When did Captain Cook find Australia apart from the aborigines?

Answer 1

Aboriginal occupation notwithstanding, James Cook did not find Australia. This is a common misconception.

The first non-Aboriginal people to visit Australia were the Malay and Indian traders, from the Indonesian islands. They collected sea slugs from the Australian coast to trade with china, where the slugs were a prized delicacy.

The first European to come across Australia was the Dutch Captain, William Jansz, who sighted Australia in 1606 and explored the Gulf of Carpentaria. However, he did not realise he had landed on a new continent, and believed it to be part of New Guinea. Dutch maps reflected this error for many years. Jansz was followed by fellow countrymen Dirk Hartog (1616) and Abel Tasman (1642).

The first Englishman to arrive on Australian shores was William Dampier, in 1688, and he was so unimpressed that his report put off England for another seventy years. Captain Cook was on a scientific expedition to observe the transit of Venus from Tahiti when he continued west, coming across New Zealand and then continuing on until he reached the Australian mainland and charted the Eastern coast, in 1770.