Talk:History of Australia (1606–1787)

A fact from History of Australia (1606–1787) appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 9 July 2006. The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the starting point for the History of Australia is usually taken to be the first undisputed sighting of Australia by the Dutch in 1606, although many researchers alleged that other sightings took place a hundred years earlier?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2006/July.

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DYK

I have nominated article for WP:DYK. Please check the question abakharev 12:17, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

brackets

What the hell areall of these??? Circeus 23:58, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

They appear to be hangovers from an old reference scheme. --Scott Davis ^Talk 04:19, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bad Starting point

I believe that this article is presented in a horribly bias way as it completely ignores all pre-colonization history of Australia. To ignore 3000 years of aboriginal history and to concentrate only on 400 years of Europeans in Australia is a horrible oversight. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.235.250.196 (talk • contribs) 04:18, 9 July 2006

The whole thing is pre European colonisation. BUT Prehistory of Australia should be linked to in the introductory text rather than linking to only Prehistory. Many people will be mis defining the word history and following the link to pre-1788 history expecting just that article. It's easy to miss the infobox link on the side.

I've been bold and edited the in-text prehistory link to now point to the prehistory of australia article as i think this is what most readers clicking the link will be after. It is perhaps inconsistent with the other australian history articles but i can live with that. If any one can't i suggest reworking the sentence to include a reference specifically to the australian prehistory article. aussietiger 04:39, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Chinese Early Contacts

I understand from 1421: The Year China Discovered America by Gavin Menzies that it is accepted in both Australia and China as a proven fact that the Chinese in the centuries before 1500 had regular contacts with Australia. Evidence includes both the "Mahogany Ship" and a ship found buried in the sand at Byron Bay in New South Wales that apparently had a rudder some twelve meters high; such a ship could have used a Portuguese caravel as a dinghy. J S Ayer 01:50, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's the view of one academic, who goes against what the vast bulk of academics think —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.86.116.67 (talk • contribs) 14:47, 9 July 2006

Euro-centric

This article completely ignores aboriginal occupation, just refering to it as being 'pre-history' and nothing else. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.86.116.67 (talk • contribs) 14:47, 9 July 2006

There is a separate Prehistory of Australia article. --Scott Davis ^Talk 04:19, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Zheng He

Could someone who thinks Zheng He is relevant please write a paragraph about it instead of just putting it in a "See also" section? --Scott Davis ^Talk 13:18, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Renaming article

Hi all - I've renamed the article to fit in with the other articles in the series, and, more importantly, to accurately reflect the content of the article. Regards, ClovisPt (talk) 21:22, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Discovery

Who actually discovered Australia? I feel the article is contradicting itself. First it says: "Dutch sightings - The first undisputed sighting of Australia by a European was made in 1606" Then it says: "Captain Cook has correctly been credited as being the person who 'discovered' Australia." Or is there a distinction between a sighting and a discovery? I think it could be more clear. And maybe the sentence can also be made more PC, perhaps: "...the person who 'discovered' what would eventually become modern Australia." Or something like that. Afterall, the indigenous people had 'discovered' Australia circa 40,000 BC.

Captain Cook

I have removed this ridiculous statement:

Captain James Cook has been often credited as being the person who 'discovered' Australia, but this is debatable.

It is not debatable, just extremely ignorant, as the article shows. This is on the same level as people who think that Sydney is the capital of Australia. We do not have to respect this factoid.--Jack Upland (talk) 09:20, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Gonneville

The French navigator Binot Paulmier de Gonneville [2] claimed to have landed at a land east of the Cape of Good Hope in 1504, after being blown off course. For some time it had been thought he discovered Australia, but nowadays the land where he landed has been shown to be Brazil.[3]

Maybe I'm missing something, but how is it possible to travel east from the Cape of Good Hope and land in Brazil, without going through the Straits of Magellan and Cape Horn (there was no Panama Canal then), then a thousand miles northwards? He would have been FAR, FAR more likely to hit Brazil if he'd gone westwards (or north-westwards) from Good Hope, rather than eastwards; but then, there'd be no possibilty he'd have encountered Australia at all. Can someone explain this to me? -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 12:38, 7 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Copy Edit

Ive made a number of corrections to this page, particularly concerning early European sightings. Janszoon has been put at the start, because his expedition was the first known to sight Australia in Feb-March 1606. Numerous factual errors re theory of Portuguese discovery have been corrected or deleted. Im not sure de Gonneville should be there at all, but have left the reference at the moment. Nickm57 (talk) 07:27, 28 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Reverted anon edit of Sept 2011

I’ve reverted the addition regarding Beyond Capricorn. It seems to be almost entirely copied from a Sydney Morning Herald article of March 2007, by Steve Meacham [1], but without any reference to it. The addition also places vastly too much emphasis on one writer’s highly speculative theory (Peter Trickett’s) to the exclusion of all others on this topic- McIntyre, Fitzgerald, Richardson, Pearson, King. The inclusion of rhetorical questions in the text is quite inappropriate for WP.--Nickm57 (talk) 00:28, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright problem removed

Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: http://valeriebarrow.com/upload/Ancient-Egyptians-in-Australia.pdf. Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.) For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 19:54, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Merge suggestion

I think that the article should be merged into European exploration of Australia, which deals with exactly the same subject matter and has basically the same content. Enthusiast (talk) 04:38, 27 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]