It was the English explorer Matthew Flinders who suggested the name we use today. He was the first to circumnavigate the continent in 1803, and used the name 'Australia' to describe the continent on a hand drawn map in 1804. The National Library holds a reproduction.
Until the early 19th century, Australia was best known as “New Holland”, a name first applied by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1644 (as Nieuw-Holland) and subsequently anglicized.
1804 - In a letter written from Mauritius to the British Admiralty, Flinders referred to this land mass as Australia rather than most commonly used names of Terra Australis and New Holland.
Australia, once known as New South Wales, was originally planned as a penal colony. In October 1786, the British government appointed Arthur Phillip captain of the HMS Sirius, and commissioned him to establish an agricultural work camp there for British convicts.
New Holland (Dutch: Nieuw-Holland) is a historical European name for mainland Australia.
The islands were settled by different seafaring Melanesian cultures such as the Torres Strait Islanders over 2500 years ago, and cultural interactions continued via this route with the Aboriginal people of northeast Australia.
While Indigenous Australians have inhabited the continent for tens of thousands of years, and traded with nearby islanders, the first documented landing on Australia by a European was in 1606. The Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon landed on the western side of Cape York Peninsula and charted about 300 km of coastline.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are the first peoples of Australia, meaning they were here for thousands of years prior to colonisation.
The Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines and named the island continent "New Holland" during the 17th century, but made no attempt at settlement.
We fondly recall Shane (Shayno), Steve (Stevo), Peter (Poida), Lance (Lancey boy) and Greg (Greggo). Don't forget Lyn, Debbie, Sue, Carol, Janet, Charlene, Charmaine and Raelene. Going further back in time, we had Beryl, Hazel, Madge, Dorothy, Beverley (Bev), Betty, Shirley and Joyce (Joycie).
The spelling Oz is likely to have been influenced by the 1939 film, though the pronunciation was probably always with a /z/, as it is also for Aussie, sometimes spelt Ozzie. The Baz Luhrmann film Australia (2008) makes repeated reference to The Wizard of Oz, which appeared just before the wartime action of Australia.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The original inhabitants, who have descendants to this day, are known as aborigines. In the eighteenth century, the aboriginal population was about 300,000.
The name Australia derives from Latin 'australis' meaning southern, and dates back to 2nd century legends of an "unknown southern land" (that is terra australis incognita).
“Why didn't the Dutch colonise Australia?” Sailing back to the Netherlands with a shipload of spices paid the costs of the journey many times over. There was nothing that the Dutch could see in Australia that was remotely close to the value of the spices they could acquire in the Indies.
Australian English can be described as a new dialect that developed as a result of contact between people who spoke different, mutually intelligible, varieties of English. The very early form of Australian English would have been first spoken by the children of the colonists born into the early colony in Sydney.
The first settlement, at Sydney, consisted of about 850 convicts and their Marine guards and officers, led by Governor Arthur Phillip. They arrived at Botany Bay in the "First Fleet" of 9 transport ships accompanied by 2 small warships, in January, 1788.
A coastal town located on the east bank of the mouth of the Tamar River, George Town is Australia's third oldest European settlement and Australia's oldest town.
ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER POPULATION
Estimates were based on post-1788 observations of a population already reduced by introduced diseases and other factors, and range from a minimum pre-1788 population of 315,000 to over one million people.
Aboriginal people were subjected to a range of injustices, including mass killings or being displaced from their traditional lands and relocated on missions and reserves in the name of protection. Cultural practices were denied, and subsequently many were lost.
It is generally held that Australian Aboriginal peoples originally came from Asia via insular Southeast Asia (now Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, East Timor, Indonesia, and the Philippines) and have been in Australia for at least 45,000–50,000 years.
Australia Day is also referred to as 'Invasion Day' or 'Survival Day' particularly by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. This is because it 'celebrates' a painful part of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history.
Aboriginal people are known to have occupied mainland Australia for at least 65,000 years. It is widely accepted that this predates the modern human settlement of Europe and the Americas.
The east coast of Australia was claimed in 1770, by Captain James Cook, in the name of and under instruction from King George III.
Early explorations
In 1606, the crew of Dutch VOC vessel Duyfken, under the command of captain Willem Janszoon, made landfall near Mapoon, on the Cape York Peninsula, and constituted the first recorded contact on Australian soil between the Indigenous people of Australia and Europeans.
The announcement of a Viking trade station in Western Australia came as a surprise to many, but the spoof was quickly seen through by most. This story, while conceived of as a hoax, fits within a genre of pseudoarchaeology that claims that the Vikings, the Phoenicians and even the Aztecs found Australia.