He would come closer still on a second voyage in 1644, picking up where Janszoon had left off 38 years earlier in tracking some of Australia’s north coast – specifically the Gulf of Carpentaria (the enclosed sea which lies above what is now Queensland and the Northern Territory) – over seven hard months. But like Janszoon before him, he did not identify the Torres Strait, nor that it was a dividing line between continents.
Instead, believing that he was still looking at New Guinea – and that the hot, sandy soil of upper Australia was a poor basis for colonial settlement anyway – he returned to Batavia with reports that left his paymasters at the Dutch East India Company unimpressed. The puzzle would go unsolved until James Cook sailed into the picture 13 decades later, and what had been under several explorers’ noses became an opportunity that Britain swiftly seized.
Would the history of the world have been different had Tasman persevered north in those gloomy hours of December 1642? Almost certainly not for aboriginal Australia – which could have faced a different set of colonial overlords a century-and-a-half sooner, but the same set of infectious diseases to which they had no immunity.
But Britain may have taken a different path. The Australian colonies set up in the late 18th century were perfectly timed replacements for the America which had just been lost.
Would the ultimate legacy of a Dutch Australia have been a far smaller British Empire, on which the sun most definitely set? Would there have been a different calibration of global powers when the World Wars began? Would Holland have been transformed?
There can be nothing but conjecture in answering any of those questions. What is for certain, however, is that Tasmania – which was renamed in tribute to its Dutch “discoverer” in 1856 – is a fine destination for a getaway; a calmer, cooler, greener, more rustic version of Australia, where rare birds sing sweetly in the trees and the fabled – although sadly endangered – Tasmanian devil scratches in the undergrowth.
And if you so choose, it is not so difficult to retrace Tasman’s journey – though he would surely be the first to agree that it is easier to do so by land. Macquarie Harbour remains a great natural bay, opening its arms placidly as it gazes into the sunset.
The Bruny Islands and the Forestier Peninsula are untrammelled and lovely, both within day-trip’s reach of the capital Hobart. And if you meander all the way up to Eddystone Point, you can admire the lighthouse placed here in 1884, feel the force of the wind which howled into Tasman’s sails in 1642 – and ask yourself whether you would have done any differently.
Source link : https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/oceania/australia/how-dutch-explorers-antipodean-muddle-changed-course-world-history/
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Publish date : 2022-12-05 03:00:00
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