Who Discovered Australia? Willem Janszoon, a Dutch navigator

Did Chinese mariners reach Australia before the Europeans?

The Aborigines were in Australia from 40 to 80 thousand years.

The first known landing in Australia by Europeans was in 1606 by Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon.

Later that year, Spanish explorer Luís Vaz de Torres sailed through, and navigated, what is now called Torres Strait and associated islands.

Twenty-nine other Dutch navigators explored the western and southern coasts in the 17th century and named the continent New Holland.

On 5 January 1688, privateer (pirate) William Dampier, ship name the Cygnet “anchored two miles from shore in 29 fathoms” on the northwest coast of Australia, near King Sound. While the ship was being careened Dampier made notes on the fauna and flora and the indigenous peoples he found there.

Macassan trepangers visited Australia's northern coasts after 1720, possibly earlier.

Other European explorers followed.

In 1770, Lieutenant or Leftenant James Cook charted the east coast of Australia for Great Britain. He returned to London with accounts favouring colonization at Botany Bay (now in Sydney).

A First Fleet of British ships arrived at Botany Bay in January 1788 to establish a penal colony, the first colony on the Australian mainland. In the century that followed, the British established other colonies on the continent.