1. On the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook's discovery of Australia its worth asking ... what was he doing here? He certainly wasn't looking for Australia (or New Holland) as Europeans had known it existed since the mid 1500's.
2. Like many other Europeans before him, Cook was searching for the fabled land of Terra Australis. The Phoenicians (based in modern day Lebanon) were brilliant sea-farers. One crew circumnavigated Africa in around 550BC. It was a one off trip as no-one else did it till 1488 AD.
3. But when those Phoenicians returned they explained that the sun was in a different position when they sailed around Africa ... and that knowledge prompted the learned Greeks to correctly calculate that the world is a sphere. But the Greeks made an error ...
4. ... the Greeks calculated that there must be an equal amount of land in the southern hemisphere as there is in the northern hemisphere. Therefore (they believed) there must be a continent in the south as large as Eurasia. When the Romans conquered the Greeks militarily ...
5. ... in around 148BC the Greeks conquered the Romans intellectually. The Romans therefore embrace the idea of a southern continenent and they named it Terra Australis (Latin for South Land). The myth of Terra Australis bubbled along for centuries but it was seemingly ...
6. ... confirmed when Europeans discovered North and South America. The two continents were calculated to be of equal size in both hemispheres and so now Terra Australis was considered a certainty. The race was now on to find it. As time when on the myth of Terra Australis
7. ... was embellised - it was now a vast land of riches and merchants eager to trade. The Portugese circumnavigated Africa in 1488 and opened up a sea route to the exotic riches of India and Asia. Endless ships went back and forth between Europe and Asia ... and plenty bumped
8. ... into western and northern Australia. But clearly this land wasn't Terra Australis - it was too barren and offered no opportunity for trade. Terra Australis must be further south. By the mid 1600's the Dutch had established a powerful presence in today's Indonesia ...
9. ... and so their finest explorer Abel Tasman set off from modern day Jakarta in 1642 to find it. He sailed south west to modern day Mauritius & then headed deep down into the Southern Ocean. He found nothing so remaining in the south headed due east. He bumped into Tasmania
10. ... and unlike the north-west of New Holland he must have thought that lush Tasmania was a serious candidate for Terra Australis ... but then it was soon revealed to be an island so he departed and kept heading east. He then found New Zealand and it too was an island so ...
11. ... gave up and decided to return to base in Jakarta. He could have sailed back to Tasmania but thankfully he didn't and sailed due north (discovering Fiji) and then sailed up around New Guinea and back to base. The next year Tasman set off again ... this time to find the
12. ... the east coast of New Holland. He sailed along the south coast of New Guinea but when he got to the shallow waters of the Torres Strait and weirdly miscalculated New Guinea and New Holland was a single landmass. He mapped the Gulf of Carpentaria, headed west, returned
13. ... to Jakarta. At that point Tasman gave up and so did the Dutch. So twice in two years Tasman missed (just) the glorious 4,000 km fertile east coast of Australia. But it wasn't just the Dutch who missed it - so had the Spanish, the Chinese, the Polynesians and everyone
14. ... else bar the Aboriginees who had been here at least 50,000 yrs. When Cook set off in 1768 his mission was to go to Tahiti to observe Venus passing before the sun. He was however also given sealed instructions to be read only after his Tahiti stopover. When he read them
15. ... he was told to sail south and discover Terra Australis. He did so (with the navigational assistance of a Tahitian priest) and they discovered New Zealand and then (250 years ago tomorrow) he bumped into coastal Victoria. He knew it wasn't Terra Australis but since
16. ... no-one else had mapped the east coast of New Holland he gave up on Terra Australis and decided to head north. He took careful notes, popped into modern day Sydney and when he got to the top of Cape York he claimed the east coast for Britain.
17. ... Cook returned to England & then set out for 2 other great voyages of Earth's largest geographical feature - the Pacific Ocean. In the process he gave us the Pacific Map and debunked the Terra Australis myth. But the ancient myth lives on in the fabulous name of Australia.
18. There was a helluva a lot of luck that shielded the east coast of Australia from earlier discovery ... but what fabulous luck. This continent was inevitably going to be colonised and none could have done so much with it as the British.
