Willem Jansz

Willem Jansz was a Dutch explorer who, in late 1605, sailed aboard the Duyfken from Bantam in the Dutch East Indies in search of New Guinea. He reached the Torres Strait and named what is now part of the Australian coast, Cape Keer-Weer, on the western side of Cape York Peninsula.1

From 1611, Dutch ships sailing from the Cape of Good Hope to Java sometimes touched Australia. Dirck Hartog's Eendracht landed in Western Australia in 1616, leaving a memorial at Shark Bay. Pieter Nuyts explored the southern coast in 1626–27, and other Dutch explorers mapped parts of the north and west. In 1642, Abel Tasman sighted the west coast and anchored off what is now Tasmania. The Dutch named the continent New Holland but showed little interest in colonization.12