or (fully and ) are obsolete geographical names for an area centred on the

Gascoyne The Gascoyne region is one of the nine regions of Western Australia. It is located in the northwest of Western Australia, and consists of the local government areas of Carnarvon, Exmouth, Shark Bay and Upper Gascoyne. The Gascoyne has about of ...

region of

Western Australia Western Australia (WA) is the westernmost state of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Aust ...

. Between 1616 and 1644, during the European

Age of Exploration The Age of Discovery (), also known as the Age of Exploration, was part of the early modern period and overlapped with the Age of Sail. It was a period from approximately the 15th to the 17th century, during which Seamanship, seafarers fro ...

, was also a name for the entire

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

n mainland. From 1644, it and the surrounding areas were known as '' New Holland'' (and, much later, as ''Western Australia''). In 1616,

Dirk Hartog Dirk Hartog (; baptised 30 October 1580 – buried 11 October 1621) was a 17th-century Dutch sailor and explorer. Dirk Hartog's expedition was the second European group to land in Australia and the first to leave behind an artifact to record hi ...

, captain of the

Dutch East India Company The United East India Company ( ; VOC ), commonly known as the Dutch East India Company, was a chartered company, chartered trading company and one of the first joint-stock companies in the world. Established on 20 March 1602 by the States Ge ...

ship , encountered the west coast of the Australian mainland, meeting it close to the 26th parallel south

latitude In geography, latitude is a geographic coordinate system, geographic coordinate that specifies the north-south position of a point on the surface of the Earth or another celestial body. Latitude is given as an angle that ranges from −90° at t ...

(26° south), near what is now known as

Dirk Hartog Island Dirk Hartog Island is an island off the Gascoyne (Western Australia), Gascoyne coast of Western Australia, within the Shark Bay, Western Australia, Shark Bay World Heritage Area. It is about long and between wide and is Western Australia's ...

. After leaving the island, sailed in a northeastern direction along the coast of the mainland, Hartog charting as he went. He gave this land the name , in short, after his ship (translated as or ).

Appearance on the charts

The earliest known appearance of that name on the charts was eleven years later in 1627 on () by Hessel Gerritsz. However, the name was in use as early as 1619. was first revealed to the world in 1626 as on the small world map shown on the title page of the (). This was the first published map to show any authentic part of the Australian coastline, denoting as part of a notionally much larger landmass. also appeared on the world map by Jodocus Hondius II published in Amsterdam in 1625, and on the world map by

Johannes Kepler Johannes Kepler (27 December 1571 – 15 November 1630) was a German astronomer, mathematician, astrologer, Natural philosophy, natural philosopher and writer on music. He is a key figure in the 17th-century Scientific Revolution, best know ...

and Philipp Eckebrecht , composed in 1630 and published in 1658 in Kepler's

Rudolphine Tables The ''Rudolphine Tables'' () consist of a star catalogue and planetary tables published by Johannes Kepler in 1627, using observational data collected by Tycho Brahe (1546–1601). The tables are named in memory of Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emper ...

Coastline knowledge

shows that the knowledge held by the Dutch of the Western Australian coastline was increasing, as the chart was based on a number of voyages, beginning with this 1616 voyage of Dirk Hartog. The 1627 chart, broken here and there by unexplored openings, extends from the Willems River (believed to be the Ashburton River) almost to

Albany, Western Australia Albany ( ; ) is a port city in the Great Southern region in the Australian state of Western Australia, southeast of Perth, the state capital. The city centre is at the northern edge of Princess Royal Harbour, which is a part of King G ...

, spanning the Western Australian coastline for a distance of around . Heeres wrote in 1899 about the increase of Dutch knowledge of the Western Australian coastline:

Breaks in the coast

By the mid to late 1620s the Dutch had gathered a good deal of information, enabling them to chart with some accuracy the west coast of what had become known by then as . Heeres then goes on to say that the coastline showed breaks in various places, due to unexplored openings such as

Exmouth Gulf Exmouth Gulf is a Bay, gulf in the North West Australia, north-west of Western Australia. It lies between North West Cape and the main coastline of Western Australia. It is considered to be part of the Pilbara Coast and Northwest Shelf, and t ...

. These gaps are clearly visible on the full-sized 1627 chart image:

True nature

Heeres then suggests that the mid seventeenth century navigators were constantly faced by the problem of the true character of this South-land, asking themselves the question:

End of the name

By 1644 most of these problems of gaps in the coastline were solved, spelling the end of the name , in favour of a name that, for the Dutch, was much closer to the heart:

Notes

References

{{AusplacesnamedbyDutch Exploration of Western Australia European exploration of Australia Maritime history of the Dutch East India Company