Qualla: Janszoon Voyage of 1605–1606

Janszoon Voyage of 1605–1606: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nachoman-au, CC BY-SA 3.0. She was called the Duyfken — the Little Dove — and she was barely the size of a modern fishing trawler. On 26 February 1606, her hull scraped past the mangrove mouth of a river on the western shore of Cape York, and roughly twenty Dutch sailors became the first Europeans known to have set foot on the Australian continent. They did not know where they were. Captain Willem Janszoon believed this low, swampy coast was simply more of New Guinea, trailing southward. He was wrong by a continent. And the people watching from the tree line were the Wik and their neighbours, whose families had lived on this land for tens of thousands of years before any sail appeared on their horizon.

Image: Nachoman-au | CC BY-SA 3.0

Janszoon Voyage of 1605–1606: The Little Dove

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kattigara, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Duyfken was a pinnace — a fast, shallow-drafted yacht the Dutch East India Company used for scouting where larger ships dared not go. Janszoon had sailed her out of Bantam in west Java on 18 November 1605, under orders to chart the coast of New Guinea and sniff out anything t...

Image: Kattigara | CC BY-SA 4.0

Janszoon Voyage of 1605–1606: A River With No Name

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Contributor(s): Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek. Bildarchiv., Public domain. Janszoon called the place of landfall R. met het Bosch — the river with the bush. Today it is the Pennefather River, just north of modern Weipa, and a granite memorial marks it as the spot where recorded European contact with Australia began. The crew nosed south along the coast,...

Image: Contributor(s): Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek. Bildarchiv. | Public domain

Janszoon Voyage of 1605–1606: Cape Keerweer

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nachoman-au, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Dutch pushed as far south as a headland Janszoon would name Cape Keerweer — Dutch for "turn around." The name is a confession. Here, the expedition met the Wik people, and the meeting collapsed into violence. By Dutch accounts and Wik oral tradition alike — a rare case where ...

Image: Nachoman-au | CC BY-SA 3.0

Janszoon Voyage of 1605–1606: The Strait That Stayed Hidden

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nachoman-au, CC BY-SA 3.0. Janszoon sailed home convinced New Guinea and this new coast were one. He was almost comically unlucky: just months later, in October 1606, the Spanish navigator Luís Vaz de Torres threaded the strait that now bears his name, proving the gap existed — yet Torres never reported la...

Image: Nachoman-au | CC BY-SA 3.0