Australian History For Dummies. Alex McDermott
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу Australian History For Dummies - Alex McDermott страница 18
![Australian History For Dummies - Alex McDermott Australian History For Dummies - Alex McDermott](/cover_pre1083347.jpg)
Because plenty of profit could be had from feeding heavy Chinese demand, every year from at least the 1720s on (but probably earlier) Macassan fishermen would sail their boats with the monsoon winds down to Australia. Here they’d stay for about half a year, catching, gutting, boiling, drying and smoking trepang before sailing back to Macassar with a full cargo.
The Macassans camped onshore each summer, and built big fireplaces for large iron pots and cauldrons to boil the trepang. Afterwards, the trepang would be buried in sand to help them dry. (If you’ve ever been in Australia’s top end during the sultry monsoonal summer months, you’ll understand why they had to be buried to get properly dried!). They’d then be smoked in bamboo sheds the Macassans had built for the purpose.
Portuguese and Spanish navigators
In the 1400s and 1500s, Portuguese and Spanish ships established a trading supremacy throughout the world, with colonies and ports established in Asia, India, China, Africa and both North and South America. It was only a matter of time before they started looking around in the part of the world where Australia was, too. Spanish and Portuguese navigators went looking — and almost discovered Australia.
A Portuguese fellow by the name of Pedro Fernandez de Quiros led an expedition to find the ‘unknown southern land’ in 1605, and in 1606 he thought he’d found it — but it turned out to be the Pacific island of Vanuatu. Heading back, disappointed, the fleet got separated in a storm and de Quiros’s second in command, a Spaniard, Fernando Torres, led the bulk of the fleet to the Philippines.
En route, Torres was the first to find a passage between Papua New Guinea and Australia (the strait is now called Torres Strait). Torres and his fleet saw the northern part of what is now Queensland (Cape York) but he didn’t realise it. Assuming it was just another island, Torres sailed on.
Lost Dutch traders and wandering explorers
Most of the trade, loot and riches that came from the New World of North and South America in the 1400s and 1500s were divided up between Portugal and Spain. However, in the 1600s a new heavyweight started muscling itself in on the global scene. This was Holland, which had managed to fight a successful war of independence against the Spanish.
In the 1600s, the Dutch began running successful trade operations of their own, setting up new trading stations and pioneering new navigation courses. One of the new routes ran right past the western coast of Australia — sometimes too close. The history of Dutch encounters with Australia can be summed up with a loud ‘bump’ noise, followed by a surprised ‘What was that?!’ and ending with ‘Oh — Australia’ (or rather, ‘New Holland’).
Setting up an administrative centre in modern-day Jakarta created one problem for the Dutch: The time it took to sail from Europe to the East Indies was incredibly long. If you think 24 hours is a long time to put up with flying in a plane from Amsterdam to Jakarta, imagine multiplying it by 364. A round-trip in a 17th-century sailing ship took a year. Then, by accident, the Dutch discovered the roaring forties. This was a powerful circuit of winds that blew all the way round the world but further south than just about anyone had been. The Dutch found that after rounding the Cape of Africa they could continue south and then get a nice little ripping wind to blow them all the way along to Indonesia.
The only snag with this was that the Dutch had to know when to turn north again and sail up to the East Indies islands. Before a method of measuring longitude had been developed, knowing exactly how far along one had been blown was difficult. A lot of guesswork was involved. Mistakes were made. If the Dutch ships went too far they ended up running into the west coast of Australia before they made the port of Batavia. Sometimes, the Dutch ships ran aground and were even shipwrecked. Other times, they just ran alongside the Australian coastline, mapping it and looking out for signs of commodities for which to barter or that would make the place worthy of further investigation. Here, they drew a blank.
When he made his way up the east coast of Australia, British explorer James Cook had a different impression of Aboriginal life. He saw past the lack of tradeable material abundance in Aboriginal cultures and actually declared them the most contented — because most self-sufficient — of all peoples he’d encountered anywhere, including Europeans and Brits. But when Britain came calling in the late 18th century, Australia appealed to it for reasons other than trade (see Chapter 3).
Chapter 3
Second Arrivals and First Colonials
IN THIS CHAPTER