Australia is the largest island in the world and also one of the oldest. It is estimated that there has been human habitation in Australia for approximately 46,000 years. However, this is only estimation and this is a substantial amount of time before the country was actually discovered by Europeans. The first ever recorded sighting of the Australian mainland is deemed to have been by the fisherman from the Malay Archipelago. They are thought to have made a number of visits in the late 1500s before the very first European sightings and first European landfall took place in the early 1600s. The first European sighting and landfall of the Australian mainland are attributed to the famous Dutch explorer and navigator William Janszoon. He is recorded to have sighted the coast along the Cape York Peninsula on a date in the early part of 1606, although the exact date of the first sighting was never actually recorded. The first landfall however, was recorded as taking place at the Pennefather River on the west shore of the Cape York Peninsula on 26th February 1606. This is extremely close to the small town of Weipa. The Dutch continued to chart a number of trips up the entire western coastline but made no attempts to settle. William Dampier an English explorer made a trip to the north-west coast in 1688 and 1699 before the world famous James Cook travelled along the east coast in 1770 and named it New South Wales and claimed the country for Great Britain. To this day Australia still has the same Queen as the Great Britain. Australia was visited by many more explorers over the years but only Great Britain claimed the territory.
