Just Where is Australia?
by Rosalind, of the Southern Cross Reference Book
It may surprise some people to know that this was a question that occupied
the minds of scientists in the early days of European exploration.
You see they figured that as there was a lot of land in the northern hemisphere
of the globe, there should be a large continent to counterbalance the Earth or
it would tip over and the northern hemisphere would become the southern
hemisphere.
This was not happening, therefore it stood to reason that the theoretical
continent provisionally called "Terra Australis" (South Land) must
exist.
The Dutch, who were busy colonising the Spice Islands AKA Indonesia, were the
first to discover and explore the West Coast of the counterweight continent.
They considered it a desolate and undesirable place but named it New Holland.
When the British sent Cook to the Pacific in the "Endeavour", one of
his secret instructions was to find and map the east coast of New Holland. Cook,
being a conscientious man did all that was asked of him even though he was
shipwrecked on the Barrier Reef.
There are rumours that the Portuguese sailors also discovered the South Land but
kept it a secret because at the time the Pope had divided the world in two. Half
for the Spanish and half for the Portuguese. This was to prevent the two nations
warring over colonies. Apparently the Portuguese were not supposed to be
anywhere near Australia.
The Australian Aborigines seemed to have had no trouble finding Australia.
Somewhere between 40 to 60 thousand years ago, someone on the coast of Indonesia
built a boat and set sail south east across the sea. It is believed that the
smoke from bushfires might have been visible and someone decided to look.
It didn't stop there of course and over thousands of years, successive waves of
people travelled the same route. Did they travel back the other way? Nobody
seems to know.
These days lots of people know where Australia is, although when I was growing
up in the fifties there seemed to be some confusion in our British colonial
minds. We spoke of ourselves as being westerners and culturally we were trying
to be, even though geographically Australia is about as far east as you can get
without tripping over New Zealand.
We also talked about Asia as being in the east, when to our surprise we
discovered one day in the sixties, that it was to the north of us.
However we have sorted out all that cultural confusion now and finally we
Australians know where we are in the world. The clue is in the name. Australia
means South.
So remember when you think of Australia, that this land might just be stopping
the world from tipping over, and spare a thought for those of us who spend our
lives walking around upside down. We do it for you.