<P> Hendrik Brouwer's discovery of the Brouwer Route, that sailing east from the Cape of Good Hope until land was sighted and then sailing north along the west coast of Australia was a much quicker route than around the coast of the Indian Ocean, made Dutch landfalls on the west coast inevitable . The first such landfall was in 1616, when Dirk Hartog landed at Cape Inscription on what is now known as Dirk Hartog Island, off the coast of Western Australia, and left behind an inscription on a pewter plate . In 1697 the Dutch captain Willem de Vlamingh landed on the island and discovered Hartog's plate . He replaced it with one of his own, which included a copy of Hartog's inscription, and took the original plate home to Amsterdam, where it is still kept in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam . </P> <P> In 1627, the VOC's explorers François Thijssen and Pieter Nuyts discovered the south coast of Australia and charted about 1,800 kilometres (1,100 mi) of it between Cape Leeuwin and the Nuyts Archipelago . François Thijssen, captain of the ship' t Gulden Zeepaert (The Golden Seahorse), sailed to the east as far as Ceduna in South Australia . The first known ship to have visited the area is the Leeuwin ("Lioness"), a Dutch vessel that charted some of the nearby coastline in 1622 . The log of the Leeuwin has been lost, so very little is known of the voyage . However, the land discovered by the Leeuwin was recorded on a 1627 map by Hessel Gerritsz: Caert van't Landt van d'Eendracht ("Chart of the Land of Eendracht"), which appears to show the coast between present - day Hamelin Bay and Point D'Entrecasteaux . Part of Thijssen's map shows the islands St Francis and St Peter, now known collectively with their respective groups as the Nuyts Archipelago . Thijssen's observations were included as soon as 1628 by the VOC cartographer Hessel Gerritsz in a chart of the Indies and New Holland . This voyage defined most of the southern coast of Australia and discouraged the notion that "New Holland" as it was then known, was linked to Antarctica . </P> <P> In 1642, Abel Tasman sailed from Mauritius and on 24 November, sighted Tasmania . He named Tasmania Anthoonij van Diemenslandt (Anglicised as Van Diemen's Land), after Anthony van Diemen, the VOC's Governor General, who had commissioned his voyage . It was officially renamed Tasmania in honour of its first European discoverer on 1 January 1856 . </P> <P> In 1642, during the same expedition, Tasman's crew discovered and charted New Zealand's coastline . They were the first Europeans known to reach New Zealand . Tasman anchored at the northern end of the South Island in Golden Bay (he named it Murderers' Bay) in December 1642 and sailed northward to Tonga following a clash with local Māori . Tasman sketched sections of the two main islands' west coasts . Tasman called them Staten Landt, after the States General of the Netherlands, and that name appeared on his first maps of the country . In 1645 Dutch cartographers changed the name to Nova Zeelandia in Latin, from Nieuw Zeeland, after the Dutch province of Zeeland . It was subsequently Anglicised as New Zealand by James Cook . Various claims have been made that New Zealand was reached by other non-Polynesian voyagers before Tasman, but these are not widely accepted . </P>

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