<P> Frontier encounters in Australia were not universally negative . Positive accounts of Aboriginal customs and encounters are also recorded in the journals of early European explorers, who often relied on Aboriginal guides and assistance: Charles Sturt employed Aboriginal envoys to explore the Murray - Darling; the lone survivor of the Burke and Wills expedition was nursed by local Aborigines, and the famous Aboriginal explorer Jackey Jackey loyally accompanied his ill - fated friend Edmund Kennedy to Cape York . Respectful studies were conducted by such as Walter Baldwin Spencer and Frank Gillen in their renowned anthropological study The Native Tribes of Central Australia (1899); and by Donald Thomson of Arnhem Land (c. 1935--1943). In inland Australia, the skills of Aboriginal stockmen became highly regarded and in the 20th century, Aboriginal stockmen like Vincent Lingiari became national figures in their campaigns for better pay and improved working conditions . </P> <P> The removal of indigenous children, by which mixed - race children of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent were removed from their families by Australian Federal and State government agencies and church missions, was a policy actively conducted in the period between approximately 1905 and 1969 . The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission argued that these removals constituted attempted genocide and had a major impact on the Indigenous population . Such interpretations of Aboriginal history are disputed by a few historians such as Keith Windschuttle as being exaggerated or fabricated for political or ideological reasons . This debate is part of what is known within Australia as the History Wars . </P> <P> Although a theory of Portuguese discovery in the 1520s exists, it lacks definitive evidence . The Dutch East India Company ship, Duyfken, led by Willem Janszoon, made the first documented European landing in Australia in 1606 . That same year, a Spanish expedition sailing in nearby waters and led by Portuguese navigator Pedro Fernandes de Queirós had landed in the New Hebrides and, believing them to be the fabled southern continent, named the land "Austrialia del Espiritu Santo" (Southern Land of the Holy Spirit), in honour of his queen Margaret of Austria, the wife of Philip III of Spain . Later that year, Queirós' deputy Luís Vaz de Torres sailed to the north of Australia through Torres Strait, along New Guinea's southern coast . </P> <P> The Dutch, following shipping routes to the Dutch East Indies, or in search of gold, spices or Christian converts, proceeded to contribute a great deal to Europe's knowledge of Australia's coast . In 1616, Dirk Hartog, sailing off course, en route from the Cape of Good Hope to Batavia, landed on an island off Shark Bay, West Australia . In 1622--23 the Leeuwin made the first recorded rounding of the south west corner of the continent, and gave her name to Cape Leeuwin . </P>

What was australia called before it was discovered
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