New Book Says Portuguese discovered Australia

A 16th century maritime map in a Los Angeles library vault proves that Portuguese adventurers, not British or Dutch, were the first Europeans to discover Australia, says a new book which details the secret discovery of Australia.

The book “Beyond Capricorn” says the map, which accurately marks geographical sites along Australia’s east coast in Portuguese, proves that Portuguese seafarer Christopher de Mendonca lead a fleet of four ships into Botany Bay in 1522 — almost 250 years before Captain James Cook.
Photo

Australian author Peter Trickett said that when he enlarged the small map he could recognise all the headlands and bays in Botany Bay in Sydney — the site where Cook claimed Australia for Britain in 1770.

[Trickett’s theory is based on] the Vallard Atlas, a collection of 15 hand drawn maps completed no later than 1545 in France. The maps represented the known world at the time. Two of the maps called “Terra Java” had a striking similarity to Australia’s east coast except at one point the coastline jutted out at right angles for 1,500 km (932 miles).

Trickett believed the cartographers who drew the Vallard maps had wrongly aligned two Portuguese charts they were copying from. “The Vallard cartographer has put these individual charts together like a jigsaw puzzle. Without clear compass markings its possible to join the southern chart in two different ways. My theory is it had been wrongly joined.” Using a computer Trickett rotated the southern part of the Vallard map 90 degrees to produce a map which accurately depicts Australia’s east coast.

… Trickett believes the original charts were made by Mendonca who set sail from the Portuguese base at Malacca with four ships on a secret mission to discover Marco Polo’s “Island of Gold” south of Java. If Trickett is right, Mendonca’s map shows he sailed past Fraser Island off Australia’s northeast coast, into Botany Bay in Sydney, and south to Kangaroo Island off southern Australia, before returning to Malacca via New Zealand’s north island.

Trickett … believes his theory is supported by discoveries of 16th century Portuguese artefacts on the Australian and New Zealand coasts.

[Michael Perry: Reuters]

Dieppe Maps

The Dieppe maps are a set of maps produced in Dieppe, France in the 16th century, thought to provide clues towards the Portuguese exploration of Australia’s east coast two hundred years before Captain Cook and even earlier than the first confirmed sighting of Australia by Jansz in his 1606 expedition along the eastern coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria. The maps show part of what might be Queensland, and name the land mass “Java a Grande”.

… In March 2007, Australian science journalist Peter Trickett stated that he believed a simple error had been made by cartographers working on the Vallard Atlas of 1547, and that if part of one map … was rotated 90 degrees, it became an accurate map of the eastern and southern Australian coasts, as far west as Kangaroo Island. The map is in Portuguese, which Trickett suggests is evidence that it was based on Cristóvão de Mendonça’s explorations in 1522.

[Wikipedia]

See Also

Beyond Capricorn @ Libraries Australia

Guide To Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Huntington Library

Digital Scriptorium Database: Huntington Catalog Images

Another nail in Cook’s coffin as map suggests he was pipped by Portugal @ Guardian Online