New Holland, the original European name for…

New Holland, the original European name for Australia, had first been applied to the island continent in 1644 by the Dutch seafarer Abel Tasman as Nova Hollandia, naming it after the Dutch province of Holland, and will remain in use for over one hundred and fifty years.

William Dampier's account of exploring the region in 1699 had used the name in his account.

Cook writes in his Journal on March 31, 1770 that the Endeavour's voyage "must be allowed to have set aside the most, if not all, the Arguments and proofs that have been advanced by different Authors to prove that there must be a Southern Continent; I mean to the Northward of 40 degrees South, for what may lie to the Southward of that Latitude I know not". (W.J.L. Wharton, Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World, London, 1893. See also J. C. Beaglehole and R. A. Skelton (eds.), The Journals of Captain James Cook on His Voyages of Discovery, Vol. 1, The Voyage of the Endeavor, 1768-1771, Cambridge University Press for the Hakluyt Society, 1955, p.290.)

On the same day he records his decision to set a course to return home by way of the yet unknown east coast of New Holland (as Australia is called at this time).

A voyage to explore the east coast of New Holland, with a view to a British colonization of the country, had been recommended in John Campbell’s editions of John Harris's Navigantium atque Itinerantium Bibliotheca, or Voyages and Travels (1744-1748, and 1764), a book which Cook has with him on the Endeavour.

Cook next sets course westwards, intending to strike for Van Diemen's Land (present-day Tasmania, sighted by Tasman) to establish whether or not it forms part of the fabled southern continent.

However, the expedition is forced to maintain a more northerly course owing to prevailing gales, and sails onward until one afternoon when land is sighted, which Cook names Point Hicks.

Cook calculates that Van Diemen's Land ought to lie due south of their position, but having found the coastline trending to the southwest, records his doubt that this landmass is connected to it.

This point is on the southeastern coast of the Australian continent, and in doing so his expedition becomes the first recorded Europeans to have encountered its eastern coastline.

The landmark of this sighting is generally reckoned to be a point lying about halfway between the present-day towns of Orbost and Mallacoota on the southeastern coast of the state of Victoria.

A survey done in 1843 ignored or overlooked Cook's earlier naming of the point, giving it the name Cape Everard.

On the two hundreth anniversary of the sighting, the name was officially changed back to Point Hicks.