Before it was Australia, the continent was known to Europeans as New Holland.

Countries & Cities · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: For over two centuries, European maps identified the Australian landmass as New Holland. While Dutch explorers first charted the coast in 1606, they never established a permanent colony, finding the terrain barren. It took British settlement and a push from navigator Matthew Flinders to finally rename the continent Australia.

The name New Holland reflects a period of Dutch maritime dominance in the 17th century. Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon first encountered the continent in 1606, but it was Abel Tasman who applied the name New Holland to the northern and western coasts in 1644. Despite numerous Dutch expeditions over the following two centuries, the Dutch East India Company never claimed the territory, largely because explorers reported a lack of fertile soil and fresh water. Instead, the Dutch focused their colonial efforts on regions like the Cape Colony and the East Indies.

British interest grew in 1770 when James Cook claimed the eastern coast, naming it New South Wales. As British settlement expanded, the term New Holland became increasingly associated with the western, unclaimed portion of the continent. By the early 19th century, navigator Matthew Flinders argued that the name was inconsistent and proposed the term Australia for the entire landmass. Although his suggestion was initially rejected, the British government officially adopted the name Australia in 1824, and the western territory was renamed Western Australia in 1832.

Despite the official shift, New Holland remained in common usage for decades, appearing in literature by authors like Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, and Henry David Thoreau as late as the 1850s. The legacy of this era persists today in biological taxonomy, where many Australian species, such as the emu, bear the specific name novaehollandiae. While the Dutch eventually transitioned to using the name Australië by the end of the 19th century, the historical label serves as a reminder of the continent's complex cartographic evolution before it settled into its modern identity.

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