How Australia got it's name
Geographers had guessed at the existence of a southern continent for many centuries before it was actually discovered.
In the second century A.D. Ptolemy published his Geography. It showed a vast area of the southern ocean as the continent of
Terra Australis Incognita, which means ‘unknown southern land'.
This name was later shortened to Terra Australis, although it was still unknown. Dutch navigators were the first
Europeans to sight the western and northern coasts of the unknown continent, and named it New Holland, but they had no idea
how far it extended east and south.
In 1770 the British navigator
James Cook landed on the eastern coast of New Holland. In 1795 another Englishman, Matthew Flinders, reached New Holland.
He decided it should revert to its old name of Terra Australis. This time the name stuck, although it eventually changed its
form to Australia.
