Abel Tasman sights and names Van Diemen's Land, 1642
The Dutch reach Tasmania without realising Australia isn't the fabled Southern Continent
Quick facts
- Ships
- Heemskerck and Zeehaen
- Sponsor
- Dutch East India Company (VOC)
- Location sighted
- west coast of Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania)
- Later landmark
- sighted New Zealand, 13 December 1642
What happened
Sailing for the Dutch East India Company, Abel Tasman departed Batavia on 14 August 1642 with 110 men aboard two ships, the Heemskerck and the Zeehaen, tasked with exploring the uncharted southern Pacific. On 24 November 1642 his expedition sighted the west coast of what is now Tasmania, and Tasman named it Van Diemen's Land after Antonio van Diemen, governor-general of the Dutch East Indies. On 1 December his crew made landfall near modern Dunalley; two days later carpenter Peter Jacobsen swam ashore with a flagpole and planted the Dutch flag, formally claiming the island. Tasman then sailed on and became the first European to sight New Zealand, on 13 December 1642.
Why it matters
By skirting the Australian coastline without ever landing on the mainland during this voyage, Tasman's expedition helped disprove the long-held European belief in a single vast southern continent, proving Australia was a separate, smaller landmass. The voyage yielded no useful trade routes for the Dutch East India Company, and it would be more than a century before Cook's landing on the east coast in 1770 drew renewed British attention to the continent.
How we know
Tasman's own journal of the 1642 voyage survives in the Dutch National Archives in The Hague; an edited copy, the Huydecoper manuscript, is held by the State Library of New South Wales.
Sources
- Australian Geographic. On this day: Abel Tasman sights Tasmania · General sourceaustraliangeographic.com.au · Cited as a "reference" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- The Mariners' Museum and Park, Ages of Exploration. Abel Janszoon Tasman · Reputable sourceexploration.marinersmuseum.org · The domain "exploration.marinersmuseum.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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