If mapmakers of the mid-1600s are to be believed, New Holland was discovered in 1644, the year in which Abel Tasman charted Australia's northern coastline from Cape York to North West Cape.
Even though Dutch sailors had mapped much of its west and south-west coasts, the continent remained for the most part cloaked in mystery. (New Holland, the name given by Tasman to the continent, remained in use until at least 1817, when Australia, the name recommended by English navigator Matthew Flinders, was officially sanctioned.)
During the period of the first Dutch discoveries, from Janszoon's voyage in the Duyfken in 1606 to Tasman's voyages in the 1660s, the VOC's official cartographers—Hessel Gerritsz , followed by Willem Blaeu and his son Joan—made little contribution to printed maps of the region. Instead, their work added more to mapmaking's decorative arts.
The reason behind the paucity of public VOC maps appears to have been company secrecy—each discovery, accidental or not, held the potential of new trading opportunities and many charts were not released.
In 1630, Dutch mapmaker Hendrik Hondius made the first major revision of Mercator's influential world map of 1569. Although his map included Jansz's exploration in the Gulf of Carpentaria, it did not reflect the Dutch discoveries of the west and south coasts of Australia.
Nearly 120 world maps were published between 1606 and 1642, the year in which Tasman made his first voyage, but fewer than 10 referred to the Dutch discoveries. Those that did were regional maps, such as the ones produced by Blaeu's competitor Johannes Jansson, and later by Blaeu himself, and Hondius.
One of the first regional maps to show Tasman's discoveries was a new state of Hondius' Polus Antarcticus, published in 1650. A year later, Nicolaes Visscher published the first world map to depict the Dutch discoveries. And in 1662, influenced by Visscher's work, Joan Blaeu published his own world map.
By this time, the mapmakers' extravagantly rendered cartography, with its brilliant colouring and beautiful motifs, placed Amsterdam at the forefront of world cartography.

Melchisedech Thevenot (1620–1692)
Hollandia Nova detecta 1644, Terre Australe decouuerte l'an 1644
engraving; 50.0 x 37.0 cm
Paris: De l’imprimerie de Iaqves Langlois, 1663
State Library
of Tasmania
In the late 1600s, New Holland often appeared on maps of the Indian Ocean, East Indies, Pacific Ocean and south polar regions. No atlas, however, contained a stand-alone map of the continent—the first printed maps of New Holland were found in travel books.
The first such book was the travel anthology Relation de Divers Voyages Curieux, published in 1663 by French scientist Melchisedech Thévenot.
The map, an almost exact copy of one by Joan Blaeu published in 1659, revealed to the general public the major Dutch discoveries, including Tasman's. The text, however, mentions only the wreck of the VOC ship Batavia. It was the first French map to show Tasman's voyages. Since the days of Dieppe, the French had been excluded from the East Indies trade.

Pieter Goos (1615–1675)
Paskaerte zynde t'oosterdeel van Oost Indien: met alle de eylanden deer
ontrendt geleegen van C. Comorin tot aen Iapan
Chart of the East Indies, South East Asia, China, Japan and north west
Australia. hand-coloured engraving; 54.0 x 43.0 cm
Amsterdam: Pieter Goos, 1666
State Library of Western Australia
Like other maps that began to appear at this time, a coastline is shown at Torres Strait. None of the Dutch explorers, including Tasman, had rediscovered the Strait that bears the name of the Spaniard L.V. de Torres. Consequently the Dutch mapping showed New Holland joined to New Guinea. Torres had in fact been within striking distance of the fifth continent without knowing it. Had he continued to sail south-west he would have been the first European to reach the east coast of Australia.

Emmanuel Bowen (1694–1767)
A Complete Map of the Southern Continent
engraving; 37.5 x 48.3 cm
Amsterdam: East India Company, 1744
State Library of South Australia
The first English map of the whole of New Holland was published a century later, in 1744 to commemorate Tasman. Engraved by Emanuel Bowen for the revised edition of John Harris's Complete Collection of Voyages, the map was copied from Thévenot and contained two legends. One remarked on the map's accuracy: 'nothing is marked here but what has been actually discovered'. A note above the Great Australian Bight said 'This is the Country seated according to Coll. Purry in the best Climate in the World'.
A former employee of the VOC, Jean Pierre Purry sought to attract Dutch, French and English settlers to Nuyt's Land, on the south coast of New Holland. Purry asserted that the best climate in the world lay between latitudes 350 north and south of the equator, the precise location of Nuyt's Land.
Both the French and English speculated about the extent and wealth of the new continent, and maps varied accordingly. Some believed that New Zealand was actually part of the east coast of Australia, a theory that revived the ancient notion that the continents of the northern hemisphere were balanced by a similar landmass to the south of the equator. Its chief proponent in the mid-eighteenth century was Alexander Dalrymple, the first hydrographer of the British Admiralty.
James Cook settled the controversy on his second voyage, from 1772–1775.
