For centuries, while Aboriginal people developed a practical knowledge of Australian geography and climate, European geographers and philosophers imagined a Great South Land below the equator.
Exploration by the Portuguese and Spanish in the late sixteenth century, however, began to erode belief in the mystical land mass.
With the arrival of Dutch traders in southern Asia in the early 1600s, European perceptions changed forever.
Dutch ships plying the seas between Indonesia and Europe, seeking valuable cargoes of spice, began making landfall on the west coast of Australia. At the same time, Dutch explorers were probing the continent's northern shores.
In time, the myth of a super-continent was put to rest forever.


