Matthew Flinders turns in his grave

Hello All,

I've received the following email & have been given permission to post it to our newsgroup.

Regards, Peter Mayberry

History is a debate (as I have pointed out on the website from its inception). And it is a free world, people can believe about the "past" what they like.

The 'naming Australia people' do not have access to main stream historians and are not historians themselves. They were given a book, a freebie by the Embbutty I gather and that is their gospel. They fall in the trap of: if it is printed it must be true. We all read newspapers we know how true this is. They should really try a second book. Then again who in this country can call themselves 'historians', apart from the appointed academia? There are no laws on that. An architect must have certain qualifications, so does a brain surgeon or a lawyer, etc. otherwise they may be in trouble when the call themselves that. But a historian? Neither am I a historian for that matter, but have the tendency to call myself an 'amateur historian'. Rightly or wrongly. I have read and written my share ( more in a journalistic style than an academic style) and we of AOTM like to base our claims on the work of respected historians who worked from original sources and basically got accepted (after a while) by Australian and OS Academia.

The "naming people" make two claims that are basic to the project as presented on their website. These claims are 1. that Quiros landed on our continent (at the east coast it is claimed) and 2. that he had something to do with the naming of Australia. Both claims look spurious as the evidence that I requested from their front man did not come. I simply did not get a reply once I asked to be enlightened. I have tried to research the matter to the point that I am fairly confident where this comes from. 1. The claim that Quiros landed here could be a 'robust' interpretation of the fact that Quiros "thought" that he had landed at the mythical 'great southland'. The reasoning then could be that: if one thinks one has found the great south land (which incidentally is not the same in those days as Australia it was supposedly much bigger), one can then name it and if THAT name somehow can be shown to have taken off as the accepted name for that southland THAN one can claim that the person initiated that name. Quiros did probably never land at any coast of our continent but he was convinced that he did, that it existed and wanted to go there on a further voyage, but died before he could get going properly. However there were maps drawn in Europe ( including in Spain and France) in the 17 hundreds, of our large island that showed the information of Tasman plus the information of Quiros, with the Quiros coast (current day Vanuatu) drawn in as part of Australia, I mention this again below. Or, as we shall see below they follow the story in the book mentioned that Quiros actually landed in what is now Gladstone rather than Vanuatu. 2. A former Spanish Ambbuttador to Australia Carlos M Fernedez-Shaw collected information about the relationship between Australia and Spain in the past and more recent (Ambbuttadors are all about relationships between countries and tend to make the best case they can find to make it as good as poss, that's their job, but they tend to have a bias as well as the fact that they are busy people who may not have the time for painstaking research). In the late nineties his government published the information under the breastle 'Spain and Australia-five centuries of history'. Why 5 centuries? that's another story, but an indicator of what I am getting at.

Carlos says on page 29-30: "When Dutch explorers set foot in Australia, they began to name it New Holland. Cook himself adopted this name in 1770 when he claimed the western (should be eastern) coast of "New Holland" on behalf of the British Admiralty, naming it New South Wales. Nevertheless of all the names the one that remained for the new country was that given by the Spanish navigator Pedro Fernandez de Quiros when he arrived in the archipelago in 1606, later called New Hebrides and today Vanuatu. Quiros convinced that he had discovered a new continent, claimed all the waters and lands to the south in the name of his King Phillip III of the House of Austria. In his honour, Quiros named the newly found territory Austrialia del Spiritus Santu - Austrialia of the Holy Spirit. Note the extra i. " NOW HERE IT COMES, CARLOS CLAIMS TO KNOW THAT: " Accepted throughout Europe due to the circulation of his Memorial 8, the "i" was soon lost and "Australia" was the name used in cartography and popular language at the time and not Australy or Australie". End of quote. In the 19th Century (.....) the British Authorities continued to use it, so Carlos finishes his theory. So what he is saying is that Quiros named it after the House of Austria and people using his example forgot the 'i' after a while and that's why we are called Australia. What Carlos does not say is that The Great Unknown Southland had been called that in Latin since the Greek scholar Claudius Ptolemeus wrote his "Geographica" and posed the theory of the Terra Australis Incognita in the year AD 140. i.e. the second century. This publication became known in Europe during the renaissance and the 'Australis part' was universally used for the southland on just about all the maps. There is at least one map still preserved of about a century before Quiros that uses the name 'Australia' for the southland. Quiros was trying to find the mystical southland; he never knew or suspected we are an island of considerable smaller size.

Carlos however is not finished with his theory (note that he has already accepted the Vanuatu bit above!): He quotes the Aussie Cardinal Patric Moran in 1901 as saying ( based on the finding of a Spanish canon and a block of marble with 3 crosses ((doing this excursion "together with a group of bishops" )), which he said could have been an altar) that Quiros did not land in Vanuatu, but in the Gladstone area Queensland, which, because he was the Cardinal was then taught at catholic schools for a while in Queensland (but not any more). (p 47) Carlos does not say that he rejects this, but the Moran view did not get currency amongst Australian historians.

Carlos also says that Cook "took Australia in the name of the British Empire" and therefore must have recognised Quiros implicitly as the real discoverer of Australia. On earlier pages Carlos had (correctly) explained that Cook used 'New Holland' and 'New South Wales', now (on p 46) he is said to have used 'Australia' (of course also by accident dropping the i ) from the map showing the 'Austrialia del Spiritu Santu' part that was shown on a map that he had on board, so says Carlos. There are maps of before Cook and I will scan in a French one that I have (a redrawn one) that shows the "Terre de St Esprit " bulging out of the Queensland east coast and send it to you. That map may well have caused the clergymen to go out and look for the evidence. The theory has not taken off in Australian History circles because evidence of Quiros actually going to Vanuatu is quite well documented. So the naming Australia people are just having another go following the former Ambbuttador's theory, or so I think and as I said it is a free world. It could well be an interesting debate. My bet is however not on Quiros. They would be better off going for Torres as he was a popular leader of men and his "first through the strait" achievement is well documented. I keep you posted when I find more.

Best regards, Peter Reynders