21 
CAUSES WHICH LED TO THE COLONISATION OF 
WESTERN AUSTRALIA. 
By J. S. B att ye, B.A., LL.B., Chief Librarian, Public Library, 
Perth. 
(Bead on 10 th September , 1918, by invitation of the Council.) 
Although there is a certain amount of evidence which would lead 
to the belief that the existence of a continent to the south of the 
East Indies was vaguely known nearly four centuries ago, and there 
is definite evidence that Dutch voyagers touched at various points 
of the western coast of this great continent during the 17th century, 
no attempt was made to do anything in the way of establishing a 
settlement until the third decade of the nineteenth century, some 40 
years after the erection of the penal colony at Botany Bay. That 
the Dutch made no attempt to exploit the resources of the new land 
was more than likely due to the fact that they were fully occupied 
in the task of securing wealth from their possessions in the East 
Indies, whilst the reason that no other nation had its attention dir- 
ected to the possibilities for colonisation that might exist was pos- 
sibly tiie secrecy with which the Dutch surrounded their discoveries. 
Some authority for this is to he found in the statement 
of the English Ambassador at the Hague in the time of Charles II. t 
Sir William Temple, who gave it as his opinion that: “A southern 
continent has long since been found out,” which he said was “as long as 
Java, and is marked on the maps by the name of New Holland, but 
to what extent the land extends either to the south, the east, or the 
west, we do not know.” To the same authority we are indebted for 
the declaration that the Dutch East India Co. ‘“have long since for- 
bidden, and under greatest penalties, any further attempts at dis- 
covering that continent, having already more trade than they can 
turn to account, and fearing some more populous nation of Europe 
might make great establishments of trade in some of these unknown 
regions which might ruin or impair what they have already in the 
This statement has been vigorously denied by the Dutch, but the 
fact, remains that of the voyages made by the Company little was 
known until the publication of the instructions issued by the Gov- 
ernor General of Batavia to Tasman on his second voyage in 1644. 
This curious document was found by Fir Joseph Banks in 1770 when 
turning over the old archives at Batavia, and was published by Sir 
Alexander Dalrymple in his Collections concerning Papua. 
The Dutch voyages were followed from MSS to 1818 by the 
English voyages of discovery and survey, notably those of Dam pier, 
