THE DUTCH SHIP Duyfken (Little Dove) charted the west coast of Cape York Peninsula in 1606 and its crew were the first Europeans known to have set eyes on the Australian continent, although there is no certainty that they landed. There is speculation about earlier Portuguese encounters at several places. The first incontrovertible evidence is a pewter plate fastened to a pole in 1616 by Dirk Hartog on what is now known as Dirk Hartog Island at Shark Bay, Western Australia. The visit of Dirk Hartog and his men on the Eendracht was thus a ‘first encounter’, followed, among others, by Willem Vlamingh in 1697, also recorded by a pewter plate at a site now known as Cape Inscription on the north-east prong of Dirk Hartog Island.

The French also played a part in the history of Shark Bay. The captain of the Naturaliste, Baron Emanuel Hamelin, also left a pewter plate, in 1801, but this has never been found. One of his officers, however, Louis de Freycinet, returned in the Uranie in 1818 and took, not the Hamelin, but the Vlamingh plate back to France.

Thus there is a continuing history of European contact with these shores before and after the settlement of the eastern seaboard, mostly by the Dutch and French, who claimed the western third of the continent for the King of France in 1772. François de St Allouarn and his men buried a bottle 2 kilometres south of Cape Inscription, with a claim written on parchment and two silver coins.