Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse
The expedition continued to Australia, arriving off Botany Bay on 24 January 1788. There Lapérouse encountered a British convoy (known later as the "First Fleet") led by Captain Arthur Phillip RN, who was to establish the penal colony of New South Wales. While it had been intended that the colony would be located at Botany Bay, Phillip had quickly decided that the site was unsuitable and the colony would instead be established at Sydney Cove in Port Jackson. High winds – which had hindered Lapérouse's ships in entering Botany Bay – delayed the relocation until 26 January (later commemorated as Australia Day).
European maritime exploration of Australia
On 1 May 1622, Englishman John Brooke in the "Tryall", a British East India Company owned vessel of approximately 500 tons, on the way to Batavia made the second English voyage to use Brouwer's southern route. He sailed too far east and sighted the coastline of Western Australia at Point Cloates (about 22° latitude south), although he mistook it for an island sighted in 1618 by Janszoon (and in 1816 named Barrow Island by Phillip Parker King). They did not land there, and a few weeks later were shipwrecked on an uncharted reef northwest of the Montebello Islands (about 20° latitude south, now known as Tryal Rocks). The shipwreck caused the deaths of 93 men, but Brooke, his son John and nine men scrambled into a skiff and the ship's factor Thomas Bright and 35 others managed to save a longboat. Brooke sailed separately to Java. Bright and his crew spent seven days ashore on the Montebello Islands, before sailing the longboat to Bantam in Java. This was the first recorded shipwreck in Australian waters and first extended stay in Australia by Europeans.
In 1623, Jan Carstensz was commissioned by VOC to lead an expedition to the southern coast of New Guinea and beyond, to follow up the reports of further land sighted by Janszoon in his 1606 voyages to the south. Settling off from Amboyna in the Dutch East Indies with two ships, the "Pera" and "Arnhem" (captained by Willem Joosten Van Colster), he traveled along the south coast of New Guinea, then headed south to Cape York Peninsula and the Gulf of Carpentaria. On 14 April 1623, he passed Cape Keerweer. Landing in search of fresh water for his stores, Carstensz encountered a party of the local indigenous Australian inhabitants, who he described as "poor and miserable looking people" who had "no knowledge of precious metals or spices". On 8 May 1623, Carstensz and his crew fought a skirmish with 200 Aborigines at the mouth of a small river near Cape Duyfken (named after Janszoon's vessel which had earlier visited the region) and landed at the Pennefather River. Carstensz named the small river Carpentier River, and the Gulf of Carpentaria in honour of Pieter de Carpentier, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies. Carstensz reached the Staaten River before heading north again. The "Pera" and Carstensz returned to Amboyna while the "Arnhem" crossed the Gulf of Carpentaria, sighting the east coast of Arnhem Land.