European maritime exploration of Australia
Cook's first expedition carried botanist Joseph Banks, for whom a great many Australian geographical features and the genus Banksia and a number of plant species e.g. Grevillea banksii were named. The reports of Cook and Banks in conjunction with the loss of England's penal colonies in America after they gained independence and growing concern over French activity in the Pacific, encouraged the foundation by the British of a colony at Botany Bay. The First Fleet led by Captain Arthur Phillip left England on 13 May 1787 to found a penal colony in Australia. It reached Botany Bay in mid-January 1788. Phillip had decided to move the settlement to Sydney Cove in Port Jackson, but the British ships were unable to leave Botany Bay until 26 January because of a tremendous gale.
History of Australia
Although a theory of Portuguese discovery in the 1520s exists, it lacks definitive evidence. The Dutch East India Company ship, "Duyfken", led by Willem Janszoon, made the first documented European landing in Australia in 1606. That same year, a Spanish expedition sailing in nearby waters and led by Portuguese navigator Pedro Fernandes de Queirós had landed in the New Hebrides and, believing them to be the fabled "southern continent", named the land "Austrialia del Espiritu Santo" ("Southern Land of the Holy Spirit"), in honour of his queen Margaret of Austria, the wife of Philip III of Spain. Later that year, Queirós' deputy Luís Vaz de Torres sailed to the north of Australia through Torres Strait, along New Guinea's southern coast.