Just who discovered Australia and when has long been a vexed topic. And Geelong has an interesting, mysterious and even key role in confirming just who made it here first. NOEL MURPHY tips conventional wisdom on its head.
WE KNOW of the arrival of Aborigines 40,000 years ago, deemed by some historians as a planned immigration.
We know of Britain’s James Cook on the east coast in 1770, English buccaneer William Dampier on the west coast in 1699 and Dutch navigator Abel Tasman around the south in 1642.
We know, too, of Spain’s Luis Vaez de Torres coming through the northern strait bearing his name in 1606. Likewise, Dutchman Willem Janszoon arriving at Cape York in his tiny Duyfken a few months earlier the same year.
But we know precious little, notwithstanding a raft of evidence, of what is an even more remarkable tale of exploration and discovery – by Muslim navigators and map-makers.
It’s a tale reflecting far deeper multicultural beginnings than the oft-cited white European version; a tale that ties Australia’s discovery to one of the most pivotal scientists in history – the man who invented the numerical system underpinning our science of mathematics.
It’s a tale that has Islamic navigators and scholars front and centre in Australia’s discovery, producing the first map of Australia in Baghdad in 820 AD followed by another in 934 AD and regularly appearing in Australian waters, exploring and trading with Aborigines.
Spearheading the revival of this a forgotten history is Ocean Grove journalist and historian Dzavid Haveric who has published two books on the Muslim discovery of Australia and other parts of the world.
The beauty of Haveric’s account is, firstly, the antiquity of the Muslim arrival – when the Western world was buried in the Dark Ages – and, secondly, the depth of research to his argument.
“The maps of Australia drawn by Muslim scholars appeared in the golden era of Islamic civilisation,” Haveric writes in his 2012 book, History of the Muslim Discovery of the World.
The maps indicating Australia are dated to 820 AD and drafted by Persian cartographer Muhammad Ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi. Another, in 934 AD, is attributed to Muslim cartographer al-Istakhari.
“It was the time of the Abbasid Caliphate, which had a scientific centre located in the city of Baghdad. It played a significant exploration and interaction of Muslims with different native cultures of south-eastern countries,” Haveric notes.
“During the period of Muslim seafaring in the southern seas, two scholars in particular, al-Khwarizmi and al-Istakhri, played the most significant roles in the discovery of Australia.
Al-Khwarizmi is known in the West for his work on Indian numerals and algebra, but his geographical and astronomical works were equally significant, Haveric says.
“Al-Kwarizmi most likely worked at the Abbasid Caliph al-Mamun’s House of Wisdom in Baghdad. There he translated and improved earlier Greek, Persian and Indian geographical works, particularly Geography, written by the early Greek scholar Claudius Ptolemy.”
Haveric’s work came into stark relief with mainstream notions of Australia’s discovery earlier this year with the re-discovery in the Northern Territory of coins dating from between 900 AD and 1300 AD, from the island of Kilwa, off Africa’s Tanzania.
The find prompted US anthropologist Ian McIntosh to plan an major expedition to the site of the coins’ discovery.
But Haveric was less than impressed.
He wrote about the coins years ago, citing earlier researchers. And he’s fiercely proprietorial about the work by Australians on the issue.
“Why do we need US academics coming here?” he rages.
“We have Australian academics, we don’t need other foreigners to show what we already know.
“There are many sources that can clearly show the richness of Australian history, many valuable sources with interactions with other civilisations.”
Haveric doesn’t fancy, either, historians underplaying or even overlooking the records of Australian discovery by Aborigines.
It’s all part of his imperative for Australia’s complex discovery stories to be fully and more widely recognised and appreciated.
“For me, it’s important to acknowledge the very significant contribution of British migrations and all subsequent migrations by different ethnicities and their great contribution to Australia society – now we have so many very different peoples.
“The Aboriginal culture is great. They were the first mapmakers. We have to acknowledge them as the first discoverers.”
“They mapped the coast, the deserts, the lakes, in detail and recorded it in pointillist paintings.”
Haveric points to Aboriginal song-lines, the practice of singing the Australian land as a navigation tool, as an extraordinary record of discovery.
He’s not surprised in the slightest that Islamic coins a thousand years old might be found in Australian waters.
“In my book Australia in Muslim Discovery, I noted the presence of East African coins in Australian waters and we can find connections to seafarers travelling from as far as Zanzibar,” he says.
“They support my claim that Australia was discovered over the course of centuries by different ethnicities.”
Haveric cautions against simplifying notions of Australia’s discovery.
“We can’t understand history if we simplify it,” he says.
“If we study it and all its complexities, then we can understand Australian history.
“We have very early maps, the first from 820AD, the second from 934 AD. The first was by Al-Khwarizmi, a scientist who invented the Arabic numerals, who invented the mathematical concept of zero and Arabic algebra.
“He’s the first mapmaker of Australia. This is our Renaissance, our Enlightenment.’’
Haveric’s research is the latest of several interesting and mysterious Geelong region contributions to the debate on Australia’s discovery.
Author Kenneth Gordon McIntyre’s 1970s book The Secret Discovery of Australia pitched with compelling force the arrival between 1521 and 1524 of Portuguese navigator Cristavao de Mendonca with a fleet of three caravels.
Mendonca purportedly wintered in the safe harbour of Corio Bay, leaving behind in the sand a set of unexplained Geelong keys that fascinated Victoria’s first governor, Charles La Trobe.
Mendonca then proceeded to Warrnambool where one of his caravels was shipwrecked – supposedly the legendary Mahogany Ship.
McIntyre drew on legends, ruins, artefacts and the realignment of maps to present-day projections, which look remarkably like Australia’s east coast and pull up sharply at Warrnambool.
Earlier again, in 1421, the great Chinese navigator Zheng He is believed to have discovered Australia with a fleet of giant junk-like ships.
Geelong hosts the curious account of a Chinese oar found at Point Lonsdale, although the area would be better known today as Barwon Heads.
One news report from the 1860s explained: “Many moons before Buckley came to the shores of Port Phillip, a boat manned by Chinaman (sic) came, or was driven ashore at the Barwon mouth, Point Lonsdale. Many Chinamen landed and were killed by the blacks, who destroyed the boat.
“Such was the story told by the late Woolmadgeon … who thinks it probably that the ‘ash oar’, which was found in the locality of Point Lonsdale imbedded fifteen feet in the earth, and over which gum and wattle trees of a large size were growing, was the relic of the catastrophe.”
Controversial author Gavin Menzies’ book 1421: the Year China Discovered the World hauled together a range of stories to underscore his claim of celestial explorers breaching our southern shores in the 15th Century.
The Yangery tribe, near Warrnambool, recounted tales of “yellow men” living among them, close to the Mahogany Ship site, and cited distinctive colour and facial characteristics among local Aborigines.
Haveric views these stories, legends, with great interest. He’s open to all suggestions, even accounts of kangaroos in the Chinese court in the days of Confucius 500 years before Christ.
But that’s a whole new field ripe for research and further discovery about the Great Southern Land.
This article appeared in Geelong Coast magazine 2 February 2014
