Willem Janszoon made the first recorded European landing on the
Australian continent in 1606, sailing from
Bantam,
Java in the
Duyfken. As an employee of the
Dutch East India Company (Dutch: Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, VOC), Janszoon had been instructed to explore the coast of
New Guinea in search of economic opportunities. He had originally arrived in
Dutch East Indies from the
Netherlands in 1598 and became an officer of the VOC on its establishment in 1602. In 1606, he sailed from Bantam to its south coast and continued down what he thought was a southern extension of New Guinea, but was in fact the western coast of the
Cape York Peninsula of northern
Queensland. He travelled south as far as Cape Keerweer, where he battled with the local
aboriginal people and several of his men were killed. As a consequence he was obliged to retrace his route up the coast towards Cape York and then returned to Banda. Janszoon failed to discover
Torres Strait, which separates Australia and New Guinea. Unknown to the Dutch, the
Spanish or
Portuguese explorer
Luis Váez de Torres, working for the Spanish Crown, sailed through the strait four months later, although Torres did not report seeing the coast of a major land mass to his south and is therefore presumed not to have seen Australia. As a result of these oversights, Dutch maps did not include the strait until after
James Cook's
1770 passage through the Torres Strait, while early Spanish maps showed the coast of New Guinea correctly, but omitted Australia.