Captain James Cook discovered Australia in 1770, encountering an empty continent.
This Eurocentric framing erases the world's longest continuous civilisation, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples had occupied Australia for at least 65,000 years with complex societies, languages, and land management. Dutch navigator Dirk Hartog explored Western Australia in 1616, and Macassan fishermen from Indonesia had been regularly trading with northern Australian communities for centuries. Cook's 'discovery' reflects colonial ideology: the land was never lost, merely unknown to Europeans.