Australia Mk2 Timeline

Overview


Australia Mk2 is a short TL based on the concept that Australia and La Jave la Grande, (“The great island of Java”) being one and the same. In July 1916, the Royal Australian Navy cruiser HMAS Encounter entered Napier Broome Bay on Australia’s north west coast. On Carronade Island in the bay, a party from the ship found two bronze cannons, protruding from the ground and placed about six feet apart and were mistakenly described as carronades and a "part of the armament of a Spanish or Portuguese caravel,at the time.  If the Dieppe maps were right and...

Time line-


' Terra Australis, Terra Australis Ignota, Terra Australis Incognita ("The unknown land of the South") or Terra Australis Nondum Cognita ("The Southern Land Not Yet Known") was a theoretical continent in the southern seas. '
 * 1) Ancient times: The OTL Shire of Douglas, Mossman and Cape Tribulation are sparsely inhabited by wandering and/or ship (well hollowed out log) wrecked Papuans, Mallucans and Sulawesi. These people adopt the local Aborigine ways and are soon assimilated by the local tribes.
 * 2) Medieval times: Several states in the Indonesian Archipeligo send explores to map the coast around the location of OTL Darwin. Others conduct an exspantion of the usual trade the natives in south western New Guinea and open formal relations with the Island of Timor. The native Yolngu sustain good trade relations with Macassan fisherman for several hundred years.
 * 3) 1526-27: Portuguese explorer Jorge de Meneses sees the western tip of New Guinea and named it Ilhas dos Papuas.
 * 4) 1530-35: Portugal formaly claims Carronade Island.
 * 5) 1542: Jean Rotz’s maps depict Lande of Java.
 * 6) 1543-44: Carronade Island is formaly colonised by 20 Portuges seamen,  a priest, 8 wifes, 2 teenage boys (who were not in naval servace) and a Goan  stowaway. They all died due to climactic issues and poor food with in 2 years.
 * 7) 1544: Java Minor was identified as the present Island of Java, by the Franco-Portuguese navigator and cosmographer, Jean Alfonse.
 * 8) 1545: Spain's Yñigo Ortiz de Retez sailed along the north coast of New Guinea as far as the Mamberamo River near which he landed, naming the island 'Nueva Guinea'.
 * 9) 1546: Pierre Desceliers mappemonde depicts Lande of Java.
 * 10) 1547: Jave La Grande apears in the 1548 Dieppe Maps.
 * 11) 1548: 25 Portugese settlers and merchants land on Groote Eylandt.
 * 12) 1566-70:Terra Australis became of great interest the among Norman and Breton merchants at that time. Francisque and André d'Albaigne presented the Admiral of France, Gaspard de Coligny, with his projects for establishing relations with the Austral lands, but the plans shelved when de Coligny was killed in 1572, despite gaining favor earlier on.
 * 13) 1590-95: 30 Norman and Breton merchants, and their wives in Jave La Grande at the site of OTL Weipa, Queensland.
 * 14) 1593: The Speculum Orbis Terrae, atlas is published in Antwerp during 1593 and shows Jave La Grande. It had an animal in the bottom right hand corner of it's logo that looks like a a kangaroo. Part of one of Cornelis De Jode's 1593 maps also depicts New Guinea with a hypothetical land to the south inhabited by dragons.
 * 15) 1595: 2 Spanish galleons leave 20 Spanish settlers (12 men and 8 women), a Milanese priest, a Spanish priest and a Pilipino laborer at the location of  Bundaberg, Queensland. The north of OTL Shire of Mulgrave is setteled by 18 more French men an their families along with 4 Milanese mercinaries and Walloon merchant. The south of OTL Shire of Mulgrave is then setteled by 6 Spanish families a few weeks laater. A spanish captain finds that Green Island has a small population of 50 Yidinyji speaking Aborigines, 12 transient Sulawesi fishermen, 12 Papuans and 6 shipwrecked Chinese sailors as well.
 * 16) 1600: The village of Nouveau Cherbourg forms over OTL Weipa, Queensland.
 * 17) 1602: The Chinese map Kunyu Wanguo Quantu, which depicts 墨瓦喇尼加/mòwǎlǎníjiā ("Magellanica") as a large and mostly unexplored continent in the South.One of the northerly exstentions resembles part of the northern coast of Australia's Northern Territory.
 * 18) 1603: Chinese briefly explore the cast of Arnhemland and make a few sketchy coastal maps before leaving.
 * 19) 1606: The Dutch began to chart the south east New Guinea, east coast of Australia and a patch round Wepia. Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon, on his ship the Duyfken, sighted the coast at Wepia in 1606.
 * 20) 1610: Portuguese explores land and settle in samll numbers across the wider Darwin area. They are driven off by locals when they tryed to land at the Tiwi Islands.
 * 21) 1616:The Dutch explorer Dirk Hartog, who visited the Western Australian coast in 1616. He landed at what is now known as Cape Inscription, Dirk Hartog Island.
 * 22) 1623: Groote Eylandt is first sighted by the crew of the Dutch ship Arnhem, under the captaincy of Willem van Coolsteerdt. Spain loses intrest in it's settler camps and abandons them to a French takeover.
 * 23) 1642: New Zealand is first seen by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman.
 * 24) 1644: Abel Tasman explored the north coast of Australia in 1644 and named Groote Eylandt.
 * 25) 1655: 20 Dutch settlers land at the site of OTL Broome, Western Australia.
 * 26) 1699: The English buccaneer, William Dampier and explorer visited the Dampier Archipelago in 1699.
 * 27) 1725: Nieuw-Amsterdam village is founded in the place of OTL Broome, Western Australia.
 * 28) 1750: France loses interest in it's territory, Nouvelle Normandie. Nova Lisboa village is founded in the place of OTL Darwin.
 * 29) 1750-1760:The Yolngu  (or Yolŋu) people Indigenous Australian Aborigine people inhabiting north-eastern Arnhem Land fought the advancing Portuguese from 1750 to 1760.
 * 30) 1752-54:Nova O’Porto is built on the site of the OTL Daly River Township after Portuguese missionaries travel down the Daly River (or Nauiyu) and make peace with the Malak Malak people who lived on the river banks and some surrounding places. The learn the finer arts of hunting Barramundi fish in a river off of the local tribes folk.
 * 31) 1755: The Lisbon earthquake destroys most of the town, so colonial interest is reduced and colonists no longer go to Australia and Nova Lisboa becomes a backwater.
 * 32) 1768: The first European contact with Bougainville Island when the French explorer Louis de Bougainville arrived and named the main island after himself. He also visets the near by  the island of Buka, the Carterets the Mortlock Islands a few days later.
 * 33) 1769: The effective Portuguese occupation of the first small peace of E. Timor occers and the city of  Dili  is founded by them.
 * 34) 1770:James Cook charted its east coast, sparking of the OTL British colonization, where ever the Europeans had not got to. The Dutch give up, with some staying in Australia and others going to the Dutch colonies of Java and Sumatra.
 * 35) 1788: Jave la Grande is put on the Harleian Mappemonde, as illustrated in Ernest Favenc's The history of Australian exploration.
 * 36) 1801: Adele Island is found and named by Nicolas Baudin as part of his expedition around Australia. He encounters some "lightly tanned Aborigine types who speak a form of Dutch"
 * 37) 1803: While circumnavigating Australia, Matthew Flinders traveled around Groote Eylandt and encountered a small fishing boat with a Portuguese/Aborigine hybrid crew on it, who spoke a variant of Portuguese.
 * 38) 1814: .Matthew Flinders published the book A Voyage to Terra Australis.
 * 39) 1820: Antarctica was finally sighted in the hypothetical area of Terra Australis.
 * 40) 1845-55: The first Anglo-Nouvelle Normandie war.
 * 41) 1856-57: The first Anglo-Nova Lisboa war.
 * 42) 1857: The first person to reside on Green Island  was J.S.V. Mien in 1857.
 * 43) 1860-65: The first Anglo-Nieuw-Amsterdam war. Aid is informally given by the Dutch governor of Java.
 * 44) 1861: John McDouall Stuart had reached Tennant Creek and Daly Waters, Northern Territory by 1861 and met the Nova Lisboan explorer Pedro Pinero at his southernmost reaches. The area's traditional owners, the Jingili people were generally friendly with both teams of explores.
 * 45) 1865: Boyle Finniss discovered the Northern Territory’s Daly River.
 * 46) 1865-66: The second Anglo-Nouvelle Normandie war.
 * 47) 1866-67: The second Anglo-Nova Lisboa war.
 * 48) 1868-70: The second Anglo-Nieuw-Amsterdam war.
 * 49) 1877-78: The 3rd Anglo-Nieuw-Amsterdam war.
 * 50) 1885: The treaty of Dili reconciles and approved of the colonial rulers in Nova Lisboa, Nieuw-Amsterdam, West Timor and East Timor.
 * 51) 1886-2013 : History is pretty much as we know it in real life.

Also see

 * Nova Lisboa (Australia Mk2)
 * Australia (Australia Mk2)
 * Nieuw-Amsterdam (Australia Mk2)
 * New Guinea (Australia Mk2)
 * East Timor (Australia Mk2)
 * New Zealand (Australia Mk2)
 * Nouvelle Normandie (Australia Mk2)