Looking for the residents of Terra Australis: The importance of Nyungar in early European coastal exploration

Even before European coastal occupation of south-west Australia, there were contradictions at the heart of the colonial enterprise. On the one hand many of those who navigated the Western Australian coast possessed openly hostile attitudes towards the Indigenous inhabitants. However, this did not mean Nyungar were always peripheral or invisible in the minds of European coastal navigators. As their diaries, journals, ship’s logs and other historical documents demonstrate, European mariners and scientists had a deep yearning and need for contact with Nyungar…