THE CHRISTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF AUSTRALIA
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Dutch Calvinist Dirck Hartog,5 in his ship Eendracht, discovered the west coast of Australia.
The American Rev. Dr. Jonathan Edwards's 1739 predictions about Australasia
By 'Australasia' is meant Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand and their Dependencies — in the southwestern quadrant of the Pacific Ocean. Twenty years after the Britons on Captain Brooke's good ship Tryal had occupied, briefly, one of Australia's Monte Bello Islands some 200 kilometres off the coast of Western Australia — an important event occurred in the very year of the beginning of the English Civil War, and the year before the Protestant Westminster Assembly met in London. For in 1642, the Dutch Reformed Presbyterian Abel Tasman dedicated to Almighty God his voyage toward 'New Holland' (alias Australia). At length, he discovered and named Van Diemen's Land (subsequently renamed Tasman-ia) — as well as Staten Landt (alias the South Island of New Zealand).
