Discovery To Settlement
Captian James Cook
Earliest Catholic association with the history of Australia is clearly shown in the voyages of discovery in the Pacific Ocean by sixteenth and early seventeenth century navigators from strongly-Catholic Spain and Portugal. Staffed by Catholic officers and seamen, these expedition always included in there personnel at least one Catholic chaplain - usually a monk.
Spain and Portugal rivaled each other in discovering and settling the New World at this period. Pope Alexander VI, acting as arbitrator, drew a line, known as The Pope's Line, on the then known map of the world, giving Portugal all the undiscovered territory east of the Line and Spain all to the west. The Line was later redrawn farther west to bisect the mouth of the Amazon River. It would have fallen across the present boundary between South Australia and Western Australia.
On November 19, 1567, the feast of St. Isabella, and expedition left Lima, on the coast of Spanish-conquered Peru, to test researches by Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa into the undiscovered southern continent. But for interference by its leader, Alvaro de Mendana, it might have landed on the coast of New South Wales. Contrary to his agreement with Sarmiento, Mendana approved a northward change of course at a vital point in the voyage, which resulted in the ships making landfall in the waters of the Solomon Islands instead of in Australian waters.
Viscount Sydney
Four Franciscan monks who accompanied Mendana were amount the first Catholic priests to minister in Oceania, which includes the Australian mainland.
In December, 1605, Fernandez de Quiros, a lieutenant in a later abortive expedition by Mendana, led another Spanish fleet from Peru in an attempt to colonize Santa Cruz and search for the southern continent. He was assisted by Luiz Vaez de Torres.
De Quiros returned home without sighting Australia, while Torres who parted company with him, narrowly missed the continent, sailing to New Guinea through the strait which bears his name. De Quiros set out again, by died in Panama.
After De Quiros and Torres, navigators from Holland and England, took up the quest and held the imitative until finally Captain James Cook was officially credited with the discovery of the east coast of Australia, thus opening the way for a British settlement in place of what might have been a predominantly Catholic solony similar to the Latin Americas.
When, in 1770, Captain Cook proclaimed Botany Bay a British Possession, there was no feature of the Catholic religion associated with the ceremony. However, some of the sailors present would certainly have been Catholics recruited from Ireland.
Governor Arthur Phillip
Captain Arthur Phillip's First Fleet, which arrived at Botany Bay in January 18, 1788, later moved north to the superior harbor at Port Jackson and settled at Sydney Cove on January 26, included an estimated 300 Catholics - almost all convicts. The First Fleeters came to found a penal Settlement in Britain's latest possession and relieved the homeland of its criminal population.
Early in 1787, before the First Fleet sailed from England, and Irish Catholic priest, Father Thomas Walshe, oh behalf of himself and another priest, wrote to the then Home Secretary, Viscount Sydney, after who Captain Phillip named the settlement of Sydney, asking for permission to accompany the First Fleet as Catholic chaplain. His plea was ignored.
Consequently there was no priest present and no outward sign or institution of Catholicism when the future nation of Australian had its humble beginnings on the shore of Sydney Cover in 1788.