It’s rare for a region to change its name from one European explorer to another, but that’s exactly what happened with Tasmania. The territory’s name officially changed from Van Diemen’s Land on 1st January 1856.
I have yet to make it to
Australia, a fact that echoes the actions of Abel Tasman. Sent out from modern
Indonesia in 1642 by Van Diemen, governor-general of the Dutch East Indies,
Tasman completely failed to find the Great South Land. This is somewhat of a
feat for something the size of Australia (or New Holland as it was originally
named by its Dutch explorers). He did become the first European to sight the
island to its south which he named for his master.
Van Diemen only lived for another
three years, but his name does live on in the form of a gulf on the north coast
of Australia close to Darwin (named of course for Charles).
Tasman went on to be the first to
sight Fiji (lucky him), and to map vast areas of the Pacific Ocean including
New Zealand. In all this exploratory zeal it’s easy to forget that though
Tasman and his crew were the first Europeans to sight these lands, humans had
reached them many thousands of years before. It is believed aboriginal Australians
have been in New Holland for 50,000 years (European races only split from Asian
populations around 24,000 years ago); the inhabitants of Fiji for roughly 4,000
years; and the Maori in New Zealand relative newcomers having been settled for
only 400 years before the arrival of Europeans to their islands.