An old map, drawn in the 1500’s, which was discovered in a Los Angeles vault gives proof that adventurers from Portugal, not Holland or England, were the discoverers of Australia, according to a recent book which give details of this surprising discovery.

The book, Beyond Capricorn authored by Australian author, Peter Trickett, claims that the map marks geographical places along the east coast of the continent in the Portuguese language, and gives proof that the Portuguese explorer, Christopher de Mendonca sailed into Botany bay nearly 250 years before Captain James Cook of England!

The book’s author was browsing in a Canberra book store 8 years ago when he came across a reproduction of the map. It was part of the Vallard Atlas, created by at least 1545. Trickett said that he recognized Australia’s eastern coast, but with some inaccuracies, noting that the maps seemed familiar, but something was not quite right about them. What puzzled him was that the places were named in Portuguese.

His curiosity piqued, Trickett hypothesized that the map could have been pieced together wrongly from the original small animal skin parchments, causing the inaccuracies. The Portuguese cartographer would have had to guess at how to assemble the parchments because he lacked compass markings to guide in the placement of the individual pieces. Trickett used his computer to rotate the southern most section 90 degrees, and thus came up with an accurate map of the Australian east coast.

Trickett supposes that the charts were created by Mendonca, who sailed from Malacca, Portugal on a secret mission with 4 ships – bound for the discovery of the “Island of Gold” mentioned by Marco Polo, south of Java.

Tricket’s hypothesis is supported by the finding of Portuguese artifacts dating from the 16th century which were found on the coasts of Australia and New Zealand.