More than 150 years before James Cook reached Australia's east coast, a Dutch ship had already touched the west.

On October 25, 1616, Dirk Hartog, commanding the Dutch East India Company ship Eendracht, landed on an island off Western Australia now named after him. Before leaving, his crew nailed an inscribed pewter plate to a post to record their visit.

The Hartog Plate is the oldest known European artifact found in Australia, and the original is now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Of course, Aboriginal peoples had lived on this land for tens of thousands of years before.

What other early encounters between continents should we cover?

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