May
25
/ 2013
According to the history books, the first person to discover Australia was Dutchman, Willem Janszoon, who landed in north Queensland in 1606 – more than 160 years before Captain Cook arrived and claimed the continent for Britain. However, the discovery of copper coins on Wessel Island, which originate from the former sultanate of Kilwa near Tanzania, and are dated as far back as the 900s, has the potential to rewrite Australian history. In 1944, a solider was patrolling the strategically important Wessel Islands off the north coast of Australia when he stumbled upon five coins buried in the sand. Maurie Isenberg, who was manning a radar station on the uninhabited islands, stored the coins in a tin, and on coming
