Due to a scribal error in Book III of Marco Polo’s travels treating of the route southward from Champa, where the name Java was substituted for Champa as the point of departure, Java Minor was located 1,300 miles to the south of Java Major, instead of from Champa, on or near an extension of the Terra Australis.
In the early 1800s, British explorer Matthew Flinders had popularized the naming of Australia after Terra Australis, giving his rationale that there was "no probability" of finding any significant land mass anywhere more south than Australia.
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In 1566 and 1570, Francisque and André d'Albaigne presented Gaspard de Coligny, Admiral of France, with projects for establishing relations with the Austral lands.
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The feature is named after the French cartographer Orontius Finaeus (Oronce Finé, 1494-1555) whose 1531 world map features a vast southern continent named Terra Australis.
In 1772, Kerguelen-Trémarec and the naturalist Jean Guillaume Bruguière sailed to Antarctica in search of the fabled Terra Australis. There he took possession of various territories for France including what would later be called the Kerguelen Islands.
The feature is named after the Flemish cartographer Jodocus Hondius (Joost de Hondt, 1563-1612) whose 1595 map depicted the southern continent Terra Australis separated from both Tierra del Fuego and New Guinea.
After two failed series in the UK for ABC Television, English comedy star Tony Hancock was flown to Australia to do a television series Terra Australis for the Seven Network.
On the same map, Fine drew Terra Australis to the south, including the legend "recently discovered but not yet completely explored," by which he meant the discovery of Tierra del Fuego by Ferdinand Magellan.
On Matthew Flinders Terra Australis Sheet 1 1801-1803 the area was originally known as Dangerous Bight.
Java Minor was identified as an island (the present Island of Java) by the Franco-Portuguese navigator and cosmographer Jean Alfonse in his work of 1544, La Cosmographie but Java Major according to him was part of the continent of Terra Australis, which extended as far as the Antarctic Pole and the Strait of Magellan.
In 1766–8 Callandar brought out in three volumes Terra Australis Cognita, or Voyages to the Southern Hemisphere during the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries, partly translated from Charles de Brosses.