The Discovery of Australia: Made in the Fifteenth Century, The Chronicle, 27 March 1897

This short notice in The Chronicle in 1897 informs readers about a paper in which Edward Augustus Petherick, the head of Australian booksellers E.A. Petherick & Co., would argue that Australia was founded in the medieval period. His evidence, the article advises, was that a kangaroo was presented to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain in 1499. The marriage of Isabella and Ferdinand in 1469 unified the houses of Castile and Aragon under one throne. They led the Christian reconquest of Spain and the overthrow of Muslim Granada in the early 1490s, and were at the forefront of New World Exploration in the late fifteenth century. Isabella and Ferdinand authorised and funded the expeditions of Christopher Columbus between 1492 and 1498.