Australasia

As for the pink, it was mostly a process of trial and error looking to find the southern continent (Antarctica) many geographers speculated existed, if you're talking about European explorers. The Polynesian ancestors of the Maori sailed to NZ from much further east in the Pacific.

The winds are generally motherly, although not directly noth-to-south. I've sailed in that area of the world and had upwind passages both to NZ from the islands and from the islands to NZ, but with some beating back and forth it's ok, never directly on the nose the whole time.

As for the blue, two things, climate and winds again. plus a lack of exploration . plus probably geopolitics. For one thing the climate in western Australia, and northwestern Oz in particular, is a miserable desert. Southeast is much more temperate, you can actually grow crops and live a European lifestyle. Plus there are no good big harbors in that region. They were making a penalty colony, but it was still supposed to be a colony, not just dumping convicts on a deserted beach and letting them starve to death. The trade wind sailing routes also work better going further south. Sailing time is NOT a direct correlation to shortest-line distance on the map. Also, much of the interior and northern reaches of Australia wevent even mapped in the earlier years. Finally, although this is speculation, that would be getting a bit close to the Dutch East Indies, and at least before the Napoleonic wars, Anglo Dutch naval and colonial tensions were always pretty high.

>>2068212
northerly, not motherly

>>2068212
The Maori sailed from the Cook Islands I believe, but yeah it mostly trial and error.
Due to the small amount of land in the pacific, constant expeditions for new land were a necessity for growth. Due to this, Polynesians developed a few methods of effective navigation.
This is mainly speculation, but I expect the most prominent method would have been observing bird migration. Obviously, if a bird takes off into a completely uncharted direction, that you know is surrounded by ocean, there HAS to be land there (some exceptions, but whatever). Secondly, large islands create their own weather, hence the Maori name for New Zealand, "Aotearoa" (Which means long white cloud). This phenomenon probably would have been obvious from some distance away.

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They just could walk on the land instead of using boats.
Abbos are much older than you think. They are remnants of great catastrophe that wiped Australian mega-fauna and man eating lizards and make Australia a desert that it is now.

>>2068344
The Abbos could, not to New Zealand though, if that's what you were getting at.

>>2068344
The ancestors of aboriginals were sailors between Sunda and Sahul, there is absolutely no way around it.

Fire based land management occurred only as the cooler and drier climatic shifts occurred. All the trees can be cut in the tropics, that doesn't make it desert.

>>2067593
Fun fact: Maori travelled to the subantarctic islands and their oral history states possibly reaching the Antarctic shelf! I'm one to believe that they only came upon a glacier of epic proportion though.

>>2068212
>>2068312
>>2068684
thank u

>>2068312
as I understand it, the main method of navigation for Polynesian mariners was reading swells (which are wave formations caused by distant weather phenomena as opposed to waves which are caused by local wind) to find land.

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Regarding the Brits decision, the far side of the island just happened to be the side they sailed towards when they first set up their penal colony. They technically stopped at other islands just off the coast--think I remember from my Brit Empire university course that those were for the worst prisoners--but its just a matter of circumstance as far as I know.

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this seems like the right thread to ask this question. how did these people managed to sail oceans? what kind of boats they use? how come they reached all the way to madagascar and the pacific without killing themselves

>>2070232
They had a culture pretty much exclusive oriented for seagoing. It's pretty much cultural evolution leading to a certain niche.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outrigger_canoe