Talk:Western Australia border

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[edit] Basis for article

At the National Museum of Australia today, I picked up a brochure on the "Garden of Australian Dreams". In the "garden" there is a yellow line which represents the Treaty of Tordesillas signed in 1494 between the Spanish and Portuguese. The museum's brochure claims that the treaty was used to divide the Australian continent. I can't work out whether or not this is legitimate or not. Peter Taylor's Atlas of Australian History has a chapter on state borders and does not mention the link. Web searching brings up a lot of links to the Theory of Portuguese discovery of Australia - a part of the theory depends on the treaty and the Portuguese keeping their activities secret because they weree in the wrong part of the world or some such notion. McIntyre does not have the credibility I would be reassured by. However, this chapter from a PhD thesis [1] provides a reasonable explanation as to why the Treaty was significant.--A Y Arktos\^talk 09:50, 28 May 2006 (UTC)