First off, those blasted Dutch have no right to Australia. Tasman couldn't even stomach New Zealand and buggered off after a day. They may very well have seen it, but they sure as hell didn't want to stay. Something about the continent giving them a weak stomach or something. Their country wouldn't even exist if it weren't for us, you know. We kick the Spaniards out, then they go off gallivanting around the planet playing explorer. Problem was, they forgot the flags. And obviously you can't claim anything for your King when you don't have flags. Or a King.

Either way, they saw it first but decided they felt more at home in a place where God put the canals in first, so they set up shop up in the Indies and forgot to leave flags behind. So I mosey on over and find nothing here - no flags, no people, nothing. Which makes things nice and easy. Plus I had a bunch of flags lying around, so decided to drop a few off.

Just so happened that at the same time, the Yanks decided they weren't civilised enough for us and started poking us until we gave up on them and left them to fight everyone else. So we needed a new place to send our dirty criminals. Not that I knew of course. But turns out a whopping great big desert in the middle of nowhere with blasted monsters trying to kill you makes for a great prison, so the King decided he liked those flags there and wanted to keep them. Sent a couple more ships round and then populated it with scoundrels.