Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-1317922-20131001224734/@comment-4656717-20131002222903

I take it your electronic device auto-corrected "Tasmania" to "Tanzania"!

The only other country that could have done it was the French. The Dutch had known about, and extensively mapped the West coast and Southern Tasmania since 1606, and clearly had no intention of colonising "New Holland", as the continent was then known. The Portuguese never had a certified landing on the continent: the only evidence is a very old map. In any case, the Portuguese were declining in power by the 1700s, too occupied by wars and internal struggles.

The French sent many expeditions to Australia: the D'Entrecasteaux expedition, the Bougainville expedition, the la Perouse expedition (which, in a sad twist of fate, arrived at Botany Bay just days after the British colonial fleet arrived in 1788) and many more. The most serious was probably the Baudin expedition, sent by Napoleon to map the Western, Southern, and Tasmanian coasts. Baudin named Southern Australia "Terre Napoleon", and even today there are many place names (Bonaparte Archipelago, Joseph Bonaparte Gulf, Archipelago de Recherche etc) which hail back to his expedition.

It is a universally accepted fact that the british only colonised Tasmania (Van Diemen's Land, as it was then known) to stop the French from getting there first (Baudin's expedition spooked them). Having Napoleonic France set up a colony in Australis does not really work unless the Napoleonic Wars are radically different.

Probably the best time and place for the French to set up a colon would be in 1820s South-Western Australia. Dumont D'Urville explored the region in 1826, and even wrote about how suited the region would be to French colonisation. Added to that the French claim to the Western coast dated back to Saint-Allouarn's 1772 expedition, almost 20 years before the British George Vancouver explored the South-Western coast in 1791.

So, in my opinion, your best POD would bbe to have the French establish a colony around otl Perth/Albany in 1826/7