The Dogger down under

This came in over Twitter this week, and yesterday Saraceni posted it so: Sahul's archipelago.

A common question in Australian prehistory is, "how come the Javanese and Islamic mariners never found Australia". Even the Polynesians may have been aware of the mainland; they absolutely got to what the Dutch call "New Zealand". I assume it a matter of time before they hit up Botany Bay from the east.

... and that's the problem. From the east, Australia's great bulk and mountain-range make landing not-horrible. The west coast of Australia is horrible: look at a map, and see how much nothing blocks winds between Malagasy and Perth. Speaking of, only the Perth corner is (relatively) human-habitable, I mean, if you're not into trapping small insectivores to survive. People do, today, live north, in the city of Darwin. Not many people.

So if Java, Islamic or Chinese-influenced or simply Javanese, had checked across the Timor Sea southeast of guess-where... they wouldn't have liked it. The landing was windy and treacherous. The local produce was bad, literally alien to a Javanese. There weren't many people there (anymore - we'll get to this) who could comprehend the concept of "trade". And there were shoals.

But. Once upon a time, those shoals were on the surface. They were islands - a chain of islands, parallel with Timor. The Tiwi Islands made a peninsula from Australia. Together they blocked a bay which is now "Joseph Bonaparte Gulf", "Malita Basin" on the gulf-floor. As for "Timor Sea": that was then more-like "Timor Strait". North Sea inhabitants might consider the Dogger Bank.

What was it like over there? Probably not far-off what Tiwi is like today - or even west Timor. With lower sealevels, in the Ice Age, the air might have been a bit cooler and drier. So less windy, at least. Kalumburu maybe? - either way, tropical-savannah with long dry seasons. October to May but more so December to March, monsoon.

Could people live in near-sea-level flatland with seasonal drenching, otherwise no water? With cisterns perhaps - but Ice Age people? @Paracelsus1092 finds this difficult to believe. There's where the Dogger similarities end; Dogger was eminently productive for birders and fishers, even for hunters when the full Doggerland Shelf.

It may be that these islands' main purpose was to make the climate less-windy and less-wavey for the inhabitants of what is now Darwin.

Maybe the Aussies could try this now. Build some artificial-islands and a submarine base or two.