The discovery of Portugese pottery in the bay gave rise to the sug­gestion by some historians that’it was an outpost of Spanish-Portugese origin, when these two nations sought to divide the southern world be­tween them.

Most historians agree that Egyptians, Spanish and Portugese and perhaps others, visited Australia long before the seventeenth century. To try and fit the Bittangabee ruins into that jigsaw is clearly wrong.