The standard narrative of Australian exploration before 1788 only includes two English names, and that's hardly surprising. William Dampier and James Cook were the only two Englishmen known to have landed on Australian soil before the First Fleet arrived.
They were not the only Englishmen to pass near the continent, but there weren't many others. The English came relatively late to Europe's maritime expansion.
The Portuguese had established themselves in Goa, the East Indies and Brazil; the Spanish had Mexico, Peru and locations around the Caribbean. While the Dutch started later, they established a monopoly in the East Indies.
So what was left?
Englishmen crossed the Atlantic to New England and Virginia, but cotton and tobacco were not gold and silver. While they established a foothold in India and China, so had almost everybody else. The easiest path for those who wanted a share of the riches was to continue the long-standing practice of setting out to help themselves.
That worked well in Elizabethan times and continued well into the 18th century. So an assortment of pirates, privateers, corsairs and buccaneers headed where the loot was. None of those places was remotely near Australia.
William Dampier's visits to the country's remote northwest coast were the exceptions that proved the rule. It came at the end of the buccaneering era, and Dampier's story completes the narrative hereabouts.
James Cook represents the culmination of a different narrative that starts with George Anson, runs on through John Byron, Samuel Wallis and Philip Carteret. It forms the basis of English Approaches.