In some earlier threads I'd made discussing early discovery of sandalwood in Oceania and Aborigine equivalents to the Native American horse culture developing, other posters suggested that the location of OTL's Perth would have made a useful colony for the Dutch, and that it could have been a resupply station for ships on the Brouwer Route.
That got me wondering-what if the Dutch got a little luckier in their accidental run-ins with Australia, explore the area around Perth and find that it's potentially useful for European-style farming and did in fact create a colony in that area (let's call it the Zwaan Stroom colony, why not)? While a little more out of the way than the Cape, the Zwaan Stroom colony would therefore be at less risk from French and English attack, and Dutch ships would still have safe harbor when turning north to Indonesia from the roaring 40's in the southern Indian Ocean.
That leaves the question of the Cape. At the height of its power, would the VOC expend resources to maintain both a Cape Colony and an Australian colony, splitting personnel and ships between these two areas? Or would the Cape remain a landmark rather than a stopping point for the Dutch? And if so, would another European power move into this potentially strategic location-perhaps the Portuguese who already had African colonies, or the English or French?