Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Early Dutch Exploration
These are intriguing theories. But most authorities believe that the first man to travel any
great distance to see Aboriginal Australia was a Dutchman named Willem Janszoon. In
1606, he sailed the speedy little ship
Duyfken
out of the Dutch settlement at Batavia (mod-
ern Jakarta) to scout for the Dutch East India Company, and found Cape York (the pointy
bit at the top of Australia), which he thought was an extension of New Guinea.
Ten years later, another Dutch ship, the
Eendracht
, rode the mighty trade winds across
the Atlantic, bound for the 'spice islands' of modern Indonesia. But the captain, Dirk Har-
tog, misjudged his position, and stumbled onto the island (near Gladstone) that now bears
his name. Hartog inscribed the details of his visit onto a pewter plate and nailed it to a post.
In 1697, the island was visited by a second Dutch explorer, named Willem de Vlamingh,
who swapped Hartog's plate for one of his own.
Other Dutch mariners were not so lucky. Several ships were wrecked on the uncharted
western coast of the Aboriginal continent. The most infamous of these is the
Batavia
.
After the ship foundered in the waters off modern Geraldton in 1629, the captain, Francis
Pelsaert, sailed a boat to the Dutch East India Company's base at Batavia. While his back
was turned, some demented crewmen unleashed a nightmare of debauchery, rape and
murder on the men, women and children who had been on the ship. When Pelsaert returned
with a rescue vessel, he executed the murderers, sparing only two youths whom he ma-
rooned on the beach of the continent they knew as New Holland. Some experts believe the
legacy of these boys can be found in the sandy hair and the Dutch-sounding words of some
local Aboriginal people. The remains of the
Batavia
and other wrecks are now displayed at
the Western Australian Museum in Geraldton and in the Fremantle Shipwreck Galleries,
where you can also see de Vlamingh's battered old plate.
The Dutch were businessmen, scouring the world for commodities. Nothing they saw on
the dry coasts of this so-called 'New Holland' convinced them that the land or its native
people offered any promise of profit. When another Dutchman named Abel Tasman charted
the western and southern coasts of Australia in 1644, he was mapping not a commercial op-
portunity but a maritime hazard.
Built by convicts, the Fremantle Arts Centre was once a lunatic asylum and then a poorhouse, or 'women's
home'. Today this Gothic building is a thriving arts centre well worth a visit.
