1616 to 1829

1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be re-produced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

Thomas Vanderveldt © 2017

ISBN 1 876763 25 6

Layout and Printing: New Holland Bulletin

2 The New Holland

Story

By Thomas van der Veldt

“In the Aboriginal world we have a belief that our spirit is born in the mother earth, the sun provides the warmth to ensure the grass and other feed is available for animals to eat, which we then eat to survive, and when we die our spirit returns to the earth.“ (John Alexander)

3 Acknowledgement

I would like to thank all the people who have helped me to provide the many small pieces of the puzzle that in the end produced the contents of this book.

Adriaan de Jong, John and Alice Alexander, the late Peter van der Kuil, Lisa Drage, Uncle Clayton Drage Clayton Drage Jnr, the late Jean Eley and her husband Laurie, Paul Eley, Maria Eley, Len Ogilvie and his wife Jean, Jan “Kabarli” James, Tim and Margaret Hargreaves, Neville Green,, Anita Jarvis, Sid de Burgh, Tim Coleman, The Battye Library, State Records Office, Department of Aboriginal Affairs and many others I may have omitted unintentionally.

4 Foreword

Did you know that Western Australia has a history that dates back to 154 years before James Cook landed on the East Coast of this great continent?

This history is barely touched upon in schools and we persist in celebrating Captain Cook’s discovery. Yet this was not of James Cook’s making because he clearly wrote in his journal: " [since I] sic. may land no more upon this Eastern coast of New Holland, and on the Western side I can make no new discovery the honour of which belongs to the Dutch navigators and as such they may lay Claim to it as their property." 22 August 1770 p 387, n. 4 Cook knew the situation so it can only be hierarchy in those early days who created a myth out of an otherwise great achievement. Yes, it was the Dutch who landed on the west coast in 1616 leaving a flattened pewter plate nailed to a post.

5 West Australians clearly have their own history, with the first two Europeans becoming marooned in 1629, after the cruel mutiny on the shipwrecked Batavia. 200 years before the British annexed New Holland.

Evidence of this event is the stern portion of the United East Indies Company (VOC) ship, Batavia, that foundered on the Abrolhos group of islands in 1629. Painstaking efforts have been made to preserve the timbers that had been submerged for more than 300 years. The shipwreck and the mutiny that preceded it have been well documented as has the massacre of 125 innocent people by the mutineers. The resultant trials and punishments of the murderers included the marooning on the mainland of two young mutineers. Those were the first Europeans to settle in New Holland, albeit it perforce.

There are ample indicators that they survived and befriended the Aboriginal people. Twenty seven years later another Dutch ship, the Vergulde Draeck (Gilt Dragon) ran onto a reef about 100 kilometres north of Perth. The wreck site was not discovered until 1963 although word of the disaster

6 had reached Batavia (modern-day Jakarta) in June 1656. There were sixty eight survivors, among whom was the captain Pieter Albertz. The survivors disappeared and were never heard of again. What could have happened to them? In 1712 another large trading vessel, called the Zuytdorp ran onto cliffs about 64 kilometres south of Shark Bay. The wreck was not discovered until 1955, the fate of the crew being a mystery to this day.

An ABC documentary about a ‘White Tribe’ in Central Australia, with Les Hiddens, inspired me to investigate in more detail.

This emphasised the question as to what happened to the people who survived the ordeal. The common belief was that had perished in this harsh and inhospitable land. Nonsense.

Conversely, it showed that these Hollanders became accepted and produced offspring that supported the anecdotes about natives with blonde hair and blue eyes.

7 The British on the other hand established the Swan River Colony and before long all Aboriginals became British Subject. A Royal gesture you might think but the term subject had a darker side. (No pun intended)

The became subject to laws that they did not understand and before long the two cultures began te clash due to Aboriginal ignorance of those rules and the high-handed application of the conquerors..

This book describes the journey over the past 15 years to find this new race of mixed blood people. The Aboriginals had no writen history, instead had the Dreamtime carried from Father to son.

This New Holland Story covers a 200 year peiod where the Aboriginals shared with European sailors the events depict herein.

8 Introduction

Linschoten “Itinerario” Jan Huygen van Linschoten (1563-1611), a merchant and explorer, left the Netherlands in 1576 to join his brother in Sevilla. After working for some years in Portugal and Spain, he got a position with the newly appointed Archbishop of Goa, João Vicente da Fonseca. Linschoten spent about five years as Secretary to the Archbishop and had access to maps and portolans and sensitive commercial information. On his return to the Netherlands, Linschoten sold the story of his travels to the Amsterdam publisher Cornelis Claesz, who published it in 1596 under the title Itinerario: Voyagie ofte schipvaert van Jan Huyghen van Linschoten naar Oost ofte Portugaels Indien … 1579-1592. (Translation: Voyage of the ship of Jan Huyghen van Linschoten to the East or Portuguese Indies ...1579-1592) In this volume, which was lavishly illustrated, Linschoten shared the commercially sensitive information he had had access to in Goa, thereby giving Dutch merchants information on Portuguese sea-routes to the Far East, of Portuguese territories, 9 and of spice trees (and spice growing areas) and other commodities. The book, which played a key role in shaping modes of Dutch colonial expansion, was a huge success. Following the first Dutch edition (1596) were a German and an English edition in 1598, a latin edition (1599) and a number of French editions (1610, 1619, 1638). Some of these editions include the plates, but do not include the maps which had added to the success of the first Dutch edition. When in 1562 Spain invaded Portugal in a war that lasted seven years, the spice trade came to a halt. So far the Dutch traders had bought spices in Lisbon and distributed those to countries in the north of Europe. As a result the Dutch undertook the journey to the Spice Islands (present day Indonesia), brought back the spices and made massive profits. In order to stop competition between the different trading companies, a new company was founded under government charter in which the different companies participated as stakeholders and

10 with a 21 year patent for the sole trading rights in the East Indian region. Thus the VOC (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie) or United East Indies Company was formed in 1602 that lasted until 1795 and made thousands of journeys to the east.

Until 1611 the Portuguese maps were used, following the eastern coast of Africa when a Dutch Captain Brouwer initiated a new route that took ships south from the Cape of Good Hope (which is at 34° South latitude south) into the Roaring Forties (at 40°-50° South), then east across the Indian Ocean before turning northward for Java. Thus it took advantage of the strong westerly winds for which the Roaring Forties are named, greatly increasing travel speed.[1] The problem with the route, however, was that there was no easy way at the time to determine longitude. The map below shows the so-called Brouwer route which is the latter part of the outward bound voyage to Batavia.

11

12 CHAPTER ONE

The White Tribe of Central Australia It all began in 1832 when an expedition to inland Australia commanded by a Lieutenant Nixon who allegedly discovered a group of Dutch people comprising 300 men and women living in a desert oasis in the Northern Territory. The first report of this discovery appeared in an English newspaper, The Leeds Mercury, in February 1834. Similar reports were published in a Dutch journal Nederlandsch Magazine and The Perth Gazette in 1837. The Leeds Mercury account claimed that Lt Nixon had spoken to the settlers in a broken form of Old Dutch and the leader of the group was a descendant of an officer named Van Baerle from a Dutch ship, wrecked 170 years ago. The exploration party remained with the group for eight days. So far a search through Army and Navy records has failed to identify a Lt. Nixon. Neither was there evidence of an order to conduct an expedition as described. Adding confusion to the story has been a recent conjecture that the Dutch ship was the Concordia. The Concordia was a large ship of approximately 900 tons and had been built in Amsterdam 1696. On 15 January 1708, under the command of Joris Vis, it set out from Batavia on a return trip to the Netherlands with two other VOC ships, Zuiderberg and Mercurius. Included in the 130 passengers and crew on board Concordia were several women returning home and

13 some Balinese who had been deported from the Dutch East Indies to the Cape of Good Hope to serve a sentence for bad conduct. Only Mercurius reached the Cape of Good Hope. The captain of Mercurius reported that Concordia and Zuiderberg had been last sighted together in bad weather to the south of Sunda Strait on 5 February 1708. On 22 February the crew of Mercurius found debris, including firewood, a chest of tea, a chintz piece of cotton, a carpenter’s bore, white candles and barrel staves. The Concordia was officially listed a being lost somewhere near Mauritius in 1708. Since the 1970’s the Australian Broadcasting Corporation had screened a story, on a number of occasions, of a ‘White Tribe” in the centre of Terra Australis, presented by Les Hiddens, the Bushtucker Man. It concerned a group of descendants of Dutch shipwreck survivors who had settled in the centre of Australia. According to their story they came from a ship wrecked 170 years before the discovery by L.Nixon, but conjectured by Les Hiddens to be the ship Concordia, wrecked in 1708, thereby conveniently pasting the number eight to the number 170. According to Hiddens the wreck had apparently drifted east, finally ending up on the North west coast. The survivors, among them ten women then travelled in an easterly direction and finally arriving at a location, given in the newspaper article as 18deg.30mins.14 secs. S. This appeared odd because remaining on the west coast would allow the survivors to attract the attention of passing ships, by lighting fires.

14 Was the story a concoction to draw attention away because James Stirling was very nervous about the various Dutch shipwrecked survivors from 1629 onwards? After all he had annexed the west coast of New Holland as the Swan River Colony for the British. The following is the letter to the Editor and published in the Leeds Mercury in 1834. The correspondent was in all likelyhood Thomas Maslen, author of the book “The Friend of Australia” who indeed lived in Halifax at the time. “Gentlemen, A friend of mine, lately arrived from Singapore, via India overland, having been one of a party who landed at Raffles Bay, on the north coast of New Holland, on 10 April 1832, and made a two-month excursion into the interior, has permitted me to copy the following extract out of his private journal, which I think contains some particulars of a highly interesting nature, and not generally known. The exploring party was promoted by a scientific Society at Singapore, aided and patronised by the Local government and its object was both commercial and geographical; but it was got up with the greatest secrecy, and remained secret to all except the parties concerned. For what good purpose it is impossible to conceive. Extract from an unpublished manuscript journal of an exploring party in Northern Australia by Lt. Nixon. May 15, 1832: On reaching the summit of the hill,

15 no words can express the astonishment, delight and wonder I felt at the magical change of scenery, after having travelled for so many days over nothing but barren hills and rocks, and sands and parching plains, without seeing a single tribe of aborigines excepting those on the sea coast and having to dig for water every day. Looking to the southwards I saw below me at the distance of about three or four miles, a low and level country, laid out as it were in plantations, with straight rows of trees, through which a broad sheet of smooth water extended in nearly a direct line from east to west, as far as the eye could reach to the westward, but apparently sweeping to the southward at its eastern extremity like a river; and near its banks, at one particular spot on the south side there appeared to be a group of habitations embossomed in a grove of tall trees like palms. The water I guessed to be about half a mile wide, and although the stream was clearly open for two thirds of the distance from the southern bank, the remainder of it was studded by thousands of little islands stretching along its northern shores: and what fixed me to the spot with indescribable sensations of rapture and admiration was the number of small boats or canoes with one or two persons in each gliding along the narrow channels between the islands in every direction, some of which appeared to be fishing or drawing nets. None of them had a sail,

16 but one was floating down the body of the stream without wind, which seemed to denote a current ran from east to west. It seemed as if enchantment had brought me to a civilised country, and I could scarcely resolve to leave the spot I stood upon, had it not been for the overpowering rays of a midday sun affecting my bowels, as it frequently had done, during the whole journey. On reaching the bottom of the hill on my return to our party at the tents, I was just turning round a low rock, when I came suddenly upon a human being whose face was so fair and dress so white, that I was for a moment staggered with terror, and thought I was looking at an apparition. I had naturally expected to meet an Indian as black or as brown as the rest of the natives, and not a white man in these unexplored regions. Still quaking with doubts about the integrity of my eyes I proceeded on, and saw the apparition advancing upon me with the most perfect indifference: in another minute he was quite near, and I now perceived that he had not yet seen me, for he was walking slowly and pensively with his eyes fixed on the ground and he appeared to be a young man of handsome and interesting countenance. We were got within four paces of each other when he heaved a deep and tremulous sigh, raised his eyes, and in an instant uttered a loud exclamation and fell insensible to the ground. My fears had now given place to sympathy, and I

17 hastened to assist the unknown, who I felt convinced, had been struck with the idea of seeing a supernatural being. It was a considerable time before he recovered and was assured of my mortality; and from a few expressions in old Dutch, which he uttered I was luckily enabled to hold some conversation with him; for I had been at school in Holland in my youth and had not quite forgotten the language. Badly as he spoke Dutch, yet I gathered from him a few particulars of a most extraordinary nature; namely, that he belonged to a small community, all as white as himself, he said about three hundred; that they lived in houses enclosed all together within a great wall to defend them from black men; that their fathers came there about one hundred and seventy years ago, as they said, from a distant land across the great sea; and that their ship broke, and eighty men and ten of their sisters with many things were saved on shore. I prevailed on him to accompany me to my party, who I knew would be glad to be introduced to his friends before we set out on our return to our ship at Port Raffles, from which place we were now distant nearly five hundred miles, and our time was linked to a fixed period so as to enable the ship to carry us back to Singapore before the change of the monsoon. The young man’s dress consisted of a round jacket and large breeches, both made of skins, divested of the hair and bleached as white as linen; and on his

18 head he wore a tall white skin cap with a brim covered over with white down or the small feathers of the white cockatoo. The latitude of this mountain was eighteen degrees thirty minutes fourteen seconds south and the longitude one hundred and thirty two degrees twenty five minutes thirty seconds east. It was christened Mount Singapore, after the name and in honour of the settlement to which the expedition belonged. A subsequent part of the journal states further: That on our party visiting the white village, the joy of the simple inhabitants was quite extravagant. The descendant of an officer is looked up to as chief, and with him (whose name is Van Baerle) the party remained eight days. Their traditional history is, that their fathers were compelled by famine, after the loss of their great vessel, to travel towards the rising sun, carrying with them as much of the stores as they could during which many died; and by the wise advice of their ten sisters they crossed a ridge of land, and meeting with a rivulet on the other side, followed its course and were led to the spot they now inhabit, where they have continued ever since. They have no animals of the domestic kind, either cows, sheep, pigs or anything else: Their plantations consist only of maize and yams, and these with fresh and dried fish constitute their principal food which is changed occasionally for Kangaroo and other game; but it appears that they

19 frequently experience a scarcity and shortage of provisions, most probably owing to ignorance and mismanagement; and had little or nothing to offer us now except skins. They are nominal Christians: their marriages are performed without any ceremony: and all the elders sit in council to manage their affairs; all the young, from ten up to a certain age are considered a standing militia, and are armed with long pikes; they have no books or paper, nor any schools; they retain a certain observance of the Sabbath by refraining from their daily labours, and perform a short superstitious ceremony on that day all together; and they may be considered almost a new race of beings.”

The Leeds Mercury story claimed that Lt. Nixon had spoken to the settlers in a broken form of old Dutch and the leader or chief of the group, was a descendant of an officer whose name was "Van Baerle". The party remained with the group for eight days.

Nixon stated: “... their fathers were compelled by famine, after the loss of their great vessel, to travel towards the rising sun, carrying with them as much of the stores as they could, during which many died; and by the wise advice of their ten sisters they crossed a ridge of land, and meeting with a rivulet on the other

20 side, followed its course and were led to the spot they now inhabit, where they have continued ever since.”

Despite extensive research, no trace or direct evidence of the settlers has ever been found. Les Hiddens also found that the coordinates of the White Tribe were dubious. Many historians now believe the original 1834 Leeds Mercury story was a hoax.

The expedition headed by Lt. Nixon was never recorded and was only mentioned in the letter to the Leeds Mercury in 1834. An extensive search of both Army and Navy records was also carried out by Les Hiddens in a bid to identify Nixon, without success. Even in the years from 1834 to the present nothing has come to light about a White Tribe in Central Australia. Professor Karen Cook of Kansas City University assisted Hiddens while she was in London with her husband who was otherwise occupied with his own research.. During her visit here in Perth, I collaborated with her by exchanging information and when she returned to the US she wrote a report that concluded that the White Tribe story was a hoax. When looking at the story in the cold light of day, it tells us that around 1662 a ship was wrecked during a storm on the coast of Western Australia. To believe that the survivors would have landed and trekked all the way through the desert to the location mentioned in the Leeds Mercury is unthinkable. 21 When the Brouwer Route was adopted it brought ships sailing north close to the Western Australian coast. A sailing voyage from Europe to Java, via Madagascar, would take almost 12 months, with an enormous toll on the health of all aboard. In 1611 Dutch captain Hendrik Brouwer made a calculated venture across the southern Indian Ocean with the Roaring Forties winds before turning north, and in doing so cut the voyage by three months. Brouwer’s navigation became known as the Brouwer Route. Shipwreck survivors on the West Australian coast could thus light fires to possibly attract the attention of passing ships, a feat of no use in Central Australia.

22 CHAPTER TWO

Vergulde Draeck On 4 October 1655 the VOC (Dutch East Indies Company) ship Vergulde Draeck, under the command of Pieter Albertszoon, of the Amsterdam Chamber sailed from Texel in the Netherlands, on her second voyage, bound for the East Indies (now Indonesia). She was carrying, apart from passengers and crew, a cargo of trade goods and silver coins with 78,600 guilders. She reached the Cape of Good Hope on 9 March 1656 and four days later set sail for Batavia. She never reached her destination. The tragedy happened on 28 April 1656, on a reef some 5 km off the mainland of Western Australia, about mid-way between what are now the towns of Seabird and Ledge Point, and 100 kilometres north of Perth. Of the 193 crew and passengers, 75 of them were reported to have made it to the shore - in two of the ship’s boats. The remaining 118 were assumed to have perished on the reef. On striking the reef the Vergulde Draeck had burst open and only a few provisions were saved.

Captain Albertszoon decided to send a party of seven sailors to Batavia, in one of the two schuyts (a flat bottomed sailboat,

23 broad in the beam, with square stern; usually equipped with lee boards to serve for a keel. Source: Wiktionary.) which had been beached from the wreck, to report the tragedy and ask for a rescue vessel to be sent. Albertszoon had decided to stay with the survivors and to appoint his under steersman (second mate) to lead the party of seven. The other schuyt had been damaged in the surf and remained on the beach. (He was influenced in his decision by the events following the wrecking of the Batavia on the Abrolhos Islands some 27 years earlier. On that occasion Pelsaert left the survivors behind to sail to Batavia, of whom 125 survivors were ultimately massacred by mutineers.) The crew of seven successfully sailed the schuyt to Batavia to report the mishap and to get help to rescue the survivors. They arrived in Batavia, on 7 June 1656, where the under- steersman reported to the Council of the Indies the events relating to the demise of the Vergulde Draeck at Lat. 30deg. 40mins.S. He told how only 75 had survived the ordeal and when asked about the remaining crew, he stated that the other 118 had perished on the reef. (At that time, many sailors could not swim.) (Ed.: The understeersman could not have been sure about those remaining alive on the shipwreck but he had no choice for the VOC Board did not allow half answers.)

The VOC Board in Batavia subsequently sent a letter to ‘Patria’ - or ‘homeland’ that contained details of the loss of Vergulde

24 Draeck and its location at 30deg.40 mins.S - as well as the loss of life. This is ambiguous for the given location is near the mouth of Hill River, some 70 km to the north from where the wreck was actually found. Immediate action was taken upon receiving the circumstances and location of the wreck. The chances of rescuing the captain, Pieter Albertsz and the other survivors were best upon taking prompt action. Of course the treasure that was on board also held some persuasion an equivalent of approx. A$1 million in today’s terms. It was not realised that there was an anomaly with the location of 30deg.40mins.S. Why was that coordinate given instead of the actual location of 31deg.16mins.S where the wreck was found in 1963? Needless to say that the first rescue attempt with the ships Goede Hoop and Witte Valk were futile if indeed the wreck was at 31deg.16mins.S.

25 CHAPTER THREE

Rescue/Salvage attempts of the Vergulde Draeck Two Flute ships, the Witte Valk and Goede Hoop were immediately sent to the wrecksite of the Vergulde Draeck at 30deg.40mins.South in order to salvage any goods or moneys, and rescue the survivors. The Witte Valk could not approach land because of rough seas whipped up by furious storms. The Goede Hoop was more persistent and managed to land a search party of three at the appropriate latitude. They got lost in the bush while searching inland and were never seen again. Subsequently a longboat with eight searchers was sent to look for the three lost sailors but it was smashed on inshore reefs by pounding surf. No bodies were recovered. The Goede Hoop returned to Batavia having found no trace of the Vergulde Draeck or its crew, leaving another eleven men behind. She reached Batavia on 14 October, 1656. In April 1657 another vessel, the flute Vink, sailed from the Cape of Good Hope to Batavia with instructions to sail via the west coast of the Great Southland and search for survivors. Once again there was no success, primarily due to bad weather and high seas. The Vink reached Batavia on 27 June, 1657. The experiences of the rescue ships with inclement weather along the coat of the Southland convinced Governor General Maetsuijker in Batavia that June and July were not the best

26 months for rescue missions. Still concerned about the fate of the survivors the next expedition was launched when it was summertime in the Southern Hemisphere. On New Year’s Day, 1658 the flute Waeckende Boei and the gallliot Emmeloort, under the command of Captains Samuel Volkersen and Aucke Pieters Jonck respectively, left Batavia in search of survivors of the Vergulde Draeck and the lost eleven members of the crew of the Goede Hoop. They were instructed to stay together, to rescue survivors and to salvage as much merchandise and bullion as possible and to chart the coast carefully. Furthermore, they were to find out if the land was inhabited and, if so, to establish trading opportunities with the inhabitants. They were also instructed to take formal possession of all the places they discovered! Was this instruction followed up? Volckersen and Jonck were not able to achieve the tasks set for them. Not long into the voyage Volkerson complained that the Emmeloort was too slow and he was having difficulty keeping the two vessels together. On 14 February they separated and thereafter acted independently, although they met up on several occasions on the coast of the Southland. The Emmeloort sighted the Southland on 24 February, 1658 at Lat 33deg..12mins.S – at about present-day Bunbury – and then sailed north charting the coast. On 8 March at about 30 degrees 25mins.S fires were seen on the shore. The next day a boat was sent ashore late in the day to investigate the fires. They had been extinguished. The following day another search party was dispatched and they met up with a group of Aborigines who

27 had been responsible for lighting the fires. The party also reported seeing land under cultivation including the growing of crops. However, no traces of survivors or ship wreckage were found.

28 CHAPTER FOUR

The Emmeloort The artist on board Emmeloort, the ship that accompanied Waeckende Boeij in 1658, John Nessel, used pen and pencil to draw the coastline and at Latitude 30deg.20mins.S three dwellings. Following is a excerpt from the Daily Register kept by the Captain of the Emeloort Aucke Pietersz.Jonck Actual entry: “Maendagh 11 Maert 1658 - des morgens met zon opganck zagen onze boot weder van het land koomen in het oosten alwaer een Eijlandken lagh daer van landt 1/2 mijl buijten den wal en het slecht water was en een Eijlandeken lagh daer van landt 1/2 mijl buijten den wal en een risf dat om den noord streckte alwaer tussen beijde seer slecht was en lanck 2 1/2 mijl langhs de wal 3/4 mijl van strant of leijt op Z: breete van 30gr. en 25 min soo ick bevondt ende de miswijsing 8gr.40min noord-westering hebben ons boot des naer middagh ten 10 uren aen boort gekregen verhaalden ons dat se bij drie huijsen waren geweest en vijf persoonen van aansien en seer groot van postuur waren wenckten ons dat men naer haar toe soude coomen als mede lijden de hand onder haar hoofd tot teijcken om te slapen maer wij niet slecht sijnde ons in handen van soodanigh wilt volk te begeven waar wij goede exempels van hebben gehadt zijn weder naar onse boot gekeert en doen wij in onse boot waren quamen sij op strandt, wij deden een teijcken

29 met onse lantaren en vlagge dat sij bij ons souden coomen maar sij seer schroomachtig waren konden haer niet bij onse boot krijgen, sijn met den doncker van ons vertrocken en wij den gehelen nacht in onse boot gerust naer het afcorten van de wal. Wij hebben aen landt veel kreupelbos gevonden op eenige plaetsen mede zaijlandt dat sij asfbranden edoch geenige fruiten gesien als eenige kruijden dat fraaij roock hadden sonder iets meer te sien van vers water of boomen landwaerts maer veel sandtduinen ... verstonden de gedaante van de Inwoonders van het Z. landt de manspersoonen sijn kloeck van persoon naeckt behalve haer mannelijckheijt een weijnich voor te hebben met een kroon op haer hooft seer swart.” Translation March 1658 Monday 11 Ditto in the morning with sunrise saw our boat returning from the land in the east where it was flat water and an Islet lay there from land 2 1/2 mile off shore and a reef which stretched northward where in between both it [the water] was very flat and 2 1/2 mile alongside the shore 3/4 mile from the beach located in S. lat: of 30 deg.25mins. as I found it and the aberration 8deg.40mins. north westering at 10. of the clock after midday we did get the boat to board and recounted to us that they had been to three houses where there were five persons of high respect and very tall posture beckoning us that one should come to them as also lay the hand under her head for sign to sleep but us not going wrong to walk into the hands of such wild folk about whom we have had good examples have returned to our boat and when

30 we were in the boat they came to the beach we did signal with our lantern and flag that they should come to us but they were very timorous and could not be gotten to our boat with darkness they left us and we rested all night in our boat after warping from the shore on land we have found much shrubs and in some places also sowing-land which they burn off in some places arable land or sowing-land however sighted no fruits except some herbs that had tolerable smell without seeing something more of fresh water or trees inland but many sand dunes when we had gone some three miles both along the beach as inland but at night saw many fires lit have not at all encountered any malice and in the afternoon at 3 o’clock we again set sail in God’s name ...understood the figure of the Inhabitants of the Southland the male people are stout persons naked except for their manhood having a little in front with a crown on their head very black.” [Translated, by Adriaan de Jong, excerpt from the copy: Daily Register kept by the skipper Aucke Pietersz Jonck of the galliot Emeloort sailing with selfsame from Battavia to the Southlandt In the Year Ano: 1658 ]

31 !

!

32 The encounter with the five persons was puzzling for where did these men come from? The location of Lat.30deg.25mins.S was within 30 km of Lat. 30deg.40mins S as reported by the under-steersman to the Council of the Indies in Batavia on 7 June 1656. The location near to what is now known as Hill River. It was near the end of June with moderate temparatures and ample water around, although some historians were quick to point the finger at our harsh climate and lack of water, causing the crew to perish. The crews of these 17th Century ships were a tough lot well used to a low subsistence and with an inherent ability to survive, unlike people in the current Western world of three meals a day. They were hardened people who were able to survive where others from today’s world would surely perish, because survival was something that they learned from a very young age in the 1600’s. Nontheless conjecture prevailed that they would surely have perished in this hot climate, without water, or even eaten by cannibals although this was nothing more than guesswork.

What really did become of these souls that landed on today’s equivalent of the moon? Nothing was familiar about the land and possible predators that might attack them during the night. There was a large animal that took leaps with its long legs like coiled springs – later named the kangaroo – and a type of

33 ostrich that moved as swift as a deer. What other unusual secrets did this strange land hold? According to the log that Captain of the Emeloort, Aucke Pietersz., kept, these huts were sighted at Lat.30deg.25mins. S. This location is near the mouth of the Hill River some12km north to the current town of Cervantes. A story called ‘the Hill River Dutchmen’ has been doing the rounds, locally, for a long time and apparently there are six graves in the vicinity. The Hill River, although smaller than the Moore River runs a similar course from the inland region. Its headwaters are near Dandaragan and it meanders along a winding path to the Indian Ocean and peters out on a wide beach. Like Moore River its mouth is tidal making it brackish whilst further inland it becomes more potable. The sides are muddy and bullrushes grow on either side. When the author visited the area it was commented that with the reeds and mud one could easily make a dwelling or two. The houses, or huts, which Johann Nessel had drawn on the coastal map of Australia in about 30deg.25mins South seem to resemble an Africal style. If this was indeed the actual style, had the Aborigines developed this style independent, or had they perhaps been influenced? A possible influence could have come from Wouter Loos and Jan Pelgrom de Bye, the two Batavia mutineers who in 1629

34 were spared the gallows and were instead marooned on the mainland, some say in the vicinity of Hutt River. Another possible influence could have come from the skipper and four sailors from the Sardam (the ship with which Pelsaert came back in 1629 to rescue the Batavia survivors) who went looking for water on the mainland, but never returned.

35 CHAPTER FIVE

Abram Leeman Now, two years after the drama of the Vergulde Draeck, Abram Leeman, upper-steersman of the Waekende Boeij, was on the shore of the Southland, searching for any sign of survival of the crew and passengers from the Vergulde Draeck. Having been ashore many times and having found wreckage Leeman set out once again with thirteen other men only to return to the Waeckende Boeij when he noticed the weather turning bad. On returning to the ship Volkerson disputed Leeman's concerns and send him back. By nightfall the storm had broken and the sea risen so high that Leeman and his men were unable to land and were forced to ride out the storm in the darkness of night. The storm worsened the next day and the boat lost its rudder and steering had to be managed by using the oars. Eventually Leeman sighted a small inlet between two rocks and with little control over the boat made for the beach with the boat considerably damaged. Meanwhile, the Waeckende Boeij had headed out to sea to ride out the storm. After 4 days Volkerson returned to the site where the boat was last seen. He fired cannons but there was no response. He concluded that Leeman and crew were lost, presumably drowned. He then decided to sail back to Batavia. That evening, March 28, they saw a fire on the land. He discharged a cannon again and immediately another fire was seen close to the first. Not having another boat on board and

36 convinced that Leeman and his crew had perished, he couldn’t go ashore to investigate. He decided to stay in the vicinity and wait for daybreak. By then the ship had drifted further north and although Volkerson recorded that he sailed past the shore and that he got close in to the coast, nothing further happened that prevented him from sailing north to Batavia, which he reached on 10 April 1658. During the 4 days the Waeckende Boeij was riding out the storm, Leeman and his crew were doing all they could to repair their damaged boat. Keeping a lookout for the Waeckende Boeij they survived by killing seals and gulls and drinking brackish water found in the rocks. They returned to the mainland near where wreckage of the Vergulde Draeck littered the beach fearing that they would be stranded there. Then, on the 28 March, in the evening, sails were sighted and Leeman ordered a fire to be lit. Shortly afterwards, the Waeckende Boeij reduced sail and fired a gun to which Leeman responded with a second fire. They could have sailed their boat to the ship but the sea was rough, it was getting dark and the surrounding reefs were of concern. Instead they decided to wait until morning. When dawn broke (29 March 1658) the Waeckende Boeij was nowhere to be seen. They sailed their boat out to sea trying to find her, but to no avail. They were now marooned ...... With their spirits low, Leeman had to work hard to convince his men that there was only one solution for their plight and that was to sail to Batavia. For a week they worked to outfit the boat for the long voyage on the open sea.

37 On the morning of the April 8, 1658 began one of the more heroic sea voyages of all time. In a remarkable feat of courage, seamanship and endurance, Leeman sailed a leaky craft with fourteen men on board, for 21 days along the barren Western Australian coast and across the Timor Sea to Java. When Leeman finally reached Batavia and reported his experience to the Governor-General and his councillors, they decided not to mount anymore expeditions to search for the survivors of the Vergulde Draeck.

38 CHAPTER SIX

Willem de Vlamingh De Vlamingh as he is often referred to does not often get a mention, yet he played an important part in New Holland. Willem - later named Willem de Vlamingh - was baptised, on 28 November 1640, as the son of Hessel Dirckszoon and Trijntje Cornelis on the island of East-Vlieland in the Netherlands. Because part of the Vlielanders livelihood was whaling, his early seafaring experience had been on whaling ships. He married Willempie Cornelis, from Amsterdam, on 2 December 1668 and settled in Amsterdam and its seafaring world. In 1688, he joined the VOC and on 26 November of that year he was on his way to Batavia. In May 1690, he returned to Holland. Four years later, on 7 January, 1694, he again departed for the East Indies and reached Batavia ten months later on 13 November that same year. On 23 August, 1695 he was back in Amsterdam and was nominated for the responsible task of mounting an expedition to search for the Ridderschap van Holland. On 11 July, 1693, the retourship, Ridderschap van Holland, had departed from the province of Zeeland, in the Netherlands, for the long voyage to Batavia. Early in 1694 it had reached Cape of Good Hope but after sailing from there, she had disappeared with 325 passengers and crew - and was

39 never heard from again. Somewhere in the Indian Ocean between the Cape and Batavia the 164 feet ship had come to grief. For VOC Board member Nicolaas Witsen this was the opportunity he had waited for. He had been aware that since Abel Tasman’s journey in 1644 - nearly fifty years before - no serious attempt had been initiated by the VOC to further explore the Southland. He had tried a number of times to convince his fellow Board members of the need for such exploration but to no avail. The loss of the Ridderschap van Holland presented him with an opportunity to push for an inquiry and a thorough search of this area of ocean - i.e. the west coast of the Southland.

Nicolaas Witsen (1641-1717) was born into a family of successful Dutch business men and rapidly became a key figure in the political, economic and cultural world of the Netherlands. de Vlamingh probably knew him and on one of his journeys north of Nova Zembla he named an island after him - a deed that Witsen would have appreciated. Witsen’s expertise in shipbuilding - he published a book about it which is still considered an important reference work today - made him an ideal board member of the VOC. He studied law at Leiden University and was Mayor of Amsterdam on and off in the years between 1682 and 1705. He was also an adviser to Peter the Great of Russia on maritime matters. As the fortunes of the Company were now a major issue his colleagues were more ready to listen.

40 The search for the Vergulde Draeck, lost in 1656, had not been a great success but in spite of this the Board of the VOC resolved on 10 November 1695 to give their accord for the inquiry to proceed. Their motivation, manipulated by Witsen, was evident in a letter they sent to Batavia that day wherein it was mentioned that because there were suggestions that the Southland lies more to the west than the charts show, there was a good chance that the Ridderschap van Holland might have stranded upon the west coast of the Southland. The expedition, which was to leave from Batavia, would therefore look for a wreck, its survivors and at the same time, and once and for all, chart the whole west coast. How necessary it was to do this, and explore the interior as well, was borne out by this optimistic statement, “Who knows whether some people (from the Ridderschap van Holland) might still be found alive, as well as finding survivors and salvage of the Vergulde Draeck.” It seemed that the Board considered it possible that after 40 years some of the Vergulde Draeck crew might still be alive in the Southland. In preparing the plans for the expedition the Board had nominated the Amsterdam Chamber of the VOC. This Chamber, in conjunction with Commander Hendrik Pronk and de Vlamingh himself, devised a strategy which was put before the VOC Board on 8 December 1695. In variation of earlier plans, which had stated Batavia as the starting point, now the Cape of Good Hope was proposed. In this way, the Ridderschap of Holland’s route could be 41 retraced. Also, the islands Amsterdam and St Paul, which were en route, could be explored further and the search for survivors in general but particularly of the Ridderschap van Holland could commence. The strategy thus devised by the Amsterdam Chamber was taken over by the Board which immediately appointed a committee, consisting of representatives of the various Chambers, to decide how the plan was to be put into action. After two days - on 10 December, 1695 - the committee gave its report. It had introduced a modification and thought it essential to start the journey in Holland. Three ships, of which one would be newly built, would sail under the command of Willem de Vlamingh in March 1696 from Amsterdam. On the way the island of Tristan da Cunha, in the Atlantic Ocean, was to be charted. The Board agreed on all points and preparations were started right away. The new ship to be built, a comfortable frigate of 110 -112 feet long, would serve as flagship of the Commander - Willem de Vlamingh. It was named Geelvinck after Joan Geelvinck, member of the Board. The Geelvinck would be accompanied by the Nijptang, with Gerrit Collaert as Skipper, and the Wezeltje, with Laurens Theuniszoon Zeeman as Skipper. The latter died en route and was replaced by Cornelis de Vlamingh (the son of Willem). The Muster Register, which kept a record of all departing Company ships, noted that Geelvinck had 130 people on board, Nijptang 50 and Wezeltje 14. 42 Although Batavia had been advised that the ships would be ready to sail in March 1696, de Vlamingh did not sail until 3 May, 1696. They sailed north of Scotland into the Atlantic Ocean and reached the island Tristan da Cunha on 17 August, 1696. One person of note on board the Geelvinck was Victor Victorszoon who was described in the log as a ‘cranckbesoeker’ (visitor of the sick). However, the prime reason for his presence on the journey was because of his talents as an artist. He was to make drawings and keep records of all interesting points that they would encounter and his first assignment was Tristan da Cunha. After charting Tristan da Cunha the ships sailed for the Cape of Good Hope. At the Cape the ships’ stores were replenished.

Three ‘Indians’ were taken aboard, natives of southern Africa who spoke a variety of languages according to de Vlamingh’s Journal but the Nijptang’s Journal states that there were four natives who between them spoke about 60 languages. With them de Vlamingh hoped that he could make himself understood in the Southland. The ships stayed at the Cape for several weeks and on 27 October 1696 they started on their voyage to the East. Cornelis de Vlamingh was now in command of Wezeltje because Laurens Zeeman, its skipper, had died. Their first destination was the islands of St Paul and Amsterdam and the former was sighted on 28 November. The

43 following day a landing party explored the island looking for the remains of Ridderschap van Holland. This tiny island was the home of walruses and seals and they were so thick on the beach that the sailors had to kill some in order to gain access. They found a small river and a hot water geyser which was so hot that they could easily cook fish in it. There was no wreckage that indicated that the Ridderschap of Holland had been there and after Victor Victorszoon had made a drawing, Willem de Vlamingh nailed a pewter plate to a post inscribed with the names of the ships, skippers and the date. They then sailed to the island of Amsterdam, situated 13 miles to the north. This island appeared a lot more fertile with a variety of vegetation and inhabited by a number of small mammals. In the streams was plenty of fish and lobster. So as to increase the survival chances of future shipwrecked people on the island, de Vlamingh gave orders to sow wheat, mustard seed and peas. Again there was nothing to indicate that the lost ship had been there. After allowing Victor Victorszoon time to draw the island and nailing another plate to a post, like at St Paul., the ships weighed anchor on 5 December and continued their journey to the East. The crew on the Nijptang were the first to sight the Southland after sailing for 19 days. The descending darkness prevented the men on Geelvinck and Wezeltje to do the same and even the following day the land remained invisible due to overcast

44 conditions and a strong current which pushed them northwards. It would still take another five days, on 29 December, that an island was sighted. Late in the afternoon the island, located at Latitude 32°S was reached. Because of the lateness of the day the investigation of the island had to wait until the following day. On Sunday 30 December 1696, de Vlamingh decided to use a boat from the Nijptang, with Collaert and a small crew, to sail around the island in the hope of finding salvage of the ship they were seeking. The Geelvinck’s boat with the first mate, the bookkeeper and 12 soldiers were sent to look over the island itself. Towards evening both groups returned. The bookkeeper reported that there were no people on the island but that there were large numbers of bos-ratten. They had shot a number of them to show de Vlamingh. They were found to be dwarf kangaroos, a mammal still unknown in Europe at that time. In the journal of the Nijptang they were described as a kind of rat, the size of a cat, and large quantities of its excreta could be found all over the whole island. The island was thus named “Rottenest: (rat’s nest) and is today known as Rottnest. From the holes that were dug on the island the men obtained good drinking water and of interest to the Company, they thought, would be the wood from trees on the island which had an exquisite smell - like rosewood. The following day de Vlamingh himself went ashore and he was very impressed 45 with the smell of the wood. He ordered a large quantity to be cut and brought on board. During the exploration of the island they found some wreckage and a piece of timber containing nails indicating that a ship had been wrecked. They considered it not impossible that the timber came from the Vergulde Draeck. Meantime they saw on the mainland, which stretched as far as they could see, many palls of smoke and on 3 January 1697 everything was made ready to investigate this. In the first instance a boat was sent to the mainland but because of the distance it was only able to carry out a short investigation. As a result a counsel was held and it was decided to mount a full expedition. Eighty six men and the ‘native interpreters’ who had been taken aboard at the Cape, would make the journey. Captain Collaert was in command. On 5 January, 1697, at sunrise, the expedition left in Wezeltje and the boats. The expedition would take nearly four days. On the first day, Collaert and all his men went inland. Near some small salty lakes they found human footprints, a small hut and more tracks of both adults and children, but of the natives nothing was seen. Because he thought that they might have been frightened off by the large group, Collaert decided to split the group into three - but to no avail. On the third day, Collaert split the group into two. The group that traveled along the beach found a piece of driftwood that looked like a ship’s rib but judging

46 by its condition it looked as if it had been there a very long time. When they arrived at the mouth of the river they sailed up it for some distance but it yielded little more than a couple of black swans - which they took to show de Vlamingh. Willem decided to go and have a look for himself. On 10 January 1697 he left with three boats to explore the Zwaanenrivier (Swan River). The group traveled some 12 miles up the river until shallow water stopped their progress. They made no contact with the natives and all they had to show for their trip were two black swans and some resin and gum from the trees. De Vlamingh had to concede that the land had little to offer and that the native population did not want to show themselves. Back on the ships, the council decided to continue the journey northwards and life on board returned to its routine. Keeping close to the coast, when the weather allowed, a number of landings were made and the coastline carefully recorded. No humans were sighted and the land was described as dry dunes and unsuitable for cattle and people. On 30 January 1697, de Vlamingh sighted another island which he thought to be Dirck Hartogh’s island. The Geelvinck and Nijptang were sent ahead to circumnavigate the island and find a good anchorage. In the meantime, de Vlamingh did his own exploring. On 3 February, both boats returned. The First Mate reported a startling discovery. When he had climbed a hill to get a better view, he had found a pole with a pewter plate half hidden in the sand. The writings on it stated that it had been left behind by Dirck Hartogh in 1616. It was

47 now certain that de Vlamingh had landed on Dirck Hartogh’s island and the next day the ships sailed into a sheltered lagoon. From here they spent nine days exploring the surroundings and making accurate charts. This was not entirely without danger for on 7 February one of the boats capsized because of a sudden gust of wind. In that boat was Cornelis de Vlamingh, Willem’s son, who managed to save himself and with others was rescued by Wezeltje. Only the ships carpenter drowned. For the rest, the island did not reveal much. It was uninhabited and the home of many seabirds and turtles. On 11 February 1697, the task was at an end and de Vlamingh made ready to sail. Before he departed however, he gave instructions to inscribe a pewter plate, like Dirck Hartog had done in 1616, and had it nailed to the pole at exactly the same spot. He took Hartogs’s plate with him. They weighed anchor on the 12th and sailed northwards. He remained as close to land as possible until Latitude 20°S. On 21 February, he veered away from the Southland and commenced the last leg of his journey to Batavia. On the way they explored the island Mony, south-west of Java (now known as Christmas Island), and on 20 March 1697, after a journey lasting 11 months, he arrived in Batavia. For the Board of the VOC the results must have been disappointing although that was due more to their own high expectations than De Vlamingh’s failure. What was not there, could not be found.

48 The retourship ‘s Lands Welvaren took the report to Holland as well as the eleven drawings done by Victor Victorszoon (namely seven of various location of the Southland, one of the island Tristan da Cuhna, one of the island Amsterdam, one of St Paul and one of Mony), Dirck Hartogh’s plate, a box with sea shells, fruits and vegetation which de Vlamingh had gathered and a bottle of oil, extracted from the exquisite smelling wood found on Rottenest were also sent. It was also intended to send some black swans but they had died on the journey. De Vlaming, his son and Collaert returned later because they had been dispatched, shortly after arrival, to Bengal and had not returned when ‘s Lands Welvaren left Batavia. They departed the Indies on 3 February 1698, Willem de Vlamingh as Commander of the Fleet on board the Gent, Collaert as skipper on the Carthago and Cornelis de Vlamingh as First Mate on the Boor. On 16 August 1698, the ships arrived in Amsterdam. Nicolaas Witsen, the instigator of the expedition, was very disappointed with the result and at first blamed Willem de Vlamingh but later his mood mellowed somewhat. Thanks to de Vlamingh’s exact observations, it was possible for the VOC cartographer in Amsterdam, Isaac de Graaff, to draw a detailed map of the West Australian coast from latitude 20°S to 32°S.

49 Besides that, de Vlamingh had successfully surveyed the islands of Tristan da Cunha, Amsterdam and St Paul, with Mony as an extra bonus. His findings for once and for all established that for the VOC there was no profit to be made on the West Australian coast. The Dutch would not carry out any further exploration. In December and January it would have been very hot and dry and one could imagine that this would have made the land seem less hospitable. Had they arrived in winter, the land would have presented a different picture with green grass and wildflowers. After his return to Amsterdam, de Vlamingh probably left the VOC for there are no further records of him. The pictures of Victor Victorszoon somehow were lost and in more recent times ‘re-discovered’. Dirck Hartogh’s plate, which de Vlamingh took with him, is now housed in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The plate which de Vlamingh left in its place on Dirk Hartog Island is now on display in the West Australian Maritime Museum in Fremantle.

(Translated from the Dutch book “de Vlamingh” by the author)

50 CHAPTER SEVEN

The story of the white tribe as described in the Leeds Mercury article may have been nothing else but a concoction of the anonymous correspondent from Halifax, or, if it had been Thomas Maslen, a promotional gimmick to get attention for his book ’The Friend of Australia’ which was yet to be published. It does however introduce the possibility that shipwreck survivors could establish themselves on mainland Australia, possibly have integrated with Aboriginal tribes. In the following chapters I’ll introduce the reader to a collection of facts, stories and speculative interpretations favouring this possibility. Yagan In the early days of the Swan River Colony the British mothers would scold their children for being naughty, or sent to bed with the warning “, Yagan will get you if you don’t ...... ” They were echoing the warnings their mothers had given them back home in England just 15 years before. Only then it had been, “Napoleon will get you if you don’t go to sleep - or behave “. ( Napoleon had just set Europe ablaze again in his 100 Days War of 1814.)

51 Yagan had arisen as the leader of the Nyungah ( a genre name for the Aboriginal tribes who had inhabited the Perth coastal plain, and south-west since Dreamtime. ) Yagan’s own Swan River tribe were called the Tjuaht’s, so named after the Tuart trees, which grow in the coastal regions. He was giving the British settlers as hard a time as Napoleon had given them several years before in Europe . Which was one of the reasons he got the nickname of “ The Black Napoleon”. Other names were “The “ Black Apollo” because of his physique, and “ Another Shaka Zulu”. News from Cape Town, South Africa , was fresh, only weeks away, and both Yagan and Shaka had inflicted many wounds on the British military. While the best of them all was the “ Aboriginal Wallace” ( After the Scots patriot - also captured and executed by treachery ) “Yagan was an extraordinary man by anybody’s standards. His military skills were only equalled by his personal courage and sense of honour. His biggest enemies could only admire him. After winning battle after battle he would set up a truce, then march proudly into Perth down St Georges Terrace to dine with the Governor at Government House.” (Jamie Bentley) “Alas, Yagan was to be killed by treachery during a truce he set up in 1833 and had the ignominy of having his head cut off, smoked, and sent to England as a trophy. Men such as Yagan , Wallace of Scotland and Shaka Zulu of South Africa have often been thrown up by events. Men who without going to a military college can take on - and defeat Regular troops and their - often incompetent - officers. From 52 the times of David in the Bible a small band of lightly armed guerrillas have taken on occupying armies in their country. They have gone on to beat standing armies in pitched battles with un-orthodox tactics when taking to the field as an

53 organised force. ( Guerrilla warfare comes from the Spanish, guerillo, meaning ‘little war’ ) Yagan too applied his common sense to use the tactics of guerrilla warfare. It is interesting to conjecture how things might have turned out for the Swan River Colony if he had not been so early, and so young. when killed . Yagan was reputed to be a descendant of the Vergulde Draeck and one might wonder where he had learned his skills and knowledge to be such a strong leader of - at what was regarded at the time - mere savages. Perhaps one day we may learn more albeit not in our lifetime.”

Excerpts from an article written by Jamie Bentley, March 1996

George Fletcher Moore was an early landowner in the Swan River Colony who befriended the natives and had been appointed Commissioner of the Civil Court. A diary entry mentions an encounter with Yagan and his two sons, although later records revealed them as two of his brothers. May 4th, 1833. “Two natives came here to-day: one of them is learning to speak English, and is very intelligent. I discovered the names of more than a dozen who were concerned in the recent murder; among others, two sons of Ya-gan, Narah and Willim, the latter a young imp not more than ten or eleven years of age: we are greatly in their power, and must keep on good terms with them, if possible. One of them had a number of frogs (which I think

54 he called "dweep") nicely packed up in the bark of the tea-tree, and tied with grass; these he signified they roasted for food, with a long white root, growing like a parsnip, which they dig up in wet weather.” The name ‘Willim’ has a striking similarity to the common Dutch name ‘Willem.’ Is this mere coincidence or should more be read into it?

55

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Natives In 1846 Rosendo Salvado, a Benedictine monk left Perth with a small party and travelled on foot through the bush for about 100 kilometres. On 1 March 1846, Salvado founded The Central Mission with the intention of converting the Aborigines to Catholicism. The mission was later renamed New Norcia after the birthplace of St Benedict. The time of year when the Vergulde Draeck survivors landed was Autumn into Winter, when temperatures were pleasant and comparable to Holland. This gave the survivors an even chance before the high summer temperatures commenced. About 20 kilometres inland flowed the Moore River providing fresh water, fish and game. Despite that the Aborigines had been described as 'savages' by some early settlers, the Benedictine monks found that the they were not hostile. Along the river there were small caves. Adjoining the river was a lake, now known as Bidaminna Lake, the home of various water birds and water for other wildlife, and also having caves

56 along its western shore. Nothing else was known about the land beyond. The majority of the 68 survivors were likely to have left the coast to go inland, perhaps to leave some men behind to keep an eye out for passing ships. If the Vergulde Draeck suvivors had landed at the location due east from where the remains of the Vergulde Draeck were found in 1963, they are likely to have come across the Moore River if they had moved inland in search of food and water. It is possible that small parties were sent to explore the Moore River that ultimately led them to two large lakes [now known as Karakin Lakes). Maybe the survivors camped there before proceeding to follow the river further. Further exploration would have brought them to a swamp to the south of which was large lake. This exploration may have taken a long time, each time returning to where they had left. The headwaters of Moore River were near New Norcia and in the years preceding the arrival of Salvado descendants of the survivors may have made it to its source. Could a picture of the two young monks perhaps provide a clue? Other clues emerged such as the stories that early settlers were helped by natives - who had an aptitude for growing plants and husbanding livestock. Legend has it that there was one Aboriginal group that had aptitude for growing food and were willing to assist settlers in their endeavours to sustain themselves. This bears out the remarks made by William de Burgh, the author of the book

57 ‘Neergabby’ whose ancestors go back four generations, arriving in the colony in 1858 and have lived at Cowalla farm, some 20 km east of the Vergulde Draeck wrecksite, all that time until his son Sid built a house closer to the main road in 1964. Indeed, these observations, although classed as circumstantial by historians, may indicate that there was a European influence in the district. However, it need not have been the survivors themselves who had travelled along the Moore River inland. (Following a river inland ensured water and wildlife and was a common practise by Aborigines in Western Australia.) Since 1656 when the Vergulde Draeck wrecked until 1858 constitutes eight generations during which time the skin colour would have darkened because of the mixed ancestry of the progeny. The British explorer George Grey made a similar observation. Now something remarkable emerged from a book titled: “The Salvado Memoirs -p 24. It shows a picture of two ‘native’ monks who were sent to Europe with Salvado and taken to the Benedictine Monastry of Cava in 1849. 58 By 1850 they were able to write a letter (in Spanish?) perhaps with some help but the picture tells another story as well. These two natives (top right) with their given names of John Dirimera and Francis Conaci show an indication of European influence in the generation of his parents before he was born., in particular John (left) who was 16 in 1849 which is less than one generation since 1829 when the Swan River Colony was established. His face and nose suggest European influence from an earlier generation then 16 years ago. He was born in 1833, only four years after the Swan River Colony commenced. Is it possible that one of his parents was a distant descendant of the Vergulde Draeck survivors? One might assume that Salvado selected them because of their aptitude towards learning, another language to boot. In his book “Neergabby” William de Burgh wrote: "....nor is it contemplated that we should enter the 'Dream Time' of the Aborigines. This field of expert anthropology has been touched upon by those with special knowledge of the subject, and sadly little is known of the activities, culture and habits of the people who hunted along the banks of the River and Brook; and fished in the streams and the large shallow waters of Garbanup before white men trod these shores. It is known that they were here and some of their camping grounds have been located by the accumulated grinding stones and cutting tools of granite, quartz or chert found near pools 59 and, in some cases, where permanent water no longer exists. All of these relics have been carried here from further inland as none of these stones are to be found naturally in this area. Some appear to be fretted away by ageless exposure to sun and rain, and worn by moving sand, denoting great antiquity, whilst others are sharp and clean cut on the edges and would almost certainly be of a later time. We know from the writings of the early explorers that so many of the native people were friendly and some were of immense help during expeditions into the unknown bush. Such prominent men in our history as J. S. Roe, G. F. Moore, G. Grey and J. Forrest were unstinting in their praise of the intelligence and loyalty of some they employed. We also know that they were human and being so, nothing human was foreign to them which led to clashes between their own people and confrontation at times with the strange new world around them. Not one incident has come to light of hostility between the native people and the white settlers in this district and we know by the CowalIa records that they were employed and trusted as minders of stock on that property. As settlement along the River did not get under way until four years after Bishop Salvado began his life's work at New Norcia, it is very probable that the road to good relations was already paved by the Benedictine monks when the first of the new settlers

60 rode the banks of the River and Brook in search of pasture for their herds and flocks, here where water was so plentiful. There are certain places which have been pointed out to succeeding generations of settlers as Aboriginal burial grounds, notably at the Junction, at Millbank and at Cowalla. There is much evidence from early writings to suggest that particular community burial grounds were not part of Aboriginal culture so perhaps these local sites only came into use after white man's exotic diseases began to take their toll of the indigenous population. It is a widely known and firmly established belief that measles was a major killer of the black adult even as diphtheria was the greatest hazard of the white child. Finally they went away and left this district altogether. Perhaps the settlers were unable to pay them wages or life may have been more attractive in the towns but it is more likely that they followed the shepherds and flocks of the inland pastoralists and when the era of shepherding ceased they did not return. May God be with them and their posterity forever. “ (William de Burgh)

Together with Salvado’s experience it indicates that perhaps Europeans had added to the gene-pool of the local natives back to the days of the ship wreck in 1656.

61 It became clear that looking for people with a white skin was somewhat naive because after some six generations the skin would have been much darker. It was customary for Aborigines to us the ‘river highways’ to travel inland for great distances as it ensured a ready supply of water as well as a meeting place of local fauna who came to drink. The Moore River winds its way from the coast into the hinterland with its head in the vicinity of where New Norcia is now situated. It need not have been the survivors themselves who had moved upstream . But it is likely to have been descendants who probably were of mixed blood. At various times there was mention of the Yuat people, who were an offshoot of the Noongar tribe. It was said that they were of use to the early British settlers because of their aptitude for growing crops and animal husbandry. Willem de Burgh makes reference to this earlier in the foregoing - supported by J. S. Roe, G. F. Moore, G. Grey and J. Forrest who were prominent citizen and explorers in the 1830’s. It has always filled me with surprise why the British have not made themselves familiar with native practices instead of over- lording on what was classed as primitive or savage. It would have been of great help in this sometimes enigmatic land.

62 CHAPTER NINE

An excursion About 100 kilometres north of Perth are some dry lakes named Karakin Lakes which did receive their water intake from the Moore River until WW1. At that time the flow had been dammed by the Australian Army so that potatoes could be grown to feed the troops. This never eventuated but the lakes remained dry from then on. The Karakin Lakes are about 20km NNE from the coast opposite where the Vergulde Draeck was found. It could have been a place for the shipwreck survivors to establish a camp because of the availability of ample fresh water. We went to have a look. The lakes are on private land and the owner showed us an area with a cave called Quinn's Castle. Large slabs of rock blocked a narrow entrance and we were not able to explore further owing to a lack of equipment. The limestone areas of the Perth

63 Coastal Plain are riddled with caves that could have provided shelter and water for the shipwreck survivors. We will return to one such group of caves - the Namban Caves - later in the book. Nevertheless, Alan Robinson a professional diver and author of a book “Treasure is not for the finder” drew a map that showed a lake and places where coins had been found some 34km inland when following the Moore River in a East North Easterly direction. The map shows that artifacts relevant the Vergulde Draeck wreck have been found in the area. It also shows a large lake where the coins were found as well as a swamp. This disqualifies Karakin Lakes to some extent. This lake and its location west of the Darling Range is reminiscent to the description given in the story of The White Tribe in the Leeds Mercury. In every respect the location is much more plausible than a place in the desert where finding fresh water would be much more difficult. There are many theories based on clues found that there was a presence – most likely from the Vergulde Draeck. The late Rupert Gerritsen in his book And Their Ghosts May Be Heard provides possible evidence. An example is an incense urn found in 1846: “an Aboriginal shepherd brought in a very unusual artefact to the monks at the newly founded mission at New Norcia. It was said to be an incense urn in the shape of a ship’s anchor 64 standing upright, topped by a bird with outstretched wings. Around it was entwined a slender dragon. According to tradition this strange object was found close to the coast at a place called Mission Well about thirty kilometres south of Lancelin. This well was also reputed to have been lined with ship’s timbers.”(Rupert Gerritsen 1993)

I knew Rupert for a number of years and he indicated to me that he was glad that someone had taken up the investigation of the demise of the early Dutch shipwreck survivors after his employment obliged him to move interstate. He has been an inspiration to me and I am grateful for his knowledge sharing. Rupert died in 2013 at the age of 60. The following quotes from his book are relevant to the Vergulde Draeck. The Edwards Find During the 1930s three finds were made that were to cause minor sensation and spark of some intensive individual investigations which ultimately lead to the discovery of the wreck of the Vergulde Draeck. The first of these fires to place in January 1931 when two young brothers Alan and Fred Edwards were playing in the sand hills north of the mouth of the Moore River. . The Edwards brothers picked up 35 coins of varying sorts including Spanish reales (pieces of eight). Dates on the coin ranged from 1618 to 1655. At the same spot Fred also found a hinge and side piece of an old chest. 65 The Eagles Nest Skeleton (1931 At the same time, with the Edwards find, was the discovery of an extremely old skeleton only 800 metres from where the coins were found. Unfortunately the details are limited to the single report which provides only a few tantalising clues. Constable Clifford of Gingin located the bones which were the remains of a human skeleton. They were very old and fell to pieces when picked up. There was nothing to give the slightest clue as to the identification and local settlers assured the constable that no burial had taken place in that vicinity. The Baramba Find (1938) Just over seven years later children from the Baramba Assisted School recovered a number of old coins and a pair of rusted and broken hinges from the sand in the same locality as the Edwards Find. Again the coins were Spanish of ‘various values’ from the reign of Phillip 1V (1621-65). Such coinage served as international currency at the time just as the American dollar does today.

The Black Box and Aboriginal Legends (1939) An interesting letter was published in The West Australian newspaper on 17 February 1939. Written by Rose Rettig, daughter of Constable David Hackett of Gingin, she claimed that ‘the blacks in the vicinity (north of Moore River) had told her of a ship that was wrecked there a long time ago’. In order to establish the veracity of their claim the Aborigines had shown Constable Hackett showed a black box made of iron

66 and wood that was firmly wedged between rocks deep down in the water and could be seen on a clear day when the tide was low. Rettig’s letter prompted W.J.Regan to recount his story of the mast he and the Skipworths had found in 1890. In that instance Regan also revealed that an old native named Mailman Charlie… and another one named Long Tom used to tell him and the Skipworths about the cave somewhere in the vicinity of the Moore River or Wedge Island which contain skeletons believed to be those of white men. Furthermore there were other coins found around the Moore River area but nothing to indicate where the survivors had gone to. The Lancelin Sword (1972) Attention shifted southward again a year later when eight-year- old Grant Borwick of the Perth suburb of Attadale found a ‘heavily rusted sword in the bush near Lancelin’ about twenty kilometres north of the Vergulde Draeck wreck site and the area where associated finds had been made. The sword with its ‘long tapering blade’ was of ‘ a rapier design’ having ‘a steel cupo for the protection of the hand’. Such swords were a common model ‘in Britain and the Low Countries [ie. Holland and Belgium] in the 17th century. Employing a metal detector, a further piece of the sword and ‘some charred sections of the hilt which resembled leather’ were also found.

(R.Gerritsen, ‘And their Ghosts may be heard pp 57)

67 At New Norcia, the Brother ‘Historian’ showed me the urn and allowed me to take a photo. He showed me a letter from the museum about the metallurgy examination that dated it later than 1846. He added that it had been presented to the Mission by a Chinese delegation in gratitude for past services. Note: The object had no holes that are common for an incense burner to be effective.

George Fletcher Moore in the Perth Gazette of 18 June 1836 ‘On this day we saw (near Mount Anne, 150 km’s east of Perth) a native and his cardo (wife), a young woman of very pleasing countenance, and something of European features and long, wavy, almost flaxen-coloured hair’.

Bishop Salvado 1840s Two Aborigines from the north came to the New Norcia Mission. ‘They told me through one of the mission natives that near the coast, four days journey north of New Norcia there were other white men. After looking into this matter I came to the conclusion that these could well be the descendants of the mutineers Captain Pelsaert left behind’. Dom Rosendo ‘The Salvado Memoirs’ pp 75.

Salvado’s conclusion was not surprising as he only knew about the two marooned mutineers in 1629. The Vergulde Draeck was

68 not discovered until 1963, two hundred and sixty seven years after its demise. However, had he known about the Vergulde Draeck’s closeness to New Norcia, he most probably would have concluded that the Aboriginal reports referred to this incidence.

The following is from explorer George Grey’s ‘Expedition in Western Australia, Vol 2 April 1836 “Four miles further over similar plains in a south by east direction brought us to a river, about five-and-twenty yards wide, which I named the Greenough . . . We passed a large assemblage of native huts of the same permanent character as those I have before mentioned; there were two groups of those houses close together in a sequestered nook in a wood, which taken collectively would have contained at least a hundred and fifty natives. We halted for the night in the dry bed of a watercourse, abounding in grass, so that we again enjoyed the luxury of a soft bed.”

The permanent character of the native huts near the Greenough River is some kind of anomaly. However George Grey had also observed that a form of yam cultivation was practiced in the same area. Thus suggests that the Aborigines in the area were less nomadic than those elsewhere living a life of hunting and gathering and that would explain the permanency of the huts. But had these

69 Aborigines developed themselves a form of yam cultivation or had there been an external influence? Nontheless, the artefacts mentioned in this chapter are still ‘fluorescent’ marks in a landscape which indicate part activities connected with the Vergulde Draeck.

70 CHAPTER TEN

Bruce White’s story Like so often coincides with what one is occupied with, a new clue emerged out of the blue. It was so with the following: A phone call from a man called Bruce White who stated that he had information about some caves that had artifacts of a Dutch ship in one of them. He put it that he felt that the Dutch had been ‘shafted’ by being deprived of the true history relating to the ship wrecks and that he wanted to rectify that. His working life had been with the Agricultural Department with many years in the Mid-West. He said that he was now retired and was dying of lung cancer. He felt that before he went he wanted to tell someone about the find that had been hushed up for so long. He told that he knew of an expedition that had been hushed and that he felt that the Dutch had been done a disservice. He had documentary proof that the then Minister for Agriculture, James Mitchell had inspected the some caves and wrote the following report: The Namban Caves The Minister for Agriculture, Hon. Jas'. Mitchell, accompanied by the Under Secretary, Mr. A. Despeissis, Mr. Jas. Gardiner, and representatives of the Press, made a visit of inspection of the important phosphatic deposits recently discovered by the

71 Geologist engaged by the Department, Mr. S. Goezel, from the Moore River at the Arrowsmith. Several caves have been opened up and explored at Namban Creek, near the coast, in the vicinity of Cervantes Island. The locality where Mr. Goezel is conducting exploring operations in one of the cave groups, is situated about 70 miles to the west of Moora, on the Midland Railway, and on the extensive range of limestone formation running within a few miles of the coast. There are now inside in three caves about 10,000 tons of phosphates of high quality awaiting transport to Fremantle. In and around Namban Creek there are from 30 to 40 caves, the majority of which contain large quantities of the fertiliser, while it is now common knowledge that for a stretch of from 130 to 150 miles contiguous to the seaboard there exist similar deposits in large caves which have yet to be thoroughly opened up and explored. The Caves In the caves there are to be seen many fossilised fragments. Petrified portions of tree trunks and bone remains of amphibians are found on the roofs, sides and in the dirt beds. Differences in the size of corresponding bone remains of animals, belonging to the same family, disclose to the geologist great variety in the size of individual animals which in past ages inhabitated the chain of islands now forming part of the mainland. Mr. Goezel found in one of the Namban Creek caves a beautifully petrified specimen of a tree showing the characteristic joints and striation of a calamite. Solidified 72 phosphatic material found in other caves disclosed, under the magnifying lens, that it consisted largely of minute bone particles., Mr. Goezel has come to the conclusion that this material was the excreta of piscivorous animals. Judging from the size of the bones the conclusion is arrived at that the animals varied in size from that of an elephant to that of a dog. While the fauna has undergone many changes since the time, ages ago, when the large accumulations were covered up by wild blown sands it is concluded that the flora bore very close relationship to the present day flora of those parts. Mr. Goezel came to this conclusion after an examination of the flora of the oldest “dirt" beds and by the petrified tree specimens. Each group of caves, is supposed to be connected by underground channels. The Namban Creek group runs its flood waters into the ocean through underground channels. Those caves wherein the animal deposits are found in greatest quantity are very lightly water washed., The caves occur in the limestone hill formations which follow the course of the coastline, but at some four to six miles from the seaboard. These limestone ranges form a barrier between the swampy country in the plains on the east and the ocean on the west, and the water from these swamp lands reaches the ocean through the underground channels of which the caves form part. Beautiful Cave Formations Having traversed chamber after chamber of the phosphate containing caves, the party were conducted to a large cavern, which was the first of many in which stalactites and stalagmites

73 claimed greater attention than did the rich deposits covering the floors. Hanging from the domeshaped roofs were stalactites in many forms and of various sizes and colours. Formations of wonderful character were everywhere met with. So soon as one became used to the dim candle light (each member of the party carried a candle). The beautiful creations of Nature commanded the most rapt attention and created the greatest admiration. Everywhere could be seen monumental works carried out by Nature. Here a huge marble pillar; there a delicate crystallised stalactite which to the touch gave forth a bell-like ringing sound. To the expressions of delight made by everyone the guide merely answered, "This is dull in comparison with the new" cave. His ideas proved to be true. While this particular cave was beautiful indeed, that newly discovered altogether eclipsed it in magnificence and grandeur. For the more easily accessible and better known cave still showed on its flooring phosphatic earth, and thus demonstrated that the percolation of water through the limestone roofing must have commenced centuries after the more newly discovered cave had become a cave. So long had the process of stalactite and stalagmite building been incessantly carried on that the deposits in the newly opened cave had become incrusted over with a flooring of highly polished stalagmitic substance, with the result that those

74 exploring felt that they were walking on coloured marble layers with brilliant crystallised decorations on roofing of the halls. To reach the chambers the party were required to clamber down a short shaft, and to then crawl in serpent fashion some 20 feet or so. All upright position without risk of collision with hanging stalactites became impossible some 20 feet further on, and then chamber after chamber of gorgeous splendour were revealed. From the roof were suspended domes and myriads of long, varicoloured stalactites. The marble-like flooring was everywhere studded with huge stalagmites, which in some cases also met the suspended stalactites. Here and there were seen huge pillars of early whiteness, to all appearances doing duty as roof supporters. Where below the stalactites there had not formed stalagmites there were large mounds, on the sides of which were terraces of delicate formation, in form similar to the famous pink terraces of New Zealand. But these cave terraces were of various colours, from a delicate whitish pink to a dark brown. The summits of these mounds were of inverted bell shape and they held small stones of various shapes and colours the result of the continual dripping of water for ages. From the flooring in other places there rose large stalagmites of mushroom shape, while here and there were pools in the marble like basement, over which had been formed a protecting transparent lid. In the centre of a shining ledge there had been a breaking away of the upper crust, which left an opening of oblong shape. Underneath there glittered crystals of all colours, the whole giving a replica of a well laden jewel casket with the lid removed. From the

75 sides of the caverns there hung flimsy shawl and curtain formations, which appeared to be of the most delicate texture and of different tintings. The forests of hanging stalactites were vari-coloured. Some were as alabaster and others of a coffee colour with streaks of blood red running down them. Everywhere was something entrancing, some thing awe inspiring, almost all indescribable. Those of the party who had marvelled at the wonders of the Jenolan, Narracoorte, Margaret River, Yallingup, and Yanchep caves stood entranced with the wonderful works of Nature revealed in this Namban Creek cavern, and without hesitation there was a general agreement that there had now been discovered a cave for beauty, for splendour, for grandeur, and for magnificence the like of which Australia had never before dreamt of. So soon as he had returned to the surface Mr. Mitchell gave instructions for this particular cave to be sealed up, for he considers that in days to come it must prove one of the greatest tourists' attractions in the Southern Hemisphere. Half a mile nearer the coast another magnificent cave larger in dimensions and more awe inspiring, because of the immensity of the beautiful formations was visited. It too will be saved from desecration, and until such time as the Caves Board declares it open for public inspection it will be sealed up. Though 70 miles from the railway line, and separated from settled parts by 60 miles of dreary, sunbaked sand plains, these caves are but 4.5 miles from the seaboard; the nearest landing place is but eight hours' sail from Fremantle, and they are

76 situated in a grove of Tuart near placid pools of pellucid waters.” (James Mitchell 1908) “JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE, W.A.

Why was my informer - Bruce so anxious to tell his story? According to him it was a tale that was contained within the Agricultural Department but he stated on a number of occasions that he felt that the Dutch had been short-changed by not being told about the contents of one of the smaller caves, into which only Mitchell himself had entered and sealed on his instructions. Bruce White said that this small cave contained artifacts and tools that came from a Dutch ship. Attempts to locate the caves have been unsuccessful as they were said to be covered by sand dunes. Nevertheless, the idea that people may have left a kind of ‘Time Capsule’ was something that warranted excitement. The caves were reported to be at Namban Creek, near the coast west of Moora, north of Perth and near Cervantes Island, about four to six miles inland – presumably in the area which is today the Pinnacles National Park, an area of limestone pinnacles and shifting sands quite spectacular and fantastic enough even without the caves.

77 CHAPTER ELEVEN

Controversies Closer to Perth at a coastal suburb called Mullaloo the existence of a rock inscription, reading ‘Vergulde Draeck 1656’ had been reported in The West Australian newspaper in 1956. Two geologists, Glover and Genister had made a cursory inspection and found that the inscription looked too fresh to have been made 300 years ago. Many years later, in a paper called ‘HOAXES AND FOLKLORE’ by Van Duivenvoorde, Polzer and Downer (Australian Archaeology, number 77, December 2013, pp. 52-65) the inscription was declared a hoax, noticing for instance that what remained of the inscription had much eroded since and also that the lettering was a-typical when compared with other rock inscriptions from Dutch seafarers. On the other hand, Robert Bednarik, specialist in dating petroglyphs and CEO of the International Federation of Rock Art Organisations (IFRAO) had stated earlier that the inscription was genuine after a detailed investigation of the micro-erosion level of the rock incisions. On Sunday the 14th of April 1963, Graeme Henderson, spearfishing and diving with his father James, his brother Alan and a friend John Cowen, discovered quite accidentally the wreck-site of the Vergulde Draeck. The position was 31⁰ 13.5′ South and 115⁰ 21′ East. 78 The wreck-site is about 100 metres from the northern end of an offshore reef, 5.6 km from the Western Australian coast. It were in particular the silver coins with dates no later than 1655 which positively identified the wreck as that of the Vergulde Draeck, lost in 1656. The latitudinal position of the wreck-site is however substantially different from the 30⁰ 40ʹ reported by the under-steersman of the Vergulde Draeck to the Council of the Indies in June 1656. The difference is 33.5 minutes of arc, or a good 62 kilometres further north. Almost without exception this difference is brushed aside and attributed to the poor and generally inaccurate way of determining latitude by the (Dutch) navigators of the 17th century. This is however not true at all. There were considerable problems with determining longitude, but latitudes were most commonly determined within a margin of less than two minutes. When the wreck of a wooden ship is submerged it is quite lightweight under water. If it is then also subjected to a current it may shift an unexpected distance over time. This may have happened to the Vergulde Draeck wreck. Along the west coast of Australia runs the so-called Leeuwin Current from north to south. The skipper of the Emmeloort, Aucke Pieters Jonck, reported in his journal whilst searching for the Vergulde Draeck (Tuesday, 26 February 1658, folio 209V) that in the last 24 hour period, despite sailing a northern course with a light wind from the south-west, they had been pushed some 50 minutes (of arc) to the south against

79 the weather and waves. Jonck concluded that there was a current running southward. Fifty minutes of arc is 50 nautical miles or 70 kilometres which suggests that the current ran at about 3 kilometres per hour to the south. This matches the flow of the Leeuwin Current. Considering that the survivors from the Vergulde Draeck had made their way to the shore along the shortest distance from the 30⁰ 40′ latitude position, their entry point would have been about 60 kilometres north from the latitude position of the wreck-site discovered in 1963. This would be close to the Nambung National Park with the pinnacles, which is also the location of the Namban Caves. (See chapter 10 – Bruce White’s Story). For the past 15 years, up to 2015, Bob Sheppard, an archaeologist and specialist in the use of metal detectors, had been prospecting along the coast, north and south of the Vergulde Draeck wreck-site latitude of 31⁰ 13.5′. In all these years he had not found the necessary (metal) artefacts that would identify the campsite of the Vergulde Draeck survivors. In the absence of such evidence he conjectured that the remaining 68 survivors must have succeeded in getting the longboat up and out of the sand and then used it to sail to Batavia. The contemporary records however (letters written by the survivors and Pieter van Dam’s work, ‘Beschrijvinghe van de Vereenichde Oostindische Compagnie’ from the end of the 17th century) indicate that if the longboat could be brought up out of the sand, they would then have had a second opportunity to send some

80 people to Batavia with it and call for help. Sixty eight people could indeed go into the Vergulde Draeck’s longboat which would be 36-38 feet long. The five tons of human flesh and bones would have made the boat sit very deep in the water, leaving less than two feet freeboard. This does not yet take into account that a large supply (several tons) of water and food needed to be taken along as well for their sustenance. This would surely overload the longboat which would go under. But without these necessary supplies the undertaking would be a suicide mission.

81 With this in mind sending the longboat with a small number of people on board in a second attempt to alert Batavia must be accepted as the practical option. In turn this means that still a large number of people would have stayed behind at the Southland.

82 CHAPTER TWELVE

Zuytdorp Some time in June or July in 1712, the 700 ton VOC ship Zuytdorp, Captained by Marinus Wijsvliet, was wrecked on the Western Australian coast, called New Holland at that time, crashing onto rocks at the bottom of cliffs just south of Shark Bay. The cliffs are now called the Zuytdorp Cliffs. It had 286 people on board when it left its home port via the Wielingen in Zeeland (Netherlands) on 1 August 1711. It was also carrying a cargo of trade goods and silver including some 250,000 guilders in newly minted coins for the VOC in Batavia. It lost 112 persons on the way to the Cape, caused by scurvy and disease that was due to drifting in the windless South Atlantic. It arrived on 23 March 1712, twice the time it would have taken normally. Another 22 left the ship there, leaving the crew to 145. About 42 new crew members (replacing some of those that died and left the ship) may have been brought on board for the trip to Batavia. The ship left Cape Town on 22 April 1712. Unlike the three other Dutch and English East India Company vessels known to have wrecked on or off the WA coast, no

83 survivors from the Zuytdorp ever reached Batavia to report the disaster. Hence there is no precise date of the wrecking. But there were survivors, their numbers unknown. It is not unlikely that as many as 100 or more could have survived, considering the ship wrecked on the shore. It is possible that the officers and passengers were the most likely survivors of this ordeal for their accommodation and diet were of a higher standard. The soldiers on the other hand were accommodated in the lowest part of the ship in dreadful conditions with lack of ventilation and toilet facilities. The ship was dashed by the surf onto a shelf allowing the people to make it to shore. What happened to these survivors? It is speculated that some of these New Holland castaways may have been accepted into the indigenous communities surrounding the wreck site (see map previous page) and that this acceptance extended to relationships and the production of offspring. Although nothing is known about the survivors an inscription on a rock face reading ‘Jan 1714’ shows that a survivor named Jan was still alive two years after the shipwreck. It is possible that he was accepted into a native group and fathered a child or children with an Aboriginal woman. It became apparent that the Aboriginal people would be the key to determine what may have happened to the shipwrecked survivors from the Zuytdorp by establishing a possible ancestral link to the passed event among Aborigines alive today. This ancestral link would need to be through DNA

84 analysis that would trace their DNA genealogy back some 300 years. Although there were likely a large number of survivors, on account of wrecking on the mainland and the winter season, it was alternatively hypothetsised that these people must have perished. This may have been the case in summer but these survivors landed in winter when temperatures were mild and rain fell frequently. Furthermore, north of the wreck site was a permanent soak (now known as Wale Well) where natives congregated and who may have noticed fires lit by the survivors. It has been suggested that the natives thought that white men were the returned spirits of their ancestors. They had forgotten what they knew when they were alive. That suited the sailors quite well. An array of findings recorded over time illustrate the possibility of shipwreck survivors mixing with local natives. Carvings and Inscriptions The Murchison area between Shark Bay and Murchison River was what appeared to be an isolated area that had remained unchanged until 1850, when lead was found in Murchison River. There was an inscription “Zuytdorp 1712” carved on the rock face above the wrecksite that was not discovered until much later. This was a good 21 years after the Swan River Colony was established. Until, then the area had been inhabited by the Nhunda Tribe.carving of “Zuytdorp” was declared to be fake and ultimately removed by a member of the WA Museum party that were collecting data, materials and artifacts to be taken to Fremantle. 85 Near by there was another name and year “Jan 1714” inscribed on a rock face. This suggested that this crew member was still alive two years after the event. Phillip Playford was told by a boundary rider, Tom Pepper, the location of a ship wreck. It was Phillips’ initiative that identified the wreck from coins found at the wreck site. Had he known about the “Zuytdorp 1712” carving it would have been a shortcut to the identity of the ship. Danny Varney who took the photograph of the “Zuytdorp 1712” said there was “umlaut” above the ‘Y’ in the word Zuytdorp, for which he had no explanation. This in fact persuaded me to believe that it was written by a Dutch person, for the following reasons: In the Dutch alphabet the letter that comes after x is the letter ij. It is used instead of the letter y and written as a combination of the letter i and j. Depending on the writer it may be expressed in hand writing as ÿ. Therefore, a non Dutch speaker would not be aware of the foregoing.

86 Robert Bednarik, the world renowned Rock Art authority has recently conceded and declared the “Zuytdorp 1712” inscription is a fake. In any event, the inscription in itself was unique and need not to have been removed. Similarly, The “JAN 1714”, if authentic, shows evidence that at least one person survived. It has received little or no attention. de Vlamingh - January 1697 From Nicolaes Witsen’s 1705 account of de Vlamingh’s Exploratory voyage along Western Australia's coastline in 1696-7 “Once at twenty-seven degrees southern latitude skipper de Vlamingh saw 5 huts close together, about one hour’s distance from the beach, one of which was made of clay with a roof sloping down on two sides. About the huts hot coals or burning wood were seen with fish lying on or near to it to be cooked, and also some fish which someone had eaten and had left the bones, so that the people must have recently left it.” R Gerritsen established that the lattitude was in fact 27deg. 40mins.S locating it inland from Gantheaume Bay. He further speculates that these huts might have been built by the ‘Sardam Five’ having been marooned after being sent to look for water on the mainland by Pelsaert. However, that was 15 years before the Zuytdorp wrecked on the cliffs some 50 km to the north, and more than 400 km from Vergulde Draeck wreck site to the south.

87 The location, 27deg.40mins.S is about 5 km north of Kalbarri. They are within 58 km south of the Zuytdorp wrecksite but 15 years before that incident. If they were built by the two mutineers, in the 68 years between 1629 and 1697, then their offspring might have had a hand in it. It is still guesswork. It was also Nhunda territory where later the Zuytdorp survivors became marooned in 1712. Daisy Bates wrote in her book: “I also found traces (among the natives) of types distinctly Dutch. When Peslsaert marooned two white criminals on the mainland in 1629, these Dutchmen had probably been allowed to live with the natives and it may be that they and their progeny journeyed far along the river highways, for I found these types as far out as the headwaters of the Gascoyne and the Murchison. There was no mistaking the flat heavy Dutch features, curly hair and heavy stocky build.”

(Passing of the Aborigines” Page 107) Author’s comment: As a person of Dutch descent I can asure the reader that Dutch people do not have ‘flat heavy features. They are indistinguishable from the English people. It seems to be that Ms Bates was a little biased with rather silly comment.

88 CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Pendal Report of 1992 At last in 1992, the West Australian State Government commissioned an investigation into the fate of the Zuytdorp and its survivors. It was established that Zuytdorp had 286 people on board when it left the Wielingen in Zeeland (Netherlands) on 1 August 1711. It was also carrying a cargo of trade goods and silver including some 250,000 guilders in newly minted coins for the VOC in Batavia. It lost 112 persons on the way to the Cape, through scurvy and other diseases, where it arrived on 23 March 1712. Another 22 disembarked in Capetown as well. About 42 new crew members (replacing those who had died or left the ship) had been brought on board for the trip to Batavia. The ship left Cape Town on 22 April 1712. Unlike the three other Dutch and English East India Company vessels known to have wrecked on or off the WA coast, no survivors from the Zuytdorp ever reached Batavia to report on the disaster. But there were survivors, on account of the camp sites that were found at the top of the cliff, but their numbers were unknown. It is quite possible, however, that many have initially survived, considering the ship wrecked on the shore. This is a reasonable assumption because when Batavia stranded on the reef at the Abrolhos, the survival rate was considerable. With Vergulde Draeck, on the other hand, only 75 of the 193 crew 89 survived, because the ship wrecked on a reef, 5km from the mainland and they were reliant on the two boats to take them ashore. What happened to these survivors? It is speculated that some of these New Holland castaways may have been accepted into the indigenous communities surrounding the wreck site or shown how to survive, and that this acceptance extended to relationships that produced offspring. In 1927 the boundary rider/dingo trapper Tom Pepper discovered the survivor's campsite at the top of the cliffs. He found silver coins and some artifacts but no signs of human remains. Although nothing was known about the survivors an inscription on the rockface “Jan 1714” showed that Jan had survived for 2 years. If in that time he became friendly with a native girl there could be at least one descendant by the law of probability. After hearing anecdotal information from residents along the coast, another possibility in finding out the fate of the Zuytdorp survivors presented itself. The district was rife with stories of local natives having mixed with the Zuytdorp survivors. Comments such as ‘Foregone Conclusion’, ‘light coloured skin and blue eyes’ were manifold. The Aboriginals were the key in finding “evidence” of the link between them and the ‘arrivals’ from the Zuytdorp. The only convincing evidence would be through analysis of DNA that would have to reach back some 300 years, hard evidence that historians would have to accept.

90 On 17 August 1994 a Report of the Select Committee on Ancient Shipwreck was presented to The Legislative Assembly in Western Australia by Hon. P.G. Pendall, MLA and Chairman of the said committee. Two excerpts of the report, relevant to the Zuytdorp are reproduced herewith:

Zuytdorp (1712) “This is the most complex story of all for a number of reasons, and the Committee has given this aspect of its investigations particular care. Because of the close physical proximity of the wrecksite to the shoreline and cliff face on which relics survived, it has been a matter of some difficulty to separate the discovery of relics pointing to the virtually certain locality of the wrecksite and discovery of the wrecksite itself. In our terms of reference we are specifically requested to inquire into and report upon the identity of the individuals who discovered the shipwrecks themselves. A further complication arises from the increasingly substantial body of evidence that survivors from the Zuytdorp came ashore. It seems probable that one or more of the castaways fathered children with Aboriginal mothers, giving rise to a strong probability that oral traditions about the Zuytdorp survived among local Aboriginal communities. There is a strong probability that Aboriginal reports at the Swan River in 1834 of a wreck to the northward referred to the Zuytdorp. While this probability falls short of a certainty it was

91 sufficient to persuade the authorities of that time, despite their limited resources, to despatch a vessel to Shark Bay to investigate the story, and at the very least the story is evidence of the strong survival of Aboriginal oral traditions for more than a century. Pastoral settlement took place in the region between Shark Bay and the Murchison in the 1870s, and traditional Aboriginal society no longer existed by the 1920s, but the survival of oral traditions into the 1920s cannot be discounted. Tom Pepper does not seem to have known about these traditions in April 1927 when, as a young boundary rider searching after a marauding dingo, he came to the Zuytdorp Cliffs and found coins and other relics from the Zuytdorp. There is considerable weight of testimony as to Pepper's integrity and honesty and his later accounts of the discovery over a period of half a century bear a high degree of internal consistency. From The West Australian of 5 February 1931, subsequently supported by Pepper's oral history it appears that he informed the manager of Tamala station of his find, who in turn informed Dr J S Battye, then the State Librarian and author of the standard History of Western Australia. Because of the remoteness and inaccessibility of the site and at a time when the Depression was closing in on Western Australia, no attempt was made to follow up Tom Pepper's find immediately. Undoubtedly he was the first to report the discovery of the relics near the site to the responsible authorities, and thus to identify the locality of an historic wreck, although without discovering the wreck itself.” (Pendal Report Page 26)

92 Further Research One of the most tantalising issues to have come before this Select Committee concerns the possibility that there were survivors from the Zuytdorp wreck. While most official texts are silent on this matter, there has been a growing body of evidence to suggest that at least some survivors may have intermarried with the local Aboriginal community between present-day Kalbarri and Shark Bay. While this evidence is by no means conclusive, it does suggest that there is far more substance in these speculations than previously thought. One important lead comes from an American woman who married an Aborigine from the Shark Bay region. In 1988, she contacted Dr Phillip Playford, who had written a book on the Zuytdorp, and informed him that her husband had died some years before of a rare disease called porphyria variegata. After having consulted a leading international expert on this disease, Dr Playford was told it was genetically linked and largely confined to Afrikaners. Moreover, all cases in South Africa could be traced back to Gerrit Jansz and Ariaantjie Jacobs, who had married in the Cape in 1688. After some further archival work, Dr Playford discovered that the Zuytdorp had arrived at the Cape in March 1712 where it took on more than 100 new crew. It is thought that one of the Jansz' sons could have boarded the ship at this time and thus become the carrier of the disease into the Australian Aboriginal population. One way to confirm this possibility would be to genetically test Aborigines in the area.

93 Physical evidence has also been found around the wreck site, which indicates that some of the estimated 280 people on board could have come ashore. For example Relics on the land show that at least 50 sailors managed to struggle to the clifftop, where they lit bonfires in vain attempts to attract the attention of following ships. Hinges and metal parts were found in ancient ashes of old fires, while skeletons were found buried, in European style, at a nearby waterhole along with cowrie shells and other aboriginal artefacts. Other relics such as a uniform button, smoking pipe, and glass fragments were also found. Some preliminary research work has already been carried out in the wreck site area, such as that conducted by Dr Phillip Playford. However, more archaeological surveys will need to be undertaken if further relics and grave sites are to be discovered. Another aspect which may play a vital role in confirming the Zuytdorp survivor theory, and one which has already received some attention in a new book by Rupert Gerritsen, is the study of Aboriginal languages and Aboriginal folklore. Several reports over many years attest that some Aborigines in the Kalbarri area had fair skin and European facial characteristics. It is gratifying to know that this Committee's inquiry has attracted a great deal of international interest. One of the South African radio programs interviewed the Chairman of this Committee, the Hon. Phillip Pendal and a local South African newspaper ran a detailed article on the challenges presented by the Zuytdorp wreck. In fact, this article prompted one South 94 African to write to the Committee clarifying several aspects of the Jansz and Jacobs genealogy. This Select Committee believes that further efforts should be made to bring these theories to some finality. A major reason for this is that generations of Australian schoolchildren have been taught that Australia was settled by the British at Port Jackson in 1788. Evidence put before the Committee and reading material made available to our members strongly suggests that, in fact, a significant European presence could have been in Western Australia at least 76 years earlier. If these theories are proved to be true, they would undoubtedly challenge conventional notions of early British settlement. Accordingly, this Committee recommends (Pendal Report Page 33-34) Recommendation: (1) That the Western Australian Government (a) mindful of the need to establish once and for all the facts about when and by whom the Australian continent was first settled by Europeans; (b) aware of the significance of the settlement at Port Jackson in 1788; and (c) recognising a variety of documents, publications and papers pointing to Dutch settlement in Western Australia early in the 18th century; agree to the creation and funding of a top-level Inquiry Into Early European Presence in Australia (IIEEPIA) to be drawn from historians, pre-historians,

95 scientific and Aboriginal bodies and other interested groups.

(1) That the IIEEPIA consider the reports of this Select Committee, all of its and other recorded evidence and publications. That the IIEEPIA have the authority to commission or pursue other relevant lines of research and inquiry. (2) That the IIEEPIA report periodically to the Select Committee on Ancient Shipwrecks which, by tabling this report, should remain extant, sufficient to meet at least twice yearly,to receive such reports and in turn to report to Parliament on the central issue of when and by whom the continent was first inhabited by non- indigenous persons.“ Unfortunately the recommendations were not followed up and the matter remained dormant - no reasons given.

SUMMARY Taking stock of the overall picture, and aside from the two mutineers, there were only two vessels that yielded survivors. From these Zuytdorp was of great interest for the following reason. This ship that wrecked on the shore allowing crew members to get off in an area occupied by one tribe, the Nhunda people.

96 What precisely happened is not easy to determine but the likelihood of interaction with the natives is quite on the cards, as will emerge later in this book. For a group of 100 or more it became necessary to divide into smaller groups. Individuals may have taken up with a native girl yet other small groups could have ventured afield and come across the Murchison River to the south and Shark Bay to the north. They could have followed a family group or met natives in other areas of the district. The ‘company’ had strict instructions that in the event of landing anywhere natives were to be befriended and had made toys, mirror pieces and other trinkets available for that purpose. Old people who at the time of writing were in their eighties recall stories that were told by their elders about the people from the ship. Clayton Drage, then 83 is the son of Aida Drage who was credited with finding the wreck in 1927, together with Tom Pepper, when he discovered the survivor's campsite at the top of the cliffs. He found silver coins and some artifacts but no signs of human remains. It was another 30 years before it was realised that this was indeed the wreck site of the Zuytdorp.

97 CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Imported disease In 2007 an article arrived that was published in the prominent Netherlands newspaper NRC Handelsblad, that often contained articles of a scientific nature, as was the case here. It dealt with a genetic disease that had apparently been carried to South Africa by a young orphan girl - a potential bride for the farmers at the Cape. It was written by a Dr. Pieter Bol and to establish some authenticity, by Googling his name, it came up with the following: “Dr. Pieter Bol was born in 1948 in Helmond. He started studying archaeology and prehistory in Utrecht. Later on he switched to medicine in Amsterdam. In 1993 he succeeded professor J. Huisman as associate professor of ‘Public hygiene and epidemiology’ at Delft University. He is (co) author of about 400 publications and has contributed to many books.” Sourced from Delft University website.

The person involved on the Australian shore was an Aboriginal with the name Ken Mallard who had been diagnosed with Porphyria Variegata. He was from the area associated with the Zuytdorp wreck. The translation reads as follows: HOW PORFYRIA WAS SPREAD BY THE VOC ACROSS THE WORLD

98 “What have a Rotterdam orphan from the seventeenth century, King George III, Vincent van Gogh, Dutch shipwrecked, Africans, Aborigines and Japanese women in common? Their disease: porphyria. When the British doctor Geoffrey Dean had established himself in South Africa, in 1947, shortly afterwards he saw a series of patients with a striking pathology. They suffered from abdominal pain, vomiting, constipation, muscle weakness, unrest, shivering and shaking. Furthermore, they were sometimes victims of acute attacks of madness, with a highly elevated blood pressure and increased pulse-rate. Usually they also had skin disorders, such as blistering in response to strong sunlight and pigmentation. Recent infectious diseases, alcoholism or a period of fasting could create the symptoms. But still he often felt that medicines, especially with the new barbiturates, but also anti- epilepsy medication or anesthesia during an operation triggered the condition. As the cause was unknown, Dean could not target a therapy; and it often turned out that he could not save the patient, who died a terrible death. Restless patients were often given barbiturates, which accelerated death. The same was true for patients who, because of their complaints

99 underwent abdominal surgery associated with anesthesia. It probably were the medicines that made the since long dormant genetic disorder in the South African population visible. Soon Dean suspected that there was question of the metabolic porphyria, but in a form that was not known in Europe. Like a Sherlock Holmes he unravelled the mystery of this disease, which he later would call Porphyria Variegata (PV). The research brought him across the world, including the Netherlands. Dean noted that the disorder in South Africa occurred in mostly Boer families, less in blacks and coloureds. He soon suspected that there was a sudden flaring up of a genetic affliction. The adherance of the Boers to traditions and their rigidity in name-giving helped him with research of family relationships. The first son was named after father's father, the second was named after mothers’s father (if it was not the same first name) and the third after one's own father. The daughters: the first was named after mother's mother, the second to father's mother and the third after mother. Only with child no.7 could names' be freely chosen, preferably of esteemed other relatives. Because the Boer wives bore generously, seven children were no exception by the way.

100 A Variant What happened to the Farmers in South Africa was sometimes called in genetics the "Noah's Ark Effect". If a male, or female ancestor introduces a variant gene into a small community where many children are born and many marriages between relatives, the many offspring possess the gene that creates disease. Dean identified the instigator of the South African rot fairly quickly. That was probably (and DNA research in recent years makes that more plausible) - the orphan Ariaantje Adriaansen (Jacobs), In 1688, she arrived in Cape Town, with seven other female orphans (including her half- sister Willemijntje) with the VOC ship 'China' from Rotterdam. The colony had a chronic shortage of women. Exports of female orphans, whose maintenance in the Netherlands cost money, combined the practical with the pleasurable.. Ariaantje married in Stellenbosch Gerrit Jansz van Deventer. Which of the two spouses brought PV in 4 of their 8 children we're not sure. In the region of Deventer, where Gerrit Jansz must have come from, still live many families with PV. But also the son of Ariaantje's half-sister Willemijn probably had PV. That makes Ariaantje the main

101 suspect within the married couple and therefore to be the founder of PV in South Africa. Dean has described his quest engagingly in his book The Porphyrias (1963). He concluded that PV is caused by an error in a dominant gene that is not found in the gender chromosomes (it is autosomal dominant). When one of the parents has the disease, there is a 50% chance that a son or daughter inherits the mutation. With genetic research, still in progress at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, it is already well established that the South African PV originated from The Netherlands and spread out from one source. Geneticists consider it as currently the largest ever described founder effect. Dr.Pieter Bol continues to tell that the son of Willemijntje, Hendrick, had been deported to East India as punishment for some aggressive behaviour. Bol speculates that Hendrick was on board the VOC ship Zuytdorp when it ran into the cliffs of the west coast of Australia, some 200 km north of present day Geraldton, early June 1712. There were an unknown number of survivors but what happened to these people is not known. One possibility, which is also the subject of this book, is that some of them integrated with the local Aboriginal tribes and in particular the Nhunda tribe. 102 If this had happened and Hendrick was among them there was a chance that the genetic mutation which causes the South African Porphyria Variegata had also been introduced in the Aboriginal gene pool, possibly also resulting in a ‘Founder or Noah’s Ark effect’. Author’s Note: Dr. Bol withdrew his statement and Hendrik did not sail on the Zuytdorp in 1712.

A research paper by Dr. Rossi etal: Variegate Porphyria in Western Australian Aboriginal patients (Internal Medicine Journal 2002; 32:445-450), described that no such founder effect was discovered. In the first place the mutations were not of one kind, but different and none of them were of the South African variant. The two mutations found by Rossi etal. had not been described elsewhere and so far appear to be unique to (Western) Australia. However, Dr. Bol had become interested in the possibility that there could be descendants from the Zuytdorp survivors among the Aborigines, notably the Nhunda people, and that this may be established via genetic analyses. This gave Dr.Bol an additional motivation to come to Western Australia to visit his uncle in Palmyra, a suburb of Perth where I met with him. After his return to Amsterdam, where he lived, he emailed me that he had interviewed a forensic geneticist, Professor Dr.

103 Peter de Knijff. Whilst having coffee after the interview he told the Professor about my research. The Professor became interested because he told Pieter Bol that although he had access to data about the Aboriginals in the southern part of Western Australia, he had none about those living in the northern part. Therefore he was more that willing to collaborate with me and supplied 500 swab sticks for collecting saliva samples for DNA analysis. Neither of us realised that the Nhunda people of the Murchison didn’t share the same enthusiasm for the project. That was mainly due to privacy and also that DNA was often used in criminal cases. Anyway, a real plus point was not having to pay A$1,000 per sample, as had been quoted by another laboratory. The location of the Zuytdorp wreck was more or less equidistant between Murchison River and Shark Bay which is a coastal area of land that was not to be settled until after 1850, 21 years after the establishment of the Swan River Colony in 1829. This was significant because the area was occupied by only Aborigines, since the wrecking of the Zuytdorp in 1712 until 1850. Frank Mallard, a retired Australian Army Warrant Officer had researched his family from when his forebear, a ‘Ticket of Leave’, Charles (Doughy) Mallard had arrived on 6 November 1857. He married Sarah Feast, an Aboriginal women and in 1881 a son, Charlie was born. From what Frank told me, Sarah Feast was likely of mixed blood.

104 To put it simply, when the convicts arrived in the Murchison District after 1850 there already were Aborigines with European features, many of whom they married. Was there substance in this? Frank thought so and gave as an example Aunty Alice in a photo depicting her as quite ‘European’. This kind of circumstantial evidence and related anecdotes are however not sufficient to prove a connection with the Zuytdorp survivors. The Zuytdorp never arrived at her destination and her disappearance was a mystery for well over two centuries. It wasn’t until 1927 that a shipwreck was reportedly found by Adia Drage, (incidentally a daughter of Aunt Alice, mentioned above) an Aboriginal women who lived at Murchison House Station. There was no evidence of the ship’s identity and the matter did not become public knowledge. In 1954, a young geologist, Phillip Playford, an employee of WAPET, was in the area looking for oil, when he was told by Tom Pepper, a boundary rider, about the wreck.

105 Phillip made the effort to investigate and with the help of coins found at the wreck site and dated 1711 he decided to investigate further.. After enquiries in The Netherlands, he soon found the identity of the ship to be the Zuytdorp. As it turned out the Zuytdorp wreck site was in the tribal lands of the Nhunda people, a region that was settled much later that the Swan River Colony in 1829.

106 CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Analysing DNA The Porphyria story had offered a glimmer of hope but Ken Mallard who had the disorder, had died of its complications in 1986. DNA analysis might be a solution but the cost at $1000 per person was out of the question because that kind of funding was not readily available for small organisations. Furthermore, it would require some concrete evidence upon which funding for any research could be based. This is the case with most funding bodies and I daresay that some valuable projects may never be undertaken as a result of this rule. As it turned out, Lady Luck smiled upon my efforts because Dr. Pieter Bol in Amsterdam, an enthusiastic collaborator by now, had an occasion to conduct an interview with a Professor Peter de Knijff for a scientific publication to which Pieter was a contributor. Peter de Knijff was and still is the head of Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) After the interview, Pieter mentioned the efforts being made in Western Australia to investigate the possible link between the survivors of the Zuytdorp and the local natives. Surprisingly, the professor responded that he had data on Aboriginals in the lower south west of this state but that he lacked data on those in the northern parts.

107 He stated that he was quite keen “to do business”. In the past he had approached official channels on a number of occasions in WA, without success. To pave the way he said that he would discuss it with the Leiden University Ethics Committee about the manner in which samples could be collected. The law in Australia forbade the export of body parts from a corpse or a skeleton, in particular from Aboriginals. However, this did not apply to saliva samples from living individuals. After some discussion it became clear that if a Aboriginal person chose to provide a sample of his or her own free will, there was no law that could intervene. The Professor agreed and a protocol was devised by the University for each donor to sign. The way was now clear to proceed and obtain the 300 samples.

This optimism soon diminished as the Aborigines in the Murchison District were not all that keen to give a sample for fear of surrendering their privacy. Furthermore their experience in the past with researchers, photographers and film makers had not been good because promises of results, photos etc were not kept. Phone calls and letters finally resulted in a visit where an Elder, Clayton Drage and his family gave the first samples. Uncle Clayton as he was referred to and I had a number of phone conversations in which he told me that as a sheep shearer for 50 years, he had worked with many Dutchmen shearers and he had fond memories about their non offensive sense of humor.

108 Somewhat unlike some Australian shearers who had a tendency to put him down. Yet, during his career, he broke a record by shearing 512 sheep in one day. Uncle Clayton then agreed to talk to his other ‘elders’ and family. All in all it took close on two years to come to a total of 153 saliva samples.

Collecting DNA samples On 29 August 2009, Uncle Clayton at a meeting with members of the Drage Family, set and example with his family by giving the first sample. Lisa, the daughter of Uncle Clayton had made arrangements for us to stay at Auntie Jean’s place at Ajana, Clayton’s cousin. Jean had a transportable next to her home that she used to accommodate visiting relatives. This visit turned out to be a wonderful experience - best described as a warm reception. “That meeting produced the first 18 samples. Progress was good and the cooperation of the families in providing samples was great. Samples would be taken with a swab and then placed in a clean envelope pre-stamped with a sample number and the indication that the donor was either male or female. The use of envelopes allowed the samples to dry out, thus rendering them non-perishable. Later a collection of envelopes would be sent by parcel post to Professor de Knijff’s laboratory in Leiden. It took nearly two years to collect 153 samples. 109 How long it would take for the results to be presented was yet to be experienced. In the forensic methodology the biochemist analyses for a large number of components that are part of the make-up of the DNA found in the Y-chromosome (the gender chromosome) of a male person. The specific profile of DNA components obtained from an unidentified person is then compared with the profiles obtained from the same kind of DNA from identified suspects. A direct match would then reveal the identity of the unidentified person. But a gap of 300 years, from 1712 to 2012, this direct matching method is not possible. To clarify this: There are no DNA profiles available from the crew members of the Zuytdorp wherefore a method of directly matching a donor’s DNA is not possible. So how does the geneticist go about this? The components mentioned above are usually referred to as ‘’STR’s’, or Short Tandem Repeats. The particular STR’s and number of each repeat determine an individuals (unique) haplotype. However, particular mutations (also called singe nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNP’s) that are present in the STR’s determine to which haplogroup an individual’s DNA haplogroup belongs.

110 Over many decades geneticists have developed extensive data bases of haplogroups which are placed in a DNA family tree. In such cases the haplogroups are the branches. These branches are associated by complex statistical methods to a time of first appearance and a geographical location. Once a geneticist has determined the haplogroup of an individual’s DNA (either from the Y-chromosome of a male, or the Mitochondrial DNA in female) he can then determine to which branch of the DNA family tree the haplogroup belongs and thus determine a geographical origin and time. This in a nutshell is how a geneticist can determine within certain statistical limits the origin of an individual’s DNA.” (A.de Jong 2015)

Aborigines are people like us and I have developed a great respect for these Nhunda People. When questioned about my motives, I told them that I wanted to know what had happened to my people - which appealed to their sense of humour and paved the way to greater understanding. The wait was not too long for the first results in March 2010, Of the 35 males (Y-Chromosome) tested, three were Australian Aboriginal and the remainder had European Ancestry, with a small number coming from the Mediterranean region. ( This was not surprising because some 30% of the crew could have come from other countries in Europe of that time. There have been historic ties between The Netherlands and Spain in the 16th and 17th century.)

111 It was great news but as the area began to be settled by convicts from the British Isles, in the 1850’s, unavoidably there was a presence of UK DNA as well. Professor de Knijff explained that he was collaborating with universities in the UK to obtain markers that would enable to differentiate between Continental Europe,and UK origin of DNA because this was essential. By 1 December 2011 the professor reported that of the 126 people tested the DNA of 20 individuals was of European and Eurasian origin. He could still not make a specific determination how many of those may be of Dutch origin. Since the crew itself was a mixed bag of which 30% of the crew were Hollanders, (all officers were Dutch as was VOC policy) 40% German (Soldiers) and the remaining 30% were of other nationalities, like men who were found in the street after a night of booze and frivolity on the waterfront. Amsterdam, after all was the centre of international trade and most nationalities were represented. The time it has taken waiting for the end results of the DNA investigation tried my patience and some Aboriginal people began to doubt its credibility. Indeed four years went by and still no final result. What had started as ‘high hopes’ and DNA being the ‘be all and end all’ of solutions turned out to be an exercise in waiting patiently.

112 CHAPTER SIXTEEN

King Peter (Warru) In talking about King Peter, Phillip Playford, who helped to identify the wreck of the Zuytdorp, learned the following from Tom Pepper Snr., a stockman of English extraction and a worker at Murchison House Station from 1920 to 1950, and then on Tamala Station until 1964’s. “He told me during a discussion that we had in 1963, that the locals called the head of the Malgana tribe at Tamala Station, King Peter (advisedly King Pieter). Tom said that Peter had golden hair and a golden beard., and although he was Aboriginal, he was heavily built, and had Dutch or European features. He firmly believed that Pieter was related to the survivors of the Zuytdorp, which had been wrecked on the cliffs about forty miles south of Tamala Station in 1712. Tom Pepper was of the opinion that any survivors from the Zuytdorp must have mingled with the Malgana, Nhunda, Watjarri and Ingarda tribes His theory is backed up by Daisy Bates in her writings about the Aboriginal tribes of Western Australia, in which she described

113 some of the southern Gascoyne Aborigines as being fair-haired, and having European features. Ivy Mallard (born in Denham, 1911) told me that she knew King Peter, who died in 1933, and said that his tribal name was Warru. Ivy said that his hair and beard were light ginger in colour and that Peter had two daughters, Ada (who had Asian features) and Alice (who had Aboriginal features). Warru (Peter) had a son, Gordon Peter who was of very heavy build, but had Aboriginal features, and he was believed to be one of the last of the Malgana tribal natives in the Shark bay area, along with another Tamala Aborigine, Ben Karlo. Both Gordon Peter and Ben Karlo left Tamala Station to retire at Denham and both have since died. Dick Hoult, a fourth generation pearler, pastoralist and fisherman at Shark bay, told me that when he was a child at Denham, he could remember King Peter (Warru) as they called him living near Tamala Station homestead. He said that King Peter had a seventeen-foot open-decked sail boat named Mascot, that he sailed between Tamala and Denham. It was most unusual in those days for a tribal Aboriginal to have a boat.”

(Source: Shark Bay Legends by Russel Cooper) Further clues On February 3, 1943, “E.H.” contributed to the West Australian Newspaper an article about a Shark Bay Dutchman. In that article

114 he wrote of native tribes in the sandhills about Shark Bay with blue eyes and flaxen hair. He also referred to ‘an extraordinary human specimen’ in one Pieter, the last of the Ingarra tribe. This reference read: “With a great blonde beard, not white but bright golden, sturdy sinuous limbs decidedly bandy, a noble girth and a passion for the sea -- none of these Aboriginal characteristics. Provided that there is the same strong atavistic rendency among white races as there is among the negroid and Asiatic, Pieter is quite possibly an amazing throwback over 14 or 15 generations to the early Dutchmen, it may be to the two desperados marooned by Pelsaert near Champion Bay in 1627 (sic.) The supposition is not absurdity in that Mendel himself allows the passing of 17 generations for the verifications of his theories. Residents of Shark Bay have assured me that Pieter’s forebears` were all typical aborigines and his ancient sister, Mithie, the only other full-blood that now exist there, is unremarkable. With a hollow nose and black skin incongruous with his white characteristics, this man spends his live cruising the shallow waters of Hamelin Pool, where he is well known as a ‘hard case’ of the stations. His most cherished possession is a little dinghy which he has fitted with a mast and sail, and on which he is eternally working - a trait in itself most un-aboriginal, harking right back to the Eendracht, the Vergulde Draecke and other adventurers who scoured those seas in the dawn of our history, with many crews marooned and shipwrecked here.” Note:

115 The author ‘E.H.’ of this article was in 1943 only aware of the year of the Batavia wrecking (1629), some 12 - 13 generations ago at the time. The number of passed generations since the Zuytdorp wrecking (1712) would be eight to nine generations

116 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Sarah Darwin In March 2010, a Dutch clipper ‘Stad Amsterdam’ engaged in the re- enactment of Charles Darwin’s ‘The Beagle’, in a joint Dutch/British venture arrived in Fremantle. The great granddaughter of Charles Darwin, Sarah Darwin, was on board in her capacity as botanist and she made some noteworthy comments, worth a mention.

The yam The Nhanda people were traditionally hunter gatherers from the Victoria District in Western Australia (WA). They traditionally collected and ate this root vegetable, the yam. In more recent times while travelling through the bush, members of the Nhanda, describe collecting the yams for a snack: "we used to eat them like biscuits" (Clayton Drage). These WA yams are just one species of many yam species found all over the tropics in Africa, Asia and Australia and are eaten by many different peoples throughout the world. This Western Australian yam is described by the scientific community as being native to this area. The edible tuber is found sometimes up to a meter underground just in this small area in WA.

117 Dioscorea Opposita. The Nhunda have been living on this land for millennia. They have eaten this yam for thousands of years - or have they? WA sports a very dangerous coastline with many small islands and reefs. It was a common trading route for the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Ships would sail from Cape Town (Africa) to what we now called Jakarta in Indonesia and which was then called Batavia. Over the past 400 years many ships were wrecked along this treacherous coast. The more recent discovery of some of these wrecks either close to or on the west Australian shore raised the question of whether there were any survivors of such tragic accidents. Would any marooned Dutch sailors have managed to survive in this harsh Australian landscape and indeed did they meet, mix and become integrated with the local Aboriginal groups?

Batavia's Graveyard In 1629 two Dutch men called Jan Pelgrom de Bye and Wouter Loos were the first Europeans to set up camp in Australia. We know this because they were saved from the gallows after they played part in a brutal mutiny shortly after the ship called the Batavia was wrecked off the WA coast. The commander of the ship left these two young men with a small boat, knives and food at a place now thought to be the mouth of the River Hutt, just north of Geraldton. Their instructions were to meet and befriend the local people. The Dutch knew that locals were in

118 the area as they had observed fires along the coast at night. It was duly noted in the commander's log, that De Bye and Loos were equipped with toys and mirrors, which were common Dutch trading items just in case they did meet with locals. De Bye and Loos were expecting to be picked up at a later date but there is no record of either of them being heard of or seen again. However, over two hundred years later British explorers reported members of the local Aboriginal group, the Nhanda, having fair skin and blond hair, even speaking some Dutch words.

So how does yam come into all of this? The Dutch ships in 17th and 18th century used to carry yams in their food stores. Yams were useful vegetables to stock on a ship for long voyages because they remained fresh for up to six months. It has been suggested that the two young Dutch men from the Batavia mutiny must have been given yams as part of their food supplies. These yams as well as remaining edible for a long period are also easy to cultivate. Indeed it is also possible that other survivors from ship wrecks managed to grab yams as essential food supplies before their ships sank. In the 1840s Sir George Grey was travelling through the River Hutt area and reported in his diary several miles of cultivated yam plants in this Nhanda country. There were so many yam holes in the ground from harvesting, Grey wrote, that it had been difficult to walk over the land.

119 The Dutch connection? It has been suggested that the presence of the yam in this part of Australia is in fact due to Dutch introductions following ship wrecks and that this plant far from being a native plant was only established sometime after the 1600s. It has further been suggested that the Dutch survivors were influential in the cultivation of yams by the local Aboriginal people thus suggesting that Dutch survivors became fully integrated into this local group. Proving this Dutch connection with the Nhanda people has now taken an interesting twist. Some Nhanda now believe, in order to claim land rights, they need to prove that they have been occupying the Nhanda region for a long time, specifically before the British and European settled Australia. Indeed many Nhunda believe that they need to prove that they are Nhanda. If the Nhanda can prove that they have Dutch heritage this might infer that they are related to early 17th century ship wreck survivors.

Why does a possible Dutch ancestry matter? Other members of the Nhunda people are keen to know where they come from, for them it is important to know and to acknowledge their heritage, both Aboriginal and European. According to William Mallard an important part of Aboriginal culture is the knowledge of "where you are from and who your people are - otherwise you are nothing". He wondered how it could be that his ancestors, the Dutch shipwreck survivors, were never rescued and felt personally affronted by this 120 apparent lack of care. He also said that he could be interested in applying for citizenship and moving to Holland. Some members of the Nhanda have even stated that they would want their European ancestry to be anything but British. This was due to the terrible way their people have been treated under British colonial rule. Throughout this shoot the Dutch film crew and I, the sole Brit, stood by as the history of Western Australia was debated. We have been wondering how things might have been so different and how the Australian flag might look with the Dutch emblem in the top left corner rather than the Union Jack. At certain moments, during the accounts of how the Aboriginal people have been treated, I thought that I might too start searching for my Dutch ancestors. Dutch ancestry is also something that Clayton Drage and some of his children Clayton Junior, Colleen and Lisa are keen to prove. In addition to the land rights interest the Drage family seem to like the whole idea of being Dutch. They have clearly enjoyed being with the Dutch film crew and will be very proud to claim that heritage. They are very excitedly awaiting the results of the genetic tests that they hope will prove this.

Sarah's quest for the yam For me, as a plant scientist, it would also be very interesting to undertake research on the local yams. If one could show that this native yam was closely related to the yams carried on the Dutch VOC ships and that these same yam plants - now found

121 in this small area near Geraldton - had only recently been introduced in the past 400 years, then this would be strong supporting evidence that the Dutch ship wreck survivors and the Nhanda people had mixed, culturally anyway. So, genetic evidence from humans and their cultivated plants would mutually support this theory. First step then in my scientific quest: find a yam. With this clearly in mind I have spent the past two days driving through Nhanda country with Clayton Drage. While sitting on the back of the truck I have been searching for this rather elusive plant. At this time of year above the ground the yam plant is all but a sandy coloured dead vine. Under the vines I have dug holes and on one occasion under the guidance of Clayton, an enormous hole hoping to find the edible part of the yam, but no luck thus far. In addition to the botanical thrill I would also be really keen to try the wild Western Australia yam in a culinary sense; if nothing else, to test whether Australian legend Crocodile Dundee's assessment was correct. You will be hearing from me.”

122 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The Nhunda People Sarah Darwin suggests in her writing that the yams were introduced via the Dutch shipwreck survivors to the Aborigines in the area adjacent to the wreck sites. The Nhunda and the Malgana people still live in the same land where the Zuytdorp stranded. It is possible that they helped the survivors whereby these became integrated into their lifestyle. Their Nhunda territory was much smaller than those of surrounding tribes which may be due to being on the coast with fish and shellfish readily available. The area of the Malagana people to the north is also smaller, perhaps for the same reason. There was ongoing interaction between the two tribes. On the other hand the Nhunda also knew about the cultivation of yams which made them less inclined to a hunter-gatherer lifestile. Yams were growing in a wide area, gradually petering out further south - see map at the start of Sarah’s chapter. These yams are almost always said to be the Dioscorea Hastifolia (Gerritsen: And Their Ghosts may be heard Ch.7). The problem with that lies in the general scientific consenses that the species is endemic to Western Australia and is thus not introduced into the area by survivors of shipwrecks. However, when I came to speak about the yams with Clayton Drage, a Nhunda Elder, he showed me the yams they used to eat. Apparently these yams could be eaten raw like a carrot.

123 The species turned out not to be the Hastifolia variety but the species Dioscorea Opposita. This yam was a lot easier to consume than the Hastifolia variety with its often woody tubers requiring long cooking to make them edible. What is more, it is considered an introduced species from the temperate Asian region. Many of the Nhunda people now believe that they are descended from the survivors of the Dutch ship Zuytdorp, although they have no actual recorded history or oral tradition about this. Even if there was an oral history, it would not have identified the source of the Zuytdorp. Dutch or Holland were meaningless to them - in their world. They had not seen a map. Neither were they aware of nations, countries, continents. It was simply that the vessel had arrived with likely the spirits of their ancestors. This impression may have caused them to be friendly towards the strangers though. We now know that the Murchison district was not open to settlers until 1850. So to all intends and purposes it was devoid of white man for the 138 years, since the Zuytdorp wreck in 1712, some five to six generations. It is now known that some Aboriginal women were born in the latter part of the 138 year period who were of mixed ancestry. From photos it appears that there are European features in evidence. This may be the ‘Zuytdorp Effect’ five or six generation after the wrecking.

124 Data from records show that many Aboriginal women lived 'beyond their three score and ten'. In the early 1850s convicts arrived to work in the new lead mine in the Murchison River and it soon happened that they chose an Aboriginal wife, albeit it ‘defacto’. A descendant of Charles Mallard, Frank Mallard (now living) had built a comprehensive family tree of his ancestors. He concurred that those new settlers had a choice between two types, the traditional native and a women who appeared to have more European features. He showed a photo of his great grandmother Alice McMurray to illustrate his point. Two convicts, Charles Mallard and Thomas Drage arrived in the mid 1850's. It appears from stories told that Charles, married a woman named Sarah Feast who was considered similarly of mixed blood. Thomas Drage on the other hand married an English girl and it wasn't until their son Thomas Amos had a relationship with an

125 Aborigine girl (Polly Glass) that one branch of the Drage family became of mixed race. To many local white people it is a foregone conclusion that when a ship of the Zuytdorp size with nearly 200 people on board, with a proof of many initial survivors, that contact of only a few with the natives would result in progeny. The final proof of whether this is true will be shown in the forthcoming DNA results, as well as other research. Even if one or two donors are shown to have ancestry relating to the ship, the needle in the haystack will have been found.

126 CHAPTER NINETEEN

Observations - 1 Some Australian Aborigines may have Dutch or German sailors among their ancestors. Explorers such as Augustus Gregory, A.C. Gregory, George Fletcher Moore and social researcher Daisy Bates noticed European characteristics, such as blonde hair and blue eyes amongst aborigines who had not previously had contact with Europeans. Bishop Salvado, the missionary who established New Norcia, in 1847, north of Perth also remarked on apparent European characteristics amongst Aborigines. These may have originated from the 68 survivors of the Vergulde Draeck, because it was customary to travel inland by following a river. In this case the Moore River. The Champion Bay tribe would have travelled inland using the Irwin River as a highway and source of food and water, for some 350 km. Also, at similar distance inland near the beginning of the Murchison river, at Walga Rock west of Cue, there is a rock painting of a European ship near Cue. Tantalizing also is the occurrence of a rare genetic disease: Ellis- van Creveld syndrome among Australian Aborigines. The most obvious symptom of which is polydactyl – having more than five fingers and toes. Cases of EvC have been reported on both the west coast and the south-west corner of WA.

127 This genetic disorder occurs world wide at a rate of 1 in 60,000 to 1 in 200,000. But amongst the old order Amish in Pensylvania who descend from Dutch/German migrants in the 17th century, it is around 1 in 200; evidence of a so called founder effect. There is ample evidence of proliferation of pre-colonial European input:

In 1839 Lt. George Grey, around the Hutt River area, wrote the following in his diary : We passed two villages, or , as the men termed them, towns - the huts of which ...... were very nicely plastered over the outside with clay and clods of turf, so that although now uninhabited, they were evidently intended for fixed places of residence.

1848 A. C. Gregory, the explorer, had passed through the same area and wrote : “I explored the country where the Dutchman had landed and found a tribe whose character differed considerably from the average Australian. Their colour was neither black nor copper, but that peculiar colour that prevails with a mixture of European blood.

Augustus Oldfield “I was much surprised to find in some of the old natives [at Champion Bay] features nearly approaching the European type, although these parts have been settled but a few years” (From Perth Gazette Friday 8 August 1861)

128 William Burgess Arriving in Swan River Colony in 1829 the Burgess brothers William, Lockier and Samuel, first settled on the Upper swan before moving to York in 1837. William carried out onerous duties over a wide area for modest remuneration dealing with the challenges of a pioneering environment and striving to prevent conflict arising from a white penetration into Indigenous land. With the establishment of the Port Gregory convict depot these duties increased as Burgess continued in this role until 1859 supervising the hiring of ticket of leave convicts, enquiring into the causes of shipwrecks and civil disturbance and generally endeavouring to keep the peace in what was a remote and somewhat unruly society where the illegal sale of liquor and antisocial behaviour were difficult to control. Burgess returned to his native Ireland in 1860 returning twice to Western Australia where, on his 2nd visit in 1875, he became briefly a member of the Legislative Council. However ill health caused him to return to Ireland in 1876 where he died in October of that year. Charles (Doughy) Mallard, convict at Lynton, earned his nickname as he was baker at Lynton for 2 years. Born at Northampton, England in 1835, he worked as a baker prior to being sentenced to 15 years imprisonment in 1853. He arrived on the ship Adelaide in July 1855. When he earned his pardon and became a freeman he married Sarah feast, a part Aboriginal woman at Lynton. Charles became employed at the Bowes’ personal holding belonging to the Birds family. William

129 Burgess,, who had been Magistrate at Lynton would have known Charles Mallard there. A daughter Sarah, died tragically from being accidentally's scalded when she was 8 months old. Charles’ son, also called Charles, and also a baker, married Alice McMurray. Some descendants of the Mallard family reside in the district today, most notably William (Bill ) Mallard, and great grandson of Charles senior, who has been a prominent spokesperson for the Nhunda people and their heritage. W. Burges.jpg George Fletcher Moore Diary “Friday, July 11 [1834] – To-day I find that a great sensation has been created in the colony by rumours which have come to us through the natives, of a vessel that was wrecked nearly six months ago (30 days journey, as they described it) to the North of this, - which is conjectured to be about Sharks Bay. Further enquiries have been made from the natives; they said that “wayl-men” – men from a distance to the North – have told them of it, and that there are men and women and children still alive, inhabiting two larger and smaller tents made of poles and canvas; that the ship is quite destroyed by the sea; and that a large quantity of money, like dollars, is lying on the shore.” Comment: The story had appeared in the Perth Gazette on the 5th of July and subsequent issues, and the Colonial Secretary had been officially advised about the matter in a letter from Stephen Parker, dated 6 July.

130 It appears that two natives, Tomghin and Weenat told Stephen Parker and his sons about the wreck on the 2nd of July. A search party commanded by Assistant Surveyor H.M. Ommanney left Fremantle on board the small schooner Monkey on the 18th of July while Fletcher Moore had send the aboriginal Weeip (in return for a pardon and release from prison of his son) with a written message that help was under way. A wreck, nor survivors where found. Weeip reported that aboriginals he had spoken to did not know of a wreck, but they all told him there was “money plenty” on the shore....pieces of money lying on top of one another... Many years later, in 1954, the wreck of the Zuytdorp was discovered at the approximate location described by the Aborigines. The many silver coins strewn about inspired the title “Carpet of Silver”, the book Phillip Playford wrote in 1996. How could all these reports lead to proving that the survivors indeed mixed with the Aboriginal people?

131 CHAPTER TWENTY

Lynton Convict Depot - Port Gregory, Western Australia Lynton Convict Depot (1853 – 1856), Western Australia, was established in 1853 to supply labour to the Geraldine Lead Mine, 40 miles north of the site in the Murchison River bed. The depot was barely finished when it was closed in December 1856 due the harsh living conditions and transport problems of the time. Convicts were held until local businessmen came to hire them for labouring tasks on the nearby farms. There are stories where the local farmers treated the convicts like slaves frequently flogging them for the slightest misdemeanours and summarily executing them for minor offenses. It is difficult to substantiate these claims and they may well be little more than local folklore. By 1856 a store, bakery, depot, lockup, hospital, lime kiln and administration block had all been built but a lack of fresh vegetables had seen the convict population ravaged by scurvy. It was decided to close the settlement and by January 1857 (less than 4 years after they had arrived) the convicts were either being shipped back to Fremantle or settled in nearby Greenough. Five women from the “Bride Ships” were known to have arrived in Lynton. Lynton remains the most intact example of a regional convict depot in Western Australia. Lynton is situated about five hundred kilometres north of Perth in the Shire of Northampton,

132 in close proximity to the Hutt River. It was surveyed by A.C. Gregory in 1853 and comprised 1280 acres. The site chosen for Lynton was ten kilometres east of Port Gregory, close enough to facilitate food supplies, but far enough inland to give shelter from coastal winds and to provide better soil for cultivation. The site was also selected for the deposits of limestone, which could be used for construction of depot buildings, and for the local rushes that could be used for thatching. There is evidence to suggest that the site was also chosen for aesthetic reasons, as was the site of Port Gregory, “because it was so picturesque.” The townsite comprised fifty- seven lots reserved for private land as well as crown land for the purpose of public buildings such as a church. The Lynton Convict Hiring Depot was built on subdivision ‘L’, in close proximity to the townsite and nestled in a small valley. Captain Henry Ashford Sanford, Superintendent of the depot, built a substantial two storey stone residence, Sanford House, on lot 10 of the town, away from the depot, on an open rising site facing out across the coastal dunes to the Indian Ocean. It was intended that occupants of the Lynton Convict Hiring Depot would provide a founding population for the town and construct a road between Port Gregory and the Geraldine lead mine. The first inhabitants of the Lynton Convict Hiring Depot were sixty ticket-of-leave men and pensioner guards who arrived at Port Gregory on 22 May 1853. The ticket-of-leave men were convicts who had served sufficient of their sentence to be released into the community to work. The pensioner guards

133 were retired military men who came out to Western Australia by free passage with the promise of work and regular wages. The guards were a cheap source of labour for the government and were regarded as a positive moral influence on those they supervised because of their conformity, and loyalty to the government. Lynton Convict Hiring Depot was built between 1853 and 1856. The buildings were designed by Lt. Crossman although it is unlikely that he supervised the construction of the buildings. Local and imported materials were used in the construction of the buildings. Dates of the construction of each building can be estimated from the reports of progress tabled for parliament in the years the depot was in operation. Progress in building was slow, because of the time taken to cut limestone, the lack of structural timber locally, and the few skilled labourers at the Lynton Convict Hiring Depot. The wrecking of the Mary Queen of Scots in February 1855 also hindered construction of the buildings as part of her cargo was shingles intended for the Lynton Convict Hiring Depot. Eventually, around 8,000 of the 12,500 shingles were salvaged and used at the Lynton Convict Hiring Depot. Living conditions at the Lynton Convict Hiring Depot were severe. In addition to the isolation and harsh climate, there were problems with drawing water from the wells. In 1854, a report to Parliament stated that one well had to be relocated as the water was too brackish. The limited rainfall in the area also meant that vegetables could be grown only in some months of the year and the depot was largely reliant on goods from Port Gregory. Crops failed in consecutive seasons, further contributing to existing problems. The occupants of the depot 134 suffered from a number of diseases, including scurvy. Sanitary arrangements at the Lynton Convict Hiring Depot were minimal and earth closets were not constructed until at least eighteen months after the depot was established. Though the capacity of the Lynton Convict Hiring Depot was eighty men, it appears that the number at any given time was well below this figure. Records from the Colonial Secretary’s Office show the number of men to be anywhere between one and fifty, but generally around thirty with a rapid decline evident from the beginning of 1856. In December 1856, not long after the last buildings were completed, the Lynton Convict Hiring Depot was closed. There were three reasons why the Lynton Convict Hiring Depot was unsuccessful. Firstly, the expense in maintaining the depot was great, because of the distance between Lynton and Fremantle which was the source of building supplies. Secondly, the need for labour in the area was limited as the surrounding pastoral district was in its early stages of settlement. Thirdly, the nearby Geraldine mine had already recruited labourers before the Lynton Convict Hiring Depot opened and did not use the hiring station as frequently as was initially thought by the depot’s organisers. A report tabled for Parliament in 1857 stated that the depot had “altogether…failed in the object for which it was originally established, and is a source of considerable and useless expense.” After the Lynton Convict Hiring Depot closed, the remaining ticket-of-leave men were transferred to Champion Bay or sent to work on the

135 Wannerooka road party. The pensioner guards remained at the Lynton Convict Hiring Depot, and although the Colonial Secretary expressed regret at the harsh conditions they were enduring, it was not until January 1858 that the guards and their families were transferred into allotments at Greenough Flats, sailing from Port Gregory to Champion Bay on the Les Trois Amis. Captain Sanford stayed on at Lynton and established a pastoral station, called Lynton Station. He utilised the depot granary and store for station buildings. The other depot buildings appear not to have been used after this period although Sanford’s House remained in use as a residence until the 1940s. Lynton Convict Hiring Depot was entered into the Register of the National Estate by the Australian Heritage Commission in March 1984 and classified by the National Trust of Australia (WA) in March 1985. The Lynton Convict Hiring Depot comprised no fewer than seven buildings, including quarters, lock-up, depot, commissariat and other utilitarian buildings. Though the buildings of the Lynton Convict Hiring Depot are in ruins, enough of the structures remain to determine their original use and the layout of the Lynton Convict Hiring Depot can be determined from a drawing by Captain Wray in 1855. Parallel with the original road were the quarters to the west and commissariat buildings to the east. Behind these to the north was a well and behind this well the main depot building. Further north, and in line with the commissariat building, were the bakehouse and blacksmith’s buildings. Directly behind the depot building was the lock-up and, adjacent, the lock-up yard.

136 Next to the lock-up, and also behind the commissariat building, was the hospital. In 1854, the quarters and commissariat building and two pensioner cottages were built. The main depot buildings and roofing were completed in 1855 and the rest of the buildings were constructed in 1856. The Lynton Convict Hiring Depot was built by ticket-of-leave men. The buildings were constructed from local limestone and the mortar made from limestone fired in a kiln. Structural evidence shows that some of the buildings had timber gables but the high cost of transporting timbers, in conjunction with other archaeological evidence, suggests that it is more likely that some buildings had skillion roofs. The original roofing was thatching but was replaced by the salvaged shingles. The quarters comprised two single rooms. One room was for the officer in charge and the other room was for a noncommissioned officer. This building has collapsed with only remnants of the walls remaining. The commissariat building was built in stages over almost two years. Though construction of the commissariat building commenced in 1854, it was not until 1855 that it was finally thatched. The building had four rooms and was used as a commissariat store, commissariat office, depot office and as a depot store. The building where the ticket-of-leave men slept was one of the last built and the men had to sleep in tents for the first two years of the depot’s existence. The depot building was used by ticket-of-leave men as sleeping quarters until they were hired out or employed in the area.

137 There is no date of construction of the bakehouse but it was probably built after December 1854 as the need for a bakehouse was mentioned in a parliamentary report bearing this date. The central feature of this building was the oven, with the cookhouse and bakehouse to either side of this. According to a letter to the Colonial Secretary, the hospital was nearly completed by May 1855. Before this date, the hospital was housed in tents. There were no perimeter fences surrounding the depot. The idea of the depots was to house ticket-of-leave men, rather than imprison them, therefore walls or perimeter fencing were not deemed necessary; although, the geographic isolation of the Lynton Convict Hiring Depot acted as a natural barrier to deter possible escape. Fences and walls enforced the social and legal demarcation of space between the ticket-of- leave men and the guards within parts of the depot. There were waist height fences at the front of the quarters and commissariat buildings, while the rear walls of the other buildings at the depot were nearly the full height of the buildings. The lock-up, as a facility for punishing offenders, did have high walls and a high walled exercise yard but it was one of the last buildings to be completed, and before the lock-up was built, prisoners were housed in a timber prison of unknown dimensions. In March 1855, it was reported that, “the cells are now ready for roofing in, and are a good piece of mason work.” The number of cells in the lock-up is uncertain as the lock-up building has deteriorated over the years.

138 Photographs taken of the site in the early 1980s, show the number of cells to be at least five. Sanford’s House was constructed away from the main buildings of the depot. It was a substantial limestone home with a single storey at the front and a double storey at the rear, with a surrounding timber veranda under a broken back roof and interesting crenellation details to the roof line at the sides. The rear of the property overlooked the sea, and the rear of the house had french doors which opened onto a timber veranda from which the view could be enjoyed. It is reported that a watch was kept from this verandah for whales. After the departure of the pensioner guards in 1858, Lynton Convict Hiring Depot does not appear to have been used except to provide outbuildings for Lynton Station. Photographs of the buildings taken at intermittent intervals from the 1930s, reveal the gradual decay of the buildings. In the 1930s, the buildings were largely intact but many were already missing roofs and timbers. In the 1940s, photographs reveal that the smaller buildings, such as the depot closet, had greatly deteriorated and other buildings were visibly damaged. The area including the Lynton Convict Hiring Depot and Sanford’s House was bought by Mr and Mrs Simkin in 1963. The Simkins recorded the deterioration of the buildings and took interim preventative measures to protect the buildings.

139 CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Observations - 2 The search for answers about survivors was both intriguing and tantalising. This must have struck young Phillip Playford as well when he cast his eye around the natives that he knew. Even so, it projects a peaceful ambience where Aboriginals and ‘white people’ of the same family live in harmony. Although Thomas Amos Drage fathered a child with Polly Glass, his father Thomas Drage an Englishman from Northampton in the Uk, urged his son to marry a “white woman”. The Drage family therefore consist of both origins. Probably unique in all of Australia. With the arrival of the Brits in around 1853 events of a historical nature were recorded providing a perspective of the area. The lack, or non existence, of written records before the arrival of the British in the various locations hampered an outcome tantamount to positive proof. With Vergulde Draeck more so than the Zuytdorp. With the latter there was, at least, a period from 1712, when the Zuytdorp wrecked, to after 1950 when convicts arrived in the Murchison. There was no shortage of observations by explorers and white settlers:

140 Upper Irwin River White tribe 1861 “From Champion Bay (Geraldton) we hear that a tribe of natives have made their appearance at the easternmost sheep stations upon the north branch of tbe Upper Irwin, who differ essentially from the aborigines previously known, in being fairer complexioned, with light colored hair flowing down upon their shoulders, fine robust figures and handsome features; their arms are spears ten feet in length, with three barbs cut out of the solid wood, long meros with which they throw the spear underhanded. A gentleman, who some months since explored the country to a distance of 100 miles north-east of the Irwin, informs us that he found these natives residing there, they were very friendly and gave, through a native interpreter serviceable information as to the country in their neighbourhood.” From Perth Gazette Friday 8 August 1861 A.C. Gregory Address to Queensland Branch of the Royal Geographical Society in 1855 On his exploration of Murchison River area he reported that: “In 1848 I explored the country where the Dutchmen had landed, and found a tribe whose characters differed considerably from the average Australian. Their colour was neither black nor copper, but that peculiar colour which prevails with a mixture of European blood: their stature was good, with strong limbs, and remarkably heavy and solid around the lower jaw.”

141 (R. Gerritsen: "and their ghosts may be heard" pg: 107.)

White tribe 40-50 miles East of Perth? ANOTHER version of the story of the wreck to the northward has just been communicated to us by Mr.F. Armstrong; the substance of the information is as follows : "I have this week, for the first time, been able to make inquiries of the Upper Swan Natives respecting the supposed wreck, my information is small but, perhaps, sufficient to throw some further light upon the subject. The natives tell me that about two and a half day's walk from here, say about fifty miles, or, perhaps, not more than forty, are several white people living : they have not been there very long ; some of the natives whom I well know, belonging to the second Northern tribe, have been to them. The white people, they say, go out catching kangaroos; they are on friendly terms with the natives, and have given them food, as well as white "money." They don't know what they have come for neither do they say that they have either women or children. I described to them that a vessel had been sent in that direction ; but they said, on my pointing out the distance to which she was ordered to extend her search, that it was too far, and that they would miss the white people, as they were settled rather inland." Perth Gazette July 26, 1834.

142 All of this points to some Europeans mixing with the natives inland from the Mid-west coast of Australia prior to British settlement there in the 1850’s. This had not gone unnoticed because many of the local white people said that it was really a “foregone conclusion” Not so, however was this shared by historians et al.

“One of the most tantalising issues to have come before this Select Committee concerns the possibility that there were survivors from the Zuytdorp wreck. While most official texts are silent on this matter, there has been a growing body of evidence to suggest that at least some survivors may have intermarried with the local Aboriginal community between present-day Kalbarri and Shark Bay. While this evidence is by no means conclusive, it does suggest that there is far more substance to these speculations than previously thought.” The Pendal Report of 1992

The Native Title issue provided some clues that could throw some light on an otherwise shrouded native history. An initiative was taken by the Yamitji Land and Sea Council in Geraldton to have a ‘Connection Report’ produced regarding the land and the Nhunda people, that was to be presented to the West Australian Government, in support of a Native Title Claim.

143 This implied that there were records of Nhunda Aborigines and their ancestry. It became clear from YMAC that there was a matriarch of the family, Alice Withers, who became the source of two prominent families in the District - the Drage and the Mallard Family.. .The photograph of Alice Withers, shown earlier, shows her having European features and it suggests that she was of mixed blood with a European dominance. Her environment in the photo reminds of the classic stance and accoutrements that show in similar photos taken in Europe in the nineteenth century

Frank Mallard, a 3rd generation descendant from Alice Withers had developed a comprehensive family tree which showed that Alice had been married at first to a McMurray with whom she had a boy called Horace and two girls Dorothy and Adia. Her second relationship was with Charles Mallard Jnr. with whom she had eleven progeny, George, Fred, Gordon, Joe, Herb, Jack, Lurlie, Marion, Louie, Thelma and Emma.

144 (Marion had red hair and a white skin according to her son Len Ogilvie.) Charles Jnr. was the son of Charles Mallard Snr, an English convict from Northampton in the UK. and an Aboriginal woman, Sarah Feast. McMurray was a Captain of Mines in charge of the “Uga Mine” at Northampton and a white man. Alice Withers is shown here as being born in 1875

! In spite of having an English father, the boy Charles Jnr. was classed as a quarter mixed blood. Sarah Feast, his mother was known to be of mixed blood. It has been suggested that Charlie Jnr. was adopted by Charles and Sarah who was already breast feeding her own child at the time. It was said that the father of the child was a school teacher and the mother a young girl. The outcome

145 suggests that this girl was of mixed blood - Eur/Aboriginal for Charlie to be a quarter mixed blood. Had Sarah Feast or the said young girl been a full-blood, Charlie would be half-blood instead of quarter mixed blood. Sarah was in her eighties when she died on 5 February 1935 thus having been born about 1855. Woothia (also Witheria) Alice had a mother named Woothia, who was born about 1847. She died on 31 December 1917, (see stub of Register of Death dated thus) Her great great grandaughter, Ada Fossa stated that Woothia lived to a ‘ripe old age’. When age 80 was suggested, she told that it was more likely in her nineties. Whether 80 or 90 she was born well before the whites arrived in the Murchison district. Was she a descendant of the Zuytdorp people? Medical expert, Dr. Pieter Bol and a retired Professor of Medicine in The Netherlands, commented on the photo and stated that not only she had European features but that there was evidence of Porphyria Variegata in both her and the

146 child she had in her lap, based, in part, on the mottled skin on both of them. She was a large woman and it was uncommon for the skin under her clothes to be white - for an Aboriginal. Her daughter Alice was the matriarch of the Mallard and Drage families. Judging from the photo, she was likely of mixed blood over two generations. (The old quarter cast) Both the Drage and Mallard paternal lineages originate in the UK. Woothia’s parentage was not known other than that she was considered of mixed blood. Alice’s father was not known. If it is thought that Woothia was a full-blood Aboriginal then why was her daughter Alice so prominently European in appearance? Alice’s union with Charles Mallard Jnr. would accentuate the European ancestry of their offspring. Her great-great-granddaughter Ada Fossa, who is now 80, told that Woothia lived to a “ripe old age” well into her eighties. If we allow 80 as the benchmark then her year of birth would be 1837 - or 13 years before the convict labour came to the Murchison area. More than 80 would mean going back into the 1712 - 1850 period. Woothia’s age at 80 would mean that she was 28 when Alice who was born in 1875.

147 Could this indicate that her ancestry included a crew member of the Zuytdorp? The ‘European influence’ mentioned before would be from the Zuytdorp, which six generations beforehand, had landed a large number of survivors, possibly 100, after its shipwreck incident. To a certain extent their steps can be traced. Not long after their arrival and setting up some camp, with the canvas from the sails and timber from the ship, small parties would have gone out to become more familiar with their new surroundings. There was no river to follow near the wreck site so at first they would have likely followed the coast to the south and north. They were not unfamiliar with this coast for Dutch ships had sailed past it for a 100 years. They would have seen maps at some stage and no doubt heard about Dirk Hartog’s exploits, and Shark Bay being only some 60km to the north may have been their destination sooner or later. It would have presented something that was familiar in this foreign landscape. Wale Well, a permanent soak was the meeting place of some of the Aboriginals because water was at a premium - particularly in the summer months. It is also quite possible that the natives observed the fires that were lit to signal their presence to passing ships. What is of significance was the finding in 1990 of a tobacco tin lid at Wale Well.

148 That may have been the first meeting point between the survivors and the Aborigines. Many of Alice’s descendants were born in Shark Bay as well as Northampton in the Murchison. Unfortunately with the arrival of the British, native ‘Dream Time’ became lost, as it was regarded as ‘anecdotal’ and not time related. There were other factors such as moving mixed blood children to a place called Mogumber where they were assimilated with ‘white ways’ and the plan to be trained as domestic servants. For example, Sarah Feast, was reported as refusing to leave the Northampton District and go to Moore River Native Settlement called Mogumber. She said she was a Native of the Northampton District and would not go away. Note: Only girls and boys of mixed blood were sent to Mogumber for this training. Nevertheless, their family ties remained strong over time and these days mostly women are quite attached to family members, dead or alive, as well as being spread over most of the State.

149 A first question that often comes up is, “What’s your mother’s name?” That starts a conversation that is sometimes difficult to follow for names are often pre-fixed by either ‘Aunty’ or ‘Uncle’. Many of the older Nhunda people have heard some stories about a link with the Zuytdorp. The younger generation know very little or nothing about it. Until 1954 no one knew where the wrecked ship had come from and before that, in their small world, the name of the ship was meaningless. A Shark Bay related report Friday, July 11 [1834] – To-day I find that a great sensation has been created in the colony by rumours which have come to us through the natives, of a vessel that was wrecked nearly six months ago (30 days journey, as they described it) to the North of this, - which is conjectured to be about Sharks Bay. Further enquiries have been made from the natives; they said that “wayl-men” – men from a distance to the North – have told them of it, and that there are men and women and children still alive, inhabiting two larger and smaller tents made of poles and canvas; that the ship is quite destroyed by the sea; and that a large quantity of money, like dollars, is lying on the shore. George Fletcher Moore’s Diary Page 225 Although the report was not precise, in 30 days they could have covered the distance of about 511km at 16 - 17km a day.)

150 (Autor’s Note: This report is interesting because it suggests that there were females on board the Zuytdorp. It was common practice that wives or brides to be would join their partners in the Indies. Their survival during the first part of the journey was enhanced because they were with the officers ‘aft of the mast’ and had better food and drink.

151 CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

DNA Results (Interim) This is a summary of the DNA results to date. Needless to say that it left a lot to be desired but not any blame rest with the Professor. There is a lot talk about DNA and all of this is impressive but not altogether correct. It is one thing to find a close match, in a criminal investigation, between an offender and the victim, quite another when it comes the passage of 300 years differentiating between individuals from different countries in Europe and the British settlers and convicts who came to the Murchison district from the 1850’s onwards.

March 2010 report. “The first results arrived from Peter de Knijff as follows: “As mentioned earlier of the 35 males (“Y” Chromosome) tested, three were pure Aboriginal and the remainder had European Ancestry, with a small number coming from the Mediterranean* region.”

29 November 2013 report. “Upon increasing the number of y loci from 15 to 23, all fully matching profiles disappeared. although this may seem bad news, is actually is not that bad. We expect one or two differences to appear because the relation is at least 20

152 generations or more. the few mismatches are exclusively in very fast mutating Y markers, as I expected. So, there is still a very good chance that a few Y lineages will be so close that a direct relation can not be excluded. A colleague told me that the full 38 markers will be ready around new year, or even a bit before. In short, what you could tell the elders is: Upon a first increase of Y markers from 15 to 23, some of the fully matching profiles are still very hopeful. the others have more differences than one could expect if these were related however, the full answer will only be possible once we have the 38 marker profiles which we expect in the period between Christmas and New Year.”

6 December 2013 report. “I will prepare the final version next monday. Have you already thought about the steps we have to take in case there still remains a (near) full match strongly supporting a male link. On the one hand that would be very nice and exciting, but also create, I fear, a lot of publicity which we need to control simultaneously on both ends of the world. When I have the Belgian results, supported by the best statistics available, and we have a (near) match, this means a match between a known aboriginal and an unknown (my samples are anonymous) dutch male.

153 many will wonder who these two persons are, and to me it would make sense that the Nhunda male would like to learn more of his possible Dutch ancestors.

Once data are published in a scientific journal, the full Y- string profiles will be in the public domain. This will enable everyone to look for matches, and I am convinced that sooner or later these matches or very near matches will be discovered. This will certainly lead to requests to you and me to reveal the identity of the Nnunda male. Perhaps you could think about this the coming period in anticipation of the full results, without making to much noise among the Nhunda and there elders yet.” yours Peter de Knijff

With the data that Peter de Knijff made available, the best way to reach some understanding, of an otherwise abstract subject, a diagram with a real person could give some clarity. The following diagram was the result of the “Y” (male) chromosome and the mtDNA (female) chromosome. The “Y” chromosome and the DNA it contains is passed on from father to son ad infinitum and the Mitochondria DNA is passed on from the mother to her sons and daughters, but only her daughters will pass it on to their children.

Thomas Drage who married Jane Bandy came from the UK in the 1850’s but not a great deal is known about them. 154 Their great grandson Clayton Drage’s bloodline provides and illustration:

The blue line depicts the paternal (Y-chromosome) lineage and the red line the maternal (mtDNA) lineage. These lineages can also be interpreted as the unbroken paternal, or maternal blood lines. We need to bear in mind that Alice Withers was the daughter of Woothia who was of mixed blood. As she was born in 1837, 13 years before the Brits arrived it is highly likely that one of her parents was of mixed blood originating from the Zuytdorp survivors. 155 It has been muted that she could be a ‘throw-back’ but either way still points at the Zuytdorp being the source.

156 CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

The Nhunda Ancestors. ALICE WITHERS Alice was born about 1875 in Northampton and died there on 9 January 1941 at age 66. She was the daughter of Woothia, an Aboriginal woman who died on 31 December 1917 “at a ripe old age”. Woothia is depicted in a photograph that shows that she had European features and white skin on her unexposed body. She was also thought to have the Porphyria Variegata that shows as mottled skin on her and the baby. Alice’s appearance suggest that she may be quarter-caste as well. If Woothia died at age 70+, her birth year would be 1840 or three years before the Murchision was opened up in 1850 It was not until 1853 that the convicts arrived to work in the Murchison lead mine. In all probability when the white convicts arrived there would have been a presence of natives with European features as well as the more traditional Aboriginals. A common adage “Kind seeks kind” may well find a truth in Alice and Charles Jnr. getting married and between them reared 11 children.

157 CHARLES MALLARD JNR Charles Mallard Jnr. born in 1881 was the son of Sarah Feast, an Aboriginal woman and Charles Mallard, an English male convict who arrived in the Murchison on 6 November 1857. Charles Jnr. was of a quarter Aboriginal mixed blood. His father was English and his mother, Sarah Feast would be of mixed blood. She died in 1935. If she married in 1880 and giving birth to Charles Jnr in 1881, say at age 23, she would have been born about 1857. For Sarah to be a half-caste, her mother would have had European blood. Is it possible that this European heritage is a link with the Zuytdorp - perhaps a ‘throw back’?

Alice is not the only matriarch for there were others.

MYAWADDIE Myawaddie was born quite close to 1850 and is listed on the marriage certificate of her daughter Fanny Nolyinna, born about 1872 in Murchison.

158 !

Somewhat similar to Jinnie (see hereafter), she was born close to 1850 and thought to be of mixed blood.

Aida, Alice’s third daughter by McMurray married Ernest Drage on 30 June 1917 (at age 19), the son of Thomas Amos Drage and Polly Glass. From l-r Mary Morgan, Ernest Drage and Adia Drage. Comment has been made that Aida’s face has European features, such as the straight nose. This is no wonder for both her mother was of mixed blood and her father a white man. (both were quadroons) Mary Morgan the other lady in the photo is thought to have the Ellis-van Creveld Syndrome.

159 KING PETER Peter, also known as King Pieter, born about 1872 in Shark Bay, d. 3.10.1933 in Shark Bay, and buried in Shark Bay. Peter was an Aboriginal man of a solid build with red/golden hair and a red beard. Reputed to be of Dutch descent.

MITHIE Mithie, d. 26.8.1940 in Shark Bay. She was said to be King Peter’s, full blood Aboriginal sister. Was he perhaps a throwback?

JINNIE Jinnie. From Northampton WA. She married Louis McQuade. Her daughter Mary Anne McQuay, b. about 1868 in Lynton Station Northampton, d. 21 Nov 1952 in Geraldton, If Jinnie was 18 when she had her daughter, she was very close to 1850, the period between 1712 (Zuytdorp wrecking) and 1853 when the land was opened to convict labour.

160 ! Does it not appear from the foregoing that there was a link to the period between 1712 and 1850, either in terms of descendants of the Europeans or ‘throw back’? It may be seen from Charles Mallard Jnr., Alice Withers and King Peter that the European genes may have thrown back into the period after 1850, that remains a possibility after only 5.5 generations. What is important is the question of the source of the European blood prior to the arrival of the Brits after 1850. Although the presence of the convicts muddied the water from a DNA point of view, it still showed a presence other than that of the convicts. In the Drage and Mallard family groups the skin colour varies from dark to a tan colour with blue eyes in many individuals. Len Ogilvie, still alive today, born in 1928, has not only Alice as his ancestor but also Venus to whom his grandfather, Andrew James Ogilvie was married. Andrew was the manager at Tamala Station. His Y-DNA haplogroup is Western Eurasia in origin. Len served in Korea in the fifties where he was wounded and returned to Australia.

161 Whereas it may be argued that the Drage family had a head start with the white heritage because of both Thomas Drage and Jane Bandy, the Mallards with only one partriarch - Charles Mallard, whose partner was Sarah Feast who was of mixed blood represent a strong ‘white’ influence in their features.

HELEN NUTTER (quoted in 2013) Appendix “A” Nobody needs to convince Helen Nutter (nee Mallard) that she has Netherland ancestors. “I was born a blonde; so are my sister and brother. My great- great grandmother was of Netherlands blood, so I myself am also a bit Hollander.” For a while Nutter was in Amsterdam to prepare an exhibition of Aboriginal art at the Zwanenburgwal. She belongs to the Nhunda tribe which has resided for centuries along the west coast of Australia where in centuries past a large number of ships from the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie were wrecked. The Nhunda consider it a fact that survivors from these Netherlands’ ships procreated offspring with the local people.

162 FRANK MALLARD He pointed at Alice Withers as being proof that there were Aboriginal women with European features who married British convicts after 1853. He said that he had always known that they had ‘Dutch blood’.

Historians will regard all of this evidence as anecdotal and circumstantial, as they have done in the past.

“With the ship wreck survivors, it is important to remember, they did not develop a Dutch enclave but became part of the Nhunda community. Today when we talk with these people they recognise themselves firstly as Aboriginal and secondly as having Dutch heritage.”

Can the reader come to another conclusion?

163 CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

It does not end here. This book has primarily dealt with two ships, the Vergulde Draeck and Zuytdorp of which the latter provided the most data. However, at the end of the first quarter of the 18th century, three other ships went missing, sailing the Brouwer Route and disappearing without a trace. They were the Aagtekerke, Fortuyn and Ridderschap van Holland. The author Hugh Edwards who dived on various wreck sites for many decades appears to have some evidence that Aagtekerke also wrecked on the Abrolhos. The Fortuyn, it has been reported, may have wrecked at the Cocos Islands.

The Aagtekerke was built in 1724 by the VOC Chamber of Zeeland on their wharf in Middelburg and was named after the village of Aagtekerke. She was 145 feet (441m) long and had a load capacity of 850 tons. It had crew of 200 men and 36 guns. On 27 May 1725, the ship sailed out with Jan Witboon as her skipper. The ship first sailed to Cape Town where she arrived on 3 January 1726, possibly to load ivory. On 27 January 1726, the ship left for Batavia, but was lost without trace.

164 She carried silver coins and precious metals with a total value of 200,000 guilders. There is some evidence from the crew of the wrecked ship Zeewijck that Aagtekerke may have been wrecked on the Abrolhos, because some remains were found of a Dutch vessel that had been wrecked earlier.

The Fortuyn was a ship owned by the VOC Chamber of Amsterdam which was lost on its maiden voyage in 1723. It sailed for Batavia, via Cape of Good Hope, on 27 September 1723. The ship reached the Cape on 2 January 1723, and continued on its voyage on 18 January. The Fortuyn was never seen again and its fate remains a challenge.

Ridderschap van Holland (Knighthood of Holland) was a large ship, the largest class of merchantmen built by the VOC) to trade with the Spice Islands. On 11 July 1693, the Ridderschap van Holland departed Wielingen on a voyage to Batavia under Captain Dirk de Lange. She arrived at the Cape of Good Hope on 9 January 1694, remaining there until 5 February. She sailed from the Cape with a crew of around 300, and two passengers, including admiral Sir James Couper. She never reached her destination, and was never heard from again.

165 She is now thought to have been shipwrecked off the coast of Western Australia.

The Ridderschap van Holland has left no trace. Or has it?

At Wonnerup, near Busselton, a large wreck was found that was never properly identified. According to the explorer F.T. Gregory it was a large “Indiaman” which almost immediately focussed the eye on a Dutch East India Trader. While it was en route to Batavia it may have sailed too close to the West Australian coast and ended up in the shallows of Dead Water. The Busselton Historical Society Newsletter of December 1979 describes it as follows:

DEADWATER WRECK “The Deadwater Wreck lies about 800 metres up the Deadwater from the road bridge at Lockeville House, Wonnerup about 250 km south of Perth. Centuries ago the Deadwater was an arm of a swiftly flowing river which ran through the coastal area known as the Vasse District. but sand gradually built up leaving the Deadwater very much as it is today, a mosquito infested lagoon of murky stagnant water. However, somewhere beneath the black mud and sand, lies the rotting timbers of an old wreck.

166 It was first discovered in 1834 when the original pioneer families settled in the area so it seems strange that none of the early explorers such as Baudin, Roe, Stirling and Bunbury who had explored the area earlier made any mention of it. Many of the early settlers boarded it and fished from its deck, but unfortunately none of them was sufficiently interested to make a sketch of it or write down anything about its construction. The timbers were very rotten and it had settled deeply in the mud. Mr. George Layman was one of those who fished regularly from its deck when he was a boy. He said that when he and the boys jumped and played about on its deck it moved which seemed to indicate that it was not buried very deeply. In 1845, Mr. Clifton, the Official Receiver of Wrecks for the Colony said that it was evidently an ancient wreck and judging from mast rings and a grappling iron found nearby must have been a ship of some considerable size. Some years later the explorer F. T. Gregory came across the ship and judged it to have been wrecked for more than 200 years. As the years went by the wreck sank deeper and deeper into the mud until only two or three feet were left visible. In 1876 Mr. J. G. Bussell found two old coins near the wreck which might have given a clue as to the country of the ship's origin, but he refused to show them to anyone. Shortly afterwards about 70 lbs of quicksilver or mercury was found nearby which suggests that whatever her nationality she must have been engaged in Eastern trade. Large quantities of

167 mercury were used in the East and it was a commodity much sought after. By 1914 the wreck had disappeared, completely swallowed up by the Deadwater mud. Many stories of dark deeds, murder and piracy surround the wreck which make it a fascinating mystery. One such story dates back to the 1830s and concerns the massacre of the local Aborigines. They were wiped out by the early settlers who found the wreck. No record of this has been found and there seems to be no reason for it as the Aborigines were not a warlike people. The story was told that they had many golden ornaments which they must have collected from the wreck and it was for these that they were killed. Others said it was because they knew too much about the wreck that they were killed. Neither story can now be proved.” The story of the gold and golden ornaments is unusual in that Aboriginals did not put value on gold. That opens the possibility that if these natives were descendants of the ship’ survivors the ornaments could have been of sentimental value. Another factor may be the quicksilver, or mercury, which the Dutch transported in ‘beardman jugs’ It was not stated what it was carried in. Was this a deliberate omission? Whilst researching historical events, there tend to be many unexplained points that arouse one’s curiosity when something that links emerges.

168 The tribe that was massacred was called “White Cockatoo Tribe” and in the story about the aberration encountered by Lt. Nixon in the White Tribe story, he mentioned a ‘white cockatoo feather’ worn on a hat. Almost a Freudian slip, what?

Ethel Hassell in her book “My dusky friends : Aboriginal life, customs and legends and glimpses of station life at Jarramungup in the 1880s” encounters an unusual event with the Ellis-van Creveld syndrome.

“... the remarkable story of the capture of the (three) pardooks on the West Australian frontier... between 1878 and 1886... a mounted party... caught some very strange people... who lived in the heart of the desert... seldom if ever seen... (he was) less than five feet tall, and had a low forehead, small eyes, flat nose, with very wide nostrils, so short an upper lip that it only seemed a small bridge below the nostril, but a large, heavy lower jaw, rather broad shoulders, but his body fell away at the hips and his legs were nearly spindles. His arms were long and he was hairy... had five perfectly formed fingers plus a thumb on each hand. There were also six toes on each foot: five very short toes and a long big toe which seemed to spread well away from the others. The (two) women were just the same.” Ethel Hassell -“My Dusky Friends” Page 150 - near Esperance, WA

Ellis-van Creveld syndrome is an inherited genetic disorder of bone growth. People with this condition have particularly short forearms and lower legs and a narrow chest with short ribs. The 169 syndrome is also characterized by the presence of extra fingers and toes, unusually formed nails, teeth, and heart defects. In most parts of the world, Ellis-van Creveld syndrome occurs in 1 in 60,000 to 2 0 0 , 0 0 0 n e w b o r n s . T h e condition is much more common in the Amish population of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and in the indigenous population of Western Australia. The Amish movement descends from a religious fellowship set up in 16th century Europe called the Mennonites.. It is possible descendants of the movement were amongst the survivors of Dutch shipwrecks in Western Australia.

Ellis-van Creveld syndrome in Australia - Frazer Range EXTRACTS FROM: Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, VOL XVI Edited by: Professor Ralph Tate 1892-1896 Page 344 “A remarkable lusus naturae was observed amongst the women of the Frazer Range, one of whom had six perfect fingers on each hand and the same number of toes on each foot. Not only were these limbs perfectly formed, but the corresponding metacarpal and metatarsal bones were also perfect. Two of her

170 brothers and a sister had, I was told, exactly the same deformity.”

Page 306 - 30 October 1891 (At the Damsinkers’ Camp near the Fraser Range) “Here I also saw a woman with six perfect fingers on each hand and the same number of toes on her feet. Not only are the fingers perfectly formed but there the corresponding number of metacarpal bones in the hand. I learnt that she had several brothers and other relations with the same remarkable development, but none of them were at the camp during my visit.”

In isolated communities such as Aboriginal tribes or the old order Amish, a hereditary disease or genetic disorder can reach a frequency that is well above the general average. In such cases as Ellis-van Creveld, the genetic disorder can be considered to come from a founder if the mutation in the gene is the same for all individuals with the disorder and a frequency well above average. This is what has been established for the Amish where the frequency is approximately one per 200 births, which is much higher that the global avarage of 60,000 (up to 200,000) The frequency of E-vC among Aborigines is not well established, although it seems to be above average. A founder effect has not yet been indicated.

171 If in a particular case a founder effect can be established with possibly European origins, this would then open the possibility of a Dutch ship wreck connection. Until then, one can only speculate in that direction. So far no research into the aspects of E-vC have been undertaken in Western Australia or Australia at large.

The reason given is lack of funding for this type of research. It is in fact the vicious circle in that research funding is not available without evidence whilst evidence can only be arrived at with research. Circumstantial evidence is not recognised as sufficient proof. Furthermore, some historians may not have the wider knowledge to be able to arrive at a wider picture. Australia, and in particular Western Australia, has a host of stories that would challenge the historians about the role the Hollanders have played in its pre-history, principally in the coastal regions. The Aboriginal people on the whole are receptive to finding out more about their history. On the southern coast, there are natives with red hair who hold the belief that they may have Dutch blood. It takes interest and dedication to lift the shroud of their past.

172 EPILOGUE It was in the year 1780, (154 years after Dirk Hartog landed on the island at Shark Bay) that James Cook landed on the East coast of Terra Australis and declared that part as New Wales for the English Crown. He may not have been very impressed with the countryside and neither were the English government at the time. It was after all a long way, on the other side of the globe. The English already had a colony on the East coast of America, where they had followed the Dutch, and conquered for themselves, a mere 5,500 kilometres away instead of 20,000 km This colony, amongst other purposes, was used to rid Britain of the criminal element. These convicts, many of them accused of petty crimes like stealing a loaf of bread, were thus transported across the Atlantic. Meanwhile, as the colony grew the influx of no-hopers began to have a negative effect and leaders like George Washington, Patrick Henry, Sam Adams and John Hancock attended the First Continental Congress that met in Philadelphia on 5 to 26 October 1774 with 56 delegates, representing every colony, except Georgia. This ultimately resulted in the Declaration of Independence which meant a new independent nation, free from British Rule, and the ability to reject those undesirables that Britain was so keen to dump somewhere.

173 Convicts were originally transported to North America, but after the American Revolutionary War ended in 1783, the newly formed United States refused to accept further convicts. On 6 December 1785, Orders in Council were issued in London for the establishment of a penal colony in New South Wales, on land claimed for Britain by explorer James Cook in his first voyage to the Pacific in 1770. So in 1788 the fleet of ‘convicts’ arrived at Sydney Cove.

Conversely, on 26 October 1616 Captain Dirk Hartog had set foot on what is now known as Dirk Hartog Island, just North of Shark Bay in Western Australia. It was the second recorded landing of a European on Australian soil. The first was Willem Janszoon in the VOC yacht Duyfken in 1606. Hartogh's ship was the Eendracht, a 1,200 tonne vessel with 26 - 30 guns and a crew of 200, and it was on the way to the East Indies (now called Indonesia) from the Netherlands. He recorded his position, now called "Cape Inscription", and left a pewter plate nailed to a post standing upright in a rock cleft on top of the cliff, inscribed with the details of the date, ship and crew. That plate, now held in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, is the oldest known written record of a European landing in Australia - Australia’s first known piece of writing. The plate was to be found 81 years later by another Dutch mariner, Willem de Vlamingh.

174 Hartog had hit upon WA’s coast because his Company - theDutch East India Company - had ordered all their ships to adopt a new and faster route to the Spice Islands in the East Indies. A Captain Brouwer pioneered the route in 1610. The ships were to sail in an easterly direction from the Cape of Good Hope for “1000 mijlen” (over 7,000 kms) - using the “Roaring Forties” - and then turn north, skirting the “Southland” on their way to the East Indies. This route shortened the journey from Europe by 3 months. Hartog sailed north up the coast charting the shore line to North West Cape thereby starting the process of "unveiling" the mysterious coast of a new land. He called that part of the Southland's coast "t'Landt van d'Eendracht" or "Eendracht's Land". Dirk Hartog's discovery had a major effect on world mapping and soon afterwards "t'Landt van Eendracht" started to appear on world maps, replacing the names for the mythical southern continent from Terra Australis, to Nova Hollandia or New Holland and South Land. During the rest of the 17th century most of the west, south, and north coasts of Australia was mapped by Dutch navigators, thereby gradually unveiling the Western Australian coastline to the world's cartographers. Dirk Hartog's plate was recovered by Willem de Vlamingh in 1697 during his voyage of discovery along the coast of Western Australia between the Swan River and North West Cape. De Vlamingh in turn left a pewter plate inscribed with a copy of Dirk Hartog's inscription, together with a record of his own visit, and nailed it to a post of

175 cypress pine that he had collected at Rottnest Island. The post was placed in the same rock cleft on top of the cliff. 25 October 2016 is the 400th Anniversary of Hartogh’s visit. This puts an accent on the history of Western Australia - where also in 1629, the first two Europeans, Wouter Loos and Jan Pelgrom de Bye, were marooned north of Geraldton. Whether or not they interacted with the local Aboriginals is very difficult to pinpoint but in view of what transpired in the Murchison, there is a good chance that later Dutch shipwreck survivors, marooned on the West Australian coast, did. This book deals with the history of the State, including the Aboriginal people who, after the Swan River Colony was established in 1829, aided many of the white settlers. The experiences of Rosando Salvado and William de Burgh provide evidence of such help, as no doubt was experienced by survivors of ship wrecks prior to the arrival of the Brits. I believe that an hostility on the part of the natives must have been provoked because in the past 16 years I have received nothing but kindness, assistance and empathy. West Australians should celebrate this unique history of Western Australia, adjacent to the discovery by Captain James Cook. There is no doubt in my mind that there are people in The Netherlands who are related to a Nhunda person as a result of the VOC shipwrecks on the West Australian

176 coast. In any event Western Australia has a Dutch heritage prior to the establishment of the Swan River Colony in 1629. Perhaps it may one day become one history of both the Dutch and the Australians. Perth, Western Australia November 2015

177 Appendix I

A translation from an original article written 2 April 2013 by Henk Schutten for The Netherlands Newspaper Het Parool. Nobody needs to convince Helen Nutter that she has Netherland ancestors. “I was born a blond; so are my sister and brother. My great- great grandmother was of Netherland blood, so I myself am also a bit Hollander.” For a while Nutter is in Amsterdam to prepare an exhibition of Aboriginal art at the Zwanenburgwal. She belongs to the Nhunda tribe which has resided for centuries along the west coast of Australia where in centuries past a large number of ships from the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie2 were wrecked. The Nhunda consider it a fact that survivors from these Netherland ships procreated offspring with the local people but so far they could not prove it. “We only know the stories from the oral tradition”, explains Nutter: “I can only rely on the stories of my grandfather who died thirty years ago. He told us about the Whites who lived in our territory before the Brits arrived. I am from a large family and when we sat together we talked about that.” Every year on January 26, Australia Day, Australians commemorate that in 1788 eleven British ships with 1500 people on board – half of them convicts – moored at present

178 day Sydney and took possession of the continent on behalf of the British Crown. But a large number of Netherlanders had much earlier already set foot on Australian soil. The ship which in 1606 put Australia on the map for the first time was the Duyfken. In the years thereafter tens of other VOC ships would follow. Many crew members did not return. “Many VOC ships foundered off the Australian coast”, says Tom Vanderveldt, president of the VOC Historical Society. Vanderveldt, the son of Netherlanders who migrated to Australia in the first half of the last century, was around the turn of the century involved with the Duyfken replica building and became more and more interested in the fate of those on board the VOC ships. It is factual that two Netherlanders, Jan Pelgrom de Bye and Wouter Loos were among the first Westerners to have set foot on Australian soil. They belonged to the mutineers from the VOC ship Batavia stranded off the west coast of Australia and for punishment were put ashore with a limited amount of food. “But there were probably also survivors among the crews of other VOC ships that were shipwrecked, possibly even in the hundreds”, says Vanderveldt. From the Zuytdorp, a ship which ran into the cliffs at the west coast of Australia, even as many as tens of those on board might have survived the disaster. “That ship had 268 people on board”, says Vanderveldt. Along the coast where the ship perished a tobacco box from the Zuytdorp has been found; pots, plates, a buckle from a belt, but also traces from a campfire. Everything points out that the castaways did make a large fire to attract the attention of other

179 ships. Fifty kilometres further up there was an Aboriginal campsite at a well. They must have seen the fire. “For a long time stories circulate in Australia about a white Aboriginal tribe in central Australia”, says Vanderveldt, who decided to find out what had happened to the possible survivors of VOC ships. British historians whom he approached were not interested, so little else was left than to go out and investigate it himself. One of the things he discovered was that a member of the Zuytdorp crew probably suffered from porphyria, a very rare metabolic disease from South Africa which had been carried from Europe by VOC ships and also frequently occurs among members of the Nhunda tribe. Vanderveldt: “So perhaps one of those on board the Zuytdorp had infected the aboriginals with it. Vanderveldt came into contact with the Netherland epidemiologist Pieter Bol who in 1998 had written an article about that disease “shipped via the VOC”. This way the idea came up to use DNA material from Aboriginals to search for possible traces from perhaps Netherland ancestors. That was easier said than done because the Nhunda also have British ancestors. In 1830 the first two British convicts to procreate offspring with Nhunda women arrived in the area. “Every Nhunda of mixed blood who was born before that time can thus have Holland ancestors”, says Vanderveldt. Eventually he was able from genealogical investigations to trace fifteen families from matriarchs who were born between 1712 and 1850 and who had European blood. 180 To persuade family members to donate saliva turned out to be anything but simple either. Far fewer than everybody wanted to co-operate. The Aborigines were very suspicious because DNA samples are often used in criminal cases. “Just like you I am eager to know what has happened to my ancestors, is how I explained it to them. We had to use a lot of persuasion”. By then Vanderveldt had already established that the DNA research should not be conducted by Australian or British scientists. “The Australian Government does not stand by waiting for this. Over the years so much about the Aboriginal past has been wiped under the carpet by the Brits; no way that this was going to happen now”. Eventually the Leiden geneticist Peter de Knijff, renown for the Putten murder case and others, was found willing to investigate the DNA material. At the beginning of 2010 the last of over 100 saliva samples were sent by mail. Now, well over three years on, Vanderveldt is still waiting for the results. Helen Nutter believes she knows why it takes so long. Since about ten years ago Aborigines can reclaim sections of land under the so-called Native Title Act if they can demonstrate that they still maintain a traditional connection with that land; for instance on the basis of stories, paintings and ceremonies. “For the Nhunda an impossible task”, says Nutter: “The Native Title Act is racist and hypocritical. Until recently living by way of our traditions and rituals, even to speak our

181 own language was still forbidden. How then can we even prove that we still honour those customs?” The land where the Nhunda live is a treasure trove of mineral resources. In the past years one after another mining company have set up business there. “Already since the 1990s there are court cases about it involving these companies”, says Nutter. “But so far not a single piece of land has been handed back to the Nhunda”. The DNA investigation can make this change. “If the research demonstrates that some families descend from Netherland castaways, it is the first proof that we already lived in the area in the seventeenth century”, says Nutter. Peter de Knijff, who told Het Parool a year ago by telephone that he was about to send his DNA findings to Australia, is now unwilling to disclose anything further about the case. Tom Vanderveldt admits it is indeed beginning to take a long time but he does not believe in a political conspiracy. “De Knijff re-assured me that it has nothing to do with that” Australians by the way would not care if some Aborigines turn out to have Netherland ancestors, as the issue of the Aboriginals has been around for a long time and there are many other activities that also draw their attention. Vanderveldt is now awaiting the DNA results this summer. That some Aborigines descend from sailors from The Netherlands is according to him already established. “It is very obvious; all our research point it out. Wait and see. It’s a hell of a story”.

182 Appendix II

The Zeewijck

The wreck of the Zeewijck in 1727, although not as dramatic as that of the BATAVIA, is nevertheless one of the most remarkable sagas in the annals of the sea, as the survivors constructed a small ship from the wreckage and sailed it successfully to Java, having retrieved a major part of the cargo. It provides some insight into the mindset and resourcefulness of the Dutch at that time, even in the - what was thought - lower intellectual echolon.

The Zeewijck departed from Vlissingen (Flushing), on its maiden voyage, on 7 November 1726, under the command of Jan Steyns, carrying a rich cargo that included 315,836 guilders in cash, stored in ten chests. The ship arrived at the Cape of Good Hope on 26 March 1727 and departed for Batavia on 21 April. Seven weeks later, at about 7.30 in the evening of 9 June, the Zeewijck ran violently onto Half Moon Reef, which skirts the western side of the Pelsaert Group, the southernmost reefs and islands of the Houtman Abrolhos. There was never any doubt that the ship had been lost. Big waves swept the deck, 2.5 metres of water soon filled the hold, and the main mast came crashing down. With the arrival of daylight, those on board were relieved to see several islands behind the reef, but they could not leave the wreck because of the height of the surf. 183 Six days later, they were still confined to the wreck, and by then some of the crew had broken into the liquor stores and were brought under control only under threat of death. On the seventh day, it was decided to risk using the longboat, which was successfully launched and taken to the shallow part of the reef with twelve men. Next day, it was rowed to the nearest island (Gun Island), returning with the good news that water had been found there. The weather was fine for the following two days, and many people successfully made the trip from the wreck to the reef crest, and from there to the island. However, some refused to leave the wreck, remaining on board under precarious conditions for several months. On 10 July, the longboat set sail for Batavia under the command of the uppersteersman, with eleven others who were generally regarded as the most capable of the seamen. They were never heard of again. It is possible that they too may have become stranded on the mainland and should, potentially, be added to numbers of survivors The ship's officers remaining on Gun Island found it impossible to maintain shipboard standards of discipline, and there was an ever- present threat of mutiny among the crew. Fortunately, they had sufficient food from the ship's cargo and from the surrounding sea and islands, in the form of seals, fish and birds. Kegs of food were periodically obtained from the wreck, some of them floating to the reef crest. But water was soon a problem. Although it had been found on the island when they arrived there in June, the well had become salty by August, and drinking supplies were then dependent on periodic rainfall. Fortunately, this

184 shortage was alleviated at the end of September when a good supply was found in a shallow well on a nearby island. The survivors managed to salvage all ten money chests from the wreck, taking them to Gun Island. This was a remarkable feat, given the disintegrating state of the wreck and the fact that the total weight of the chests was more than 3 tonnes. By the end of October, the Zeewijck castaways concluded that the longboat could not have reached Batavia, as otherwise a relief ship would have appeared before then. They made the courageous decision to construct a small ship from the wreckage of the Zeewijck, with the objective of sailing it to Batavia. The keel of this new vessel, which they named the Sloepie (Little Sloop), was laid on 7 November. It had to be large enough to carry eighty-eight men, over 3 tonnes of coinage, and several tonnes of water and provisions, as well as being sufficiently seaworthy to make the voyage from the Houtman Abrolhos to Batavia. The carpenter and his mates worked hard in their little shipyard on Gun Island, using materials recovered from the wreck of the Zeewijck plus timber from mangroves on one of the larger islands. Skipper Steyns's drawing of the vessel, on his map of the area, shows that it had a single mast, with two square sails and a jib, and flags flying bravely from the mast, bow and stern. The Sloepie was completed in a little over four months, an amazing achievement, considering the extraordinarily difficult circumstances. This little vessel deserves fame as the first ocean-going ship to be built in Australia, and it testifies to the remarkable courage, perseverance and resourcefulness of the VOC seamen of that time.

185 Of the 208 men who had departed from the Netherlands on the Zeewijck, and the 158 who had left the Cape, 88 remained alive to sail from the Houtman Abrolhos on the Sloepie. Stores and money chests were loaded, and the little sloop set sail on 26 March 1728, some 10 months after the Zeewijck had been wrecked. It completed a speedy voyage to Sunda Strait, arriving there on 21 April, and reaching Batavia on 30 April with 82 survivors. In 1952, Lieutenant Commander M.R. Bromell of the Royal Australian Navy learned, during a visit to the Houtman Abrolhos, that a crayfisherman had discovered a number of cannon on Half Moon Reef. During a subsequent visit, as commander of HMAS Mildura, he reported finding six guns, three cylindrical pieces of iron, and two bundles of iron bars at this location. There are also some masses of nails, now welded together by rust in the shape of the barrels that originally contained them, at the site. Three of the cannon, one 12- pounder and two 8-pounders, were later raised by crews of the Mildura and the Fremantle and transported to Perth. It is clear that these relics found on top of the reef were derived from the wreck of the Zeewijck, as the remains of the ship were subsequently located nearby the position of the cannon, as quoted by Bromell, is 28°52.6' south, 113°49.7' east. The understeersman's position of the Zeewijck wreck quoted in the ship's journal is 28°50' south, 128°19' east, which gives a measure of the accuracy of navigation at that time. The longitude measurement given in the journal needs to be adjusted to take account of the fact that the prime meridian (0°) used at that time is not the same as that of today. Indeed, the Dutch 186 prime meridian in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries varied from map to map. Most navigators used either Tenerife or Ferro (Hierro) in the Canary Islands, but others used Corvo, Flores or Sao Miguel in the Azores, Boa Vista in the Cape Verde Islands, Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands, or Cape Verde. However, it is clear from the logs of the Belvliet in 1711-12 and the Zeewijck in 1726-27 that they had adopted the peak of Tenerife (Pico de Teide) as the prime meridian. This peak rises to an elevation of 3.718 metres, and seamen at that time commonly thought of it as the highest mountain in the world. Its longitude today, in relation to the prime meridian of Greenwich, is 16°39' west. Thus, the longitude of the Zeewijck wreck given in the ship's journal should be corrected to 111°40', for comparison with present-day coordinates. This means that the wreck's position as determined by the ship's navigators was only 2.6' (about 5 kilometres) too far north, but a massive 2°10' (about 208 kilometres) too far west. The first persons to locate the main part of the Zeewijck wreck were Hugh Edwards, Tom Brady, Harry Bingham, Max Cramer and Neil McLaughlan, in March 1968. Edwards first recognized that he was at the wrecksite when he discerned the curved shape of an elephant tusk among coral on the sea-floor. The 1994 Select Committee on Ancient Shipwrecks recommended that Hugh Edwards, Tom Brady and Harry Bingham be recognized as primary discoverers of the Zeewijck, and that Max Cramer, Neil

187 McLaughlan and Colin Jack-Hinton be regarded as secondary discoverers. Several expeditions have investigated the archaeology of Gun Island and the Zeewijck wreck. Most have been sponsored by the WA Museum and the WA Maritime Museum, and have returned rich collections of artefacts. Several skeletons of persons from the Zeewijck who perished during their sojourn on the island have also been exhumed. The Zeewijck was the last VOC vessel to be wrecked on the Western Australian coast. Even though hundreds of company ships sailed past that coast during the rest of the eighteenth century, none are known to have been lost there, and no new observations or maps of the area have been reported from company records of that period. The wreck of the Zeewijck and the voyage of the Sloepie brought to an end the remarkable era of Dutch discovery and shipwreck on the Western Australian coast, which had begun more than a century before, with Dirk Hartog and d’ Eendracht. VOYAGE NR: 2680. NAME OF VESSEL: Zeewijk Bibliography and Sources: Bruijn, J.R., Gaastra, F.S., Schöffer, I Dutch- Asiatic Shipping In The 17th and 18th Centuries (3 Vols). The Hague, 1979, 1987

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