Dutch Courier Feb18._Full

PAGE 16 February 2018 Dutch Courier
AUSTRALIAN HISTORY - AT LAST?
It was gratifying to read that a
prominent Australian historian
- Professor Geoffrey Blainey -
made the comment that our history
should be re-written and in
particular the significant role of
the Dutch navigators.
Geoffrey Norman Blainey AC,
FAHA, FASSA is an Australian historian,
academic, philanthropist
and commentator with a wide international
audience. He is noted
for having written authoritative
texts on the economic and social
history of Australia, including The
Tyranny of Distance. He has published
over 35 books, including
wide-ranging histories of the world
and of Christianity.
But maybe it will be high time to
rewrite that history of Australia,
Geoffrey Blainey, one of Australia’s
most prominent historians, says.
“The role of the Dutch in Australia
has so far remained too underexposed”,
he told the Channel 7 television
channel makers in 2010.
He has often appeared in newspapers
and on television. He
held chairs in economic history
and history at the University of
Melbourne for over 20 years. In
the 1980s, he was visiting professor
of Australian Studies at
Harvard University.
He received the 1988 Britannica
Award for dissemination of knowledge
and was made a Companion
of the Order of Australia in 2000.
The Dutch role in Western
Australia is the most prominent
and can be attributed to the efforts
of Captain Brouwer who
devised the Brouwer route that
resulted in shipping coming close
to the west coast.
The Brouwer route
The old route used by the
Portuguese from Cape of Good
Hope to the Spice Islands went
via the African East Coast and
Madagascar. Any Portuguese visits
would like have been of an
exploratory nature of the South
Land.
In the face of my frustrations in
the past 17 years this news from
a prominent Australian historian
like Prof. Blainey is like a ray of
sunshine and I hope that this will
serve as a benchmark for the future.
Until then I had to be consoled
by the following quotation:
“Professional historians on the
whole are a deceitful, distrusting,
conniving and secretive bunch of
beggars who would direct a blind
man up a blind alley rather than
risk giving him an advantage.
Enthusiastic amateurs on the
other hand may lack scholarship
but they often have bucket loads
of information which they are eager
to share.”
Circumstantial evidence
Let us look at some of the “circumstantial
evidence” that past
historians rejected;
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 the 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.”
(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
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.
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.
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 “waylmen”
– 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.”
(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.)
Tom
Web: www.indigitrax.org.au
E: bulletin@iinet.net.au
Perth, Western Australia
TO BE CONTINUED NEXT
MONTH
DUTCH SHIPS & SIX
FINGERED CHILDREN
By Jan James & Henny Crijns-
Coenen
Jan James (Kabarli) Honorary
Member of the VOCHS and
Genealogist of Northam Western
Australia writes:
“Dutch ships and six fingered
children have intrigued me for
many years and the discovery of
another person with the condition
sends me off into a frenzy of
research”.
“With this discovery of an undated
photo of a six fingered
Aboriginal child from “Frasers
Range” and my theory of Dutch
Ship wrecks off the South coast
looked more and more likely”.
“Fraser Range is half way between
Norseman and Balladonia,
100 km east of Norseman,
heading towards South Australia.
Described as being the Western
Nullarbor Plain, it was originally
founded by John and Alexander
Forrest on their expedition to
Adelaide in 1870. The property
Fraser Range Station was first
settled by the Dempster brothers
in 1872 making Fraser Range the
first station to be founded on the
Nullarbor Plain”.
“At the time Fraser Range was
settled, Perth was a penal colony
and men with a ‘ticket of leave’
of many different nations were
employed to assist the Dempster
brothers in developing the station
and building a number of impressive
structures out of stone”.
These ‘ticket of leave’ men were
not the first non-aboriginal men
to mix with the Aboriginal women
of the area.
THE ZUYTDORP
The ship the Zuytdorp (Zuijtdorp)
was built in the year 1701 for
the Dutch East Indies Company
known in short as VOC, in
Middelburg in the Netherlands.
She was used by the VOC from
1701 to June 1712 when she
mysteriously vanished without
a trace until the early years of
the last century. We came to
learn that she wrecked between
Kalbarri & Shark Bay in Western
Australia.
She was 160 feet in length and
of 1152 ton. She would normally
carry a crew of 250.
At the time of her wrecking
against the cliffs that now bear
her name, she was carrying 282
living souls on board.
From 2011, for 12 months there
had been stories in various
newspapers about the Zuytdorp
but more closer, in 2012, to the
300th anniversary of her wrecking
drew nearer. Evidence was
found that there were survivors
but what happened to them had
not yet been established. The
aborigines from that area firmly
believe that they have Zuytdorp
survivor’s blood, having taken
them in and then married into
the clans. DNA studies have been
carried out for a few years now
and we are waiting to find out
if indeed the aboriginal people
could be right.
There are those of us who believe
this to be true as we feel that the
survivors may have in all probability
passed on a couple of illnesses
that have then transcended
the centuries up until today.
Pv = Porphyria V which amongst
its symptoms is purple pigment
(mottled skin); EvC = Ellis-van
Creveld which amongst its symptoms
is extra digits either fingers
or toes or both. Also cleft lip or
palate and there is also short
stature (dwarfism). This could
all possibly be the proof along
with DNA results that will link the
Dutch survivors of the Zuytdorp
with the aborigines and show
that the Dutch could well have
been some of the first Europeans
to settle in this land and well before
British colonization.
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