The Ultimate Guide to Fishing Weipa eBook & Sunday Night’s: Australia’s Secret History
Posted by Meggs | Weipa fishing book | Posted on April 20th, 2010
Greetings all,
When we were kids in school (some 40 years ago now) they taught us the fact that the dutchman William Dampier landed on the west coast of Australia in 1688 well before Captain Cook made his way to Australia. What they didn’t tell us was that there were other Dutch vessels making the long voyage to the Southlands even before Dampier.
For those of you that missed Channel 7’s Sunday Night show it makes the claim that the Dutch colonisation of Australia pre-dates the British albeit perhaps unintentional and by way of shipwreck. They are in the process now of carbon dating a wasp’s nest that was painted over by aborigines in a figure that looks like a Dutch officer (somewhere in northern Queensland) and they are also conducting DNA testing on some local aboriginess in the vicinity of Monkey Mia in WA to determine whether they are of Dutch decendancy.
See: Channel 7’s Sunday Night program
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You can also take a look at Ross Coulthart’s blog that discusses the show.
I’ve decided to release the opening page of “The Ultimate Guide to Fishing Weipa” eBook (unedited and word for word) to share with you some (obviously) little known Australian history about the early Dutch explorers and their influence on the tiny fishing and bauxite mining town of Weipa.
You can click here to find out more about “The Ultimate Guide to Fishing Weipa” eBook.
I hope you enjoy it.
You could probably win some money on this little piece of trivia down at your local watering hole…
Who was the first European to “encounter” the Australian mainland?
Answer: Willem Janszoon in 1606.
For some reason no one refers to this encounter as a “discovery” and I suspect this is due to our British heritage. Now if that doesn’t win you a round of drinks nothing will. As a contemporary Australian male I would’ve thought that even in the 1600’s the English ruled the high seas. But this was not the case.
At that time a new Dutch nation known as the United Provinces seemed to have the ocean trade sewn up with a huge fleet of sea going vessels. In the early 1600’s the British were lucky to have 10% of the number of ships that the Dutch owned. Not only was the United Provinces home to the largest fleet of ships but also the biggest business in the world – The Dutch East Indies Company (VOC). This firm was held in such high esteem it was even granted the power to wage wars and to put in place treaties with foreign leaders across the globe.
I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t extend the same privileges to BHP today.
VOC also had a monopoly on the super lucrative spice industry. Wow, a few centuries later and the Spice Girls are worth millions but it’s hard to turn a dollar pedaling nutmeg, pepper, cinnamon, ginger, clove and mace. Spices were all the rage in the 1600’s and much raping, pillaging and violence ensued to capture the supply of these valuable resources. It’s hard to fathom what all the fuss was about but to put things into some perspective nutmeg for example was thought to be a cure for the plague!
One of the boats owned by the VOC was called the Duyfken – in English this name translates to “Little Dove”. This 20m, 8 cannon, sailing ship was granted a monopoly on the spice trade from the Spice Islands by the Dutch government. In 1606 the Duyfken was charged with the responsibility to seek out “east and south lands” and it was this journey that led it to charting Australia’s Cape York Peninsula and also a subsequent landing on the shores of Weipa (well 40km to the north of the town at least).
The Duyfken’s captain Willem Janszoon and Jan Roosengijn were acclaimed as the first white people ever to set foot on land in Weipa and after this feat (pardon the pun!) for the very first time all inhabited continents were finally known to European geographers.
The Duyfken continued its colorful history after its departure from Weipa and, in the ensuing years, battled Spanish Galleys and captured a fortress on Indonesia’s Makian Island in 1608.
A month later the Dufyken was taken to another Indonesian island called Ternate to repair some damage to the ship’s hull. Disaster soon struck when a decision was taken to lie the ship on its side to make repairs – a move that led to the destruction of the ship.
Today Duyfken Point marks the northern point of Weipa’s Albatross Bay.
Sea you later,
Skipper Meggs