Greta van der Rol

The Abrolhos Archipelago must be a treacherous place at night. Henrietta Drake-Brockman said “Having seen the islands, it is not difficult to imagine an unforeseen wreck on Noon Reef or Morning Reef, at night, in moonlight.”

The Batavia was wrecked on 4th June 1629. The man on watch mistook white water for the glimmer of moonlight on the white caps. Ninety-eight years later, on the moonlit night of 9th June 1727, the Zeewijk met a similar fate.

Understandably, the survivors thought this was the same place the Batavia was wrecked and the group of islands was accordingly named the Pelsart Group. In fact, it is well south of the Batavia’s resting place in the Wallabi Group.

There are certain similarities with the Batavia disaster. Most of the people on board made it to land – this time, tiny Gun Island – but unlike the Batavia, they were able to find some fresh water. As with the other Dutch wrecks, the longboat was sent off to Batavia to fetch help but never arrived. When October had come and gone, the survivors decided no rescue ship was coming. As ever, they were a resourceful lot. Using material from the wreck of the Zeewijk and wood from local mangroves, they build a twenty meter long boat which they called Sloepie. They even loaded a pair of guns on her, in case of pirates. The endeavour took four months; In March 1728, eighty-eight men set sail for Batavia. Eighty-two arrived. When you consider the Zeewijk’s original complement was two hundred and eight, this was a considerable achievement.

Two other things are worthy of mention; two lads found guilty of sodomy were marooned, each on his own lump of coral. Homosexuality was not condoned in Dutch society at that time. The captain of the Zeewijk who made the journey to Batavia in Sloepie, was found guilty of the loss of his ship and falsifying the records. He lost his position and his material assets.

I didn’t buy the 'wedding dress' specially for the wedding.  No, indeed. It has its own history, some might even find this a little bit spooky.

You see, not too many months after I moved to Melbourne, one of Pete’s business associates invited us to attend the opening of an exhibition at the art gallery.  It was to be a gala occasion, in fact the Governor of Victoria was to officiate.  It’s not our sort of gig, really, so we asked this fellow what we should wear.  Ladies, he said, should wear a cocktail dress and men lounge suits.  Well crumbs.  I didn’t have a cocktail dress – except that red one and it didn’t fit me any more.  So I did the rounds of the big shops in Melbourne looking for something suitable without success.  Then somebody at the office said she’d seen a nice outfit in a boutique just down the road in the Paris end of Collins St, Melbourne’s haute couture Mecca.  I went down and had a look, although I did hesitate at the door. This was a designer’s own little shop, certainly not the sort of place I usually frequent for my off-the-rack purchases.  But I girded my loins and ventured within. The outfit was the right size, a sort of off-white brocade material, a straight skirt with split down the back and a separate top with three quarter sleeves and buttons with loop fastenings.  It cost a lot more than I’d normally pay for a dress – but it WAS a sale price and I’d already struck out in the department stores. And the event was next week.  So… I bought it. Then I had to buy shoes and a matching bag.  They were on special, too, but all up, I paid probably three times what I’d normally pay.  The evening arrived and Pete and I changed into our glad rags at a hotel in Lygon St, the only room we could find at short notice.  Then we caught a cab down to the Art Gallery. We soon discovered the only cocktail gowns and lounge suits were worn by Pete and me.  As it turned out, we could have worn jeans and runners and not been out of place.  We were a bit self-conscious for five minutes and then we thought - what the hell, we look good. 

Pete’s mate?  He turned up (eventually) in a pair of slacks and a sports jacket.

Back at home after our Big Night Out I put the suit back into its plastic pack and hung it in the ‘infrequently worn’ section of the wardrobe. You know what I mean - the bit down the back where you leave the clothes that seem to have shrunk or are just the *wrong* colour for this season or the wrong style. But you can't bear to get rid of them. And there it stayed, gathering dust with the red cocktail dress and a number of lovely summer dresses that I was sure I'd fit back into some day. But I’d actually put the dress on at work to show the lady who had suggested it.  Everybody agreed it was a wonderful dress and a couple of people asked me if I was getting married.  There you go.  Four years later, I didn't have to rush about buying a wedding dress - I already had one I'd prepared earlier.

The Zuytdorp’s story started in August 1711. After a horrendous journey down to Cape Town, it set off on the last leg of its journey from Table Bay on 22nd April 1712. It never arrived. And no survivors reached Batavia to tell the story. It was speculated, of course, that she’d met her fate but her resting place wasn’t finally found until centuries later. A young stockman found some artefacts in 1927 along the high cliffs overlooking the Indian Ocean south of Shark Bay; those very cliffs that Pelsaert and Jacobsz saw as they sailed for help after the Batavia was wrecked nearly a hundred years before. Those cliffs now bear the name of the ship that lies at their base – the Zuytdorp cliffs.

It was not until 1954 that the identity of the wreck was established. The sea is relentless there, bashing into the cliffs over a ledge of rock that juts along the shoreline. The cliffs extend for hundreds of miles and only two small ‘beaches’ offer a relatively easy way of getting to the top, anywhere from thirty meters to two hundred metres above the waves.

Was it coincidence that the Zuytdorp came to grief just adjacent to one of those two small beaches?

We know a lot of people made it to shore. In a cave just below the top of the cliff there are signs of a huge fire – hot enough to melt metal. Like many people involved in a shipwreck, the first thought seems to have been to get drunk – and maybe, also, attract another ship sailing up the coast to Batavia. But the Dutch mariners had learned to fear those cliffs and would not approach by choice, and no record exists of any such bonfire being sighted.

It would not have been easy to get frightened people off the ship and to safety in a pounding sea. Archaeologists say the ship would soon have heeled over when she hit the reef. It is rare indeed for the sea to be calm enough for divers to go down.When they did, they found a carpet of silver strewn over the seabed where the treasure cases had spilled their contents.

It’s possible that like all the other wrecks, a longboat was dispatched to get help from Batavia. But if it occurred, in this case the boat never arrived.

Nobody knows what happened to these unfortunate people who survived the wreck. Traces of them were found inland, where they had attempted to search for water. But as several Dutch landing parties had discovered, this part of the coast is barren and waterless. Some speculate that they merged with local aboriginal tribes but what little circumstantial evidence has been produced is hotly disputed.

Another fascinating mystery.

The Batavia wasn’t the only Dutch VOC ship to be wrecked on the West Australian coast. In all, four wreck sites have been found and a fifth ship is assumed to have met its fate on the Abrolhos. Not bad, that; of the five wrecks, three ships hit the Abrolhos.

Every one of those wrecks has an intriguing story attached. Maybe not so blood-thirsty as the Batavia but fascinating, nonetheless.

The Batavia sank in 1629. The next VOC ship to be lost was the Vergulde Draeck (Gilt Dragon) which sank in 1656 just north of Perth, capital of Western Australia.

Seventy five survivors reached the shores of Australia in a boat. The ship’s captain sent the under steersman Abraham Leeman and six other men, in the ship’s boat to Batavia to seek help, while the rest remained on the continent. Once again showing the remarkable endurance and courage of these early sailors, the boat reached Batavia six weeks later. The governor (by then van Diemen) sent out two ships to search for the wreck and rescue the survivors. The expedition only compounded the disaster. Three of the men landed on the Southland to search became lost in the scrub and were never seen again; a longboat carrying eight men was smashed in the surf with no survivors. No sign was found of the sixty eight folk from the Vergulde Draeck.

Van Diemen hadn’t given up. In 1658 other boats sailed along the coast both searching for survivors and mapping this unknown continent. Traces were found of the folk from the Vergulde Draeck on the beach in the vicinity of the wreck and some ships claimed to have seen signs of cultivated crops. During one such foray along the South Land, that same Abraham Leeman and a crew of thirteen men became stranded in a violent storm on one of the islands scattered not far off shore along the WA coast. The ship they’d been on, the Waeckende Boei, sailed off without them. They had been marooned.

So Leeman did the trip again. Yes, that’s right. He sailed up along the coast and across the sea to Java in a small boat. This time, the trip took three weeks. Truly a most remarkable man.

What happened to the survivors of the Vergulde Draeck remains a mystery.