Dutch explorer Dirk Hartog ‘bumped’ into Australia 400 years ago after wind blew him off course

VIVID Festival may be all about the lights, but one light artwork will celebrate how Australian history was changed when Dutch explorer Dirk Hartog (left) was blown off course onto the west coast of Australia.

Dutch historian Dr Peter Sigmond (right) with assistant Simon Hawkes holding the historic pewter plate which was nailed to post in Western Australia by explorer Dirk Hartog in 1616.

WHILE light plays a major part in Sydney’s Vivid Festival, opening tomorrow night, this year one of the works celebrates the role played by wind in Australia’s history. Called Spice Winds, the Dutch installation near the Museum of Contemporary Art features 25 wind indicators with a directional LED light that changes with the winds sweeping across the harbour. It pays homage to ships’ crews who rode the winds to Australia.

Spice Winds is also part of the year-long celebration of the 400th anniversary of Dirk Hartog’s voyage to Australia. In 1616 Hartog was on his way to the East Indies when winds took him off course. He ended up bumping into a continent, becoming the first known European to set foot on Australia’s west coast.

Hartog’s birthdate is not recorded but he was baptised on October 30, 1580, in the Netherlands, the second son of a seafarer named Hartych Krynen. Dirck (or Dirk) was given the name Hartog, meaning son of Hartych, although there were several variations on the spelling of his name. Several documents show that he signed his name as Dyrck Hartoochz.

A portrait of Dutch explorer Dirk Hartog, who was the second expedition to arrive in Australia in 1616.

Hartog followed in his father’s footsteps and went to sea at an early age, gaining command of his first vessel in 1610. Well established in his career, in 1611, he bought the Dolpyhn, a
small trading ship, and also married Meynsgen Abels.

Over the next few years he sailed around the Mediterranean and the Baltic, becoming an experienced commander. In 1615 he was appointed as captain of the Eendracht (Concord), built for the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC), the Dutch East India Company, established in 1602, which had a monopoly on the spice trade with the East Indies (later Indonesia). The Eendracht set out on its maiden voyage in January 1616 from the island port of Texel, in the province of North Holland, the Netherlands, as part of a fleet of VOC ships. The fleet intended sailing down the west coast of Africa, around the Cape of Good Hope to the East Indies, a route that had been pioneered by the Portuguese.

A ferocious storm off Africa resulted in Hartog’s ship becoming separated from the fleet. When he rounded the cape he decided to take a more southerly route, which had been discovered by fellow Dutchman and VOC commander Hendrik Brouwer in 1611. Brouwer had found that
by sailing about 7400km east and then turning north to the Sunda Strait where prevailing westerlies — later dubbed the Roaring Forties because they occur between latitude
40 and 50 degrees — could drastically cut sailing time.

An illustration of Dirk Hartog nailing the inscribed pewter plate to a pole in 1616 on what is now known as Dirk Hartog Island.

But Hartog’s voyage saw him blown much further east. While sailing north for the Sunda Strait he saw an unfamiliar coastline, not on any of his charts. He stepped ashore at what is now Shark Bay, about 800km north of what is today Perth.

Although he thought he was the first European to set foot on this land, he had no idea that 10 years earlier another Dutch ship had charted part of the coast of the Cape York Peninsula, thinking it was part of New Guinea. Hartog marked his visit by erecting an oak post to which he nailed a pewter plate inscribed “1616, 25 October, is here arrived the ship the Eendracht of Amsterdam, the upper-merchant Gillis Miebais of Liege, skipper Dirck Hatichs of Amsterdam; the 27th ditto set sail again for Bantam, the under-merchant Jan Stins, the uppersteersman Pieter Dookes van Bill, Anno 1616”.

He named the new territory Eendrachtsland, which remained its name on charts for several decades until it became New Holland. The Eendracht then made its way north, charting some of the Australian coastline before sailing to Makassar, Sulawesi, where 15 of his crew were killed in an altercation with the natives.

He visited East Indies trading ports before leaving in December 1617 with a rich cargo. He arrived home to the Netherlands in triumph in 1618.

Although it was a successful voyage, Hartog left the VOC to return to private trading and he died in 1621. His pewter plate was found by Dutch captain Willem de Vlamingh on a 1697 voyage. Vlamingh replaced it with his own plate and took the original back to the Netherlands. The French navigator Louis de Freycinet found Vlamingh’s plate and took it back to France where it was placed in the French national museum. The French then presented the plate to Australia in 1948.