Hartog was Here

Four hundred years ago, a Dutchman landed on an island off our coast and left behind a flattened dish. The first Europeans to set foot in Western Australia, he and his crew arrived here aboard a ship called the Eendracht. The stretch of West Australian coast that Hartog discovered was called the ‘Land of the Eendracht’ on Dutch maps.

They were working for the Dutch East India Company, the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC). Their journey across the ocean to reach Western Australia was part of a bigger story of Dutch trade with the East Indies (modern day Indonesia) and the creation of a trading empire.

A Chance Encounter

Dirk Hartog Dish, 1600 - 1616

Dirk Hartog Dish, 1600 - 1616
Image courtesy Rijksmuseum

Dirk Hartog dish
Dirk Hartog Island, Western Australia, 1616
Rijksmuseum, Netherlands, NG-NM-825

This is the Hartog dish — proof that the crew of a Dutch ship landed in Australia at what is now known as Cape Inscription, Dirk Hartog Island, Shark Bay in October 1616. To record their visit for others to find, Hartog and the crew left a marker nailed to a wooden post before continuing on their journey to the East Indies. It was made by flattening a pewter dish, the words scratched into the soft metal with a knife. It remains the most tangible evidence of an early European presence in Australia to date.

The inscription can still be read although the last three lines have all but eroded away. It is possible that the names of Joannes Steijns and Pieter Dooke were added to the official inscription as they are inscribed much more lightly.

Written in Dutch are the words:

1616, October 25, the ship Eendracht arrived here from Amsterdam, with upper merchant Gillis Mibais of Liege, skipper Dirk Hartog of Amsterdam, the 27 [October], ditto made sail for Bantam, the junior merchant J[o]an[nes] S[te]i[j]ns, the first steersman Piet[e]r Dooke van Bill.

The Dutch Tradition of Bringing a Plate

de Vlamingh Dish, c. 1697

de Vlamingh Dish, c. 1697
Image courtesy WA Museum 

de Vlamingh dish
Dirk Hartog Island, Western Australia, 1697
Western Australian Museum, DHI4139

Some 80 years later on 2 February 1697, another Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh unknowingly anchored his fleet in the same spot on Dirk Hartog Island and discovered Hartog’s dish. De Vlamingh and his crew replaced Hartog’s dish with a new one inscribed with the original words, adding new text detailing the arrival and departure of the de Vlamingh expedition. They recognised the historical significance of the 1616 flattened dish and chose the exact same location to erect their own post and commemorative plate. This signpost remained at Dirk Hartog Island and was observed during the nineteenth century by French explorers until it was eventually recovered by Louis de Freycinet in 1818 and taken to Paris where it remained until given by the French people to the Australian government after World War II.