Audience applause
Thank you Sarah.
Thank you all.
Having worn the coat to
establish my bona fides as
obviously intelligent and a
scholar, I'll now take it off.
It's too warm and hot up here
and we've got a lot to do.
There are many, many people
involved in what I have to say
and the best way to, I think, acknowledge
those people is in this manner.
Two of those folk
are here today.
Dr Phillip Playford and Hugh
Edwards, both famous for their
work on our VOC shipwrecks.
Other folk that you see up
there are Jeremy Green of
course who heads our program.
Csilla, a scholar who you'll
get to know in a minute.
Bob Sheppard, Juliet Pasveer, Myra
of course - many of you know Myra well.
Pat Baker, Walter Bloom numismatist, 
Wendy a Dutch scholar.
Alistair Paterson who's going
to be leading a lot of the
modern work that you see.
Jennifer here, one of
the artefact managers.
Nic Bigourdan our scholar
from France who's with us.
Vicki, one of the
heads of conservation.
Stephen Knott, you'll see him a bit 
more with a facial reconstruction.
Geoff Kimpton of course, not
only a great diver and the man
who's built the Batavia façade
and the Batavia timbers but also
a model maker of note.
Dan Franklin a
forensic archaeologist.
JD Hill from London,
Parthesius or "Party House"
as we used to call him,
a Dutch scholar.
Ian MacLeod of course not just
the Director but acknowledged -
widely acknowledged
conservator.
The late Rupert Gerritsen, a good
friend and also a scholar.
Maddy McAllister, one of
our young things that we're
passing it all over to.
And then we just go on.
And on to all these wonderful
folk who you won't know
because they aren't part of
the Roaring Forties group and
they are all part of the
new dimension that we're
developing now in using the
best technology as part of the
Roaring Forties program which
I'll talk about in a minute.
You will recognise Corioli Souter
there from the Department.
And then some of these folk
you'll also know from our group.
Sue Cox, our Department
Secretary without whom we
can't do anything.
The boss Alec Coles.
Ross Anderson, one of our people.
And of course Ed Punchard.
And Julia Redwood who
will be doing film work.
The others are scholars
of some significance in
technology but I thought I'd just mention
those whom most of you will know.
This is where it all began
with folk like Phillip and
Hugh and the late Max Cramer
and others around and these
are the works that led many
people to learn about the Dutch.
And with the advent of Jeremy
Green shown here, apparently
he was that focused, as you
needed to be in those days
given the conditions
and so on.
The crowd actually had to send
his lunch down to him one day
in a plastic bag with a lead
weight they had tied that he
wouldn't come up.
So they sent the message down.
It was naturally
tightly focused work.
Because it was new, Jeremy
headed one of the only three
maritime archaeology units in
the world and it focused very,
very much on the timbers and
the objects and the various
things from the wrecks.
However a lot has changed,
as one would expect.
We're talking now the time
from 1971 through now to the
present day and we've all come
to learn an awful lot more of
the importance of Indigenous
cultures and their complexities.
And one of the things as a
museum we do, is to try to
attend to part of that missing
understanding and knowledge
that was there when
we first started.
Here, Samson or Tjangaloli his
correct name, is on one of the
world's oldest boats.
He is predated in boats solely
by those Aboriginal folk shown
here at the bottom right
with the canoes shown which
probably go back to
30 or 40,000 years.
The Wandjinas there are
4 to 5 thousand years.
So, in deference to that we
also looked at our program of
'Strangers On The Shore',
the interaction of Indigenous
people with shipwreck
survivors and I would have to
say to you that this is a much
purer view of what Aboriginal
people feel about the visitors
to their shores than those who
come with power, with hats, drums
and all the trappings of those things.
The one on the right
interestingly is a steam ship
which is both part of
Aboriginal legend and European
legend which is part of our
26-ship database that is
developed by one of our
volunteers Lesley Silvester.
Most of you are aware of all
of this and most of you are
aware of those who test the
challenge to Dutch primacy.
There's many works
on the subject.
We've assisted folk
with many of them.
Bill Richards for
example, did this one.
That one, 1421 its best use
today is for Debbie,
the mother of our children, so
she doesn't have to lift her
head too high in the morning to
see what the alarm clock says.
It's an errant nonsense:
beautifully written first
two chapters but the rest of it
are nonsense and I'm afraid
to say down the bottom right
there - my eyes are closed for
the brick bats - that
the Chinese at the 400th
anniversary of Cheng Ho which
I was privileged to go and
lecture there, were not happy
to find that Cheng Ho most
likely did not come and if he did
come, there's no evidence of it.
It's very interesting, nations
like India and China now
casting off the shackles of
their earlier colonialism are
very keen not to ever again
allow a colonial power to do
what they did to them and to
have been able to show Cheng
Ho in a deservedly bright
light to them is a very
important thing.
However it's not to be.
So the actual evidence for the
primacy lies with the Dutch.
Here is a lovely photo from
NASA taken inside the space
shuttle across to Dirk Hartog
and the plate therefore -
because it is the only proof
of this primacy of visitation
to Indigenous shores
- becomes priceless.
And the first thing that's
occurred in recent times
behind the scenes at the
Museum has been work on
the de Vlamingh plate.
It's been led by Ian MacLeod
and groups of other folk
(and Ian has just arrived).
The science bit is far too
much for people like me who
haven't got right angles in
their dictionary and my great
skill is building chook runs but
there's all sorts of work that
those who are
scientifically-bent can follow.
These are some of the
images in Ian's report.
What I tend to do with
these scientists is read the
abstract and the conclusion
and the abstract is there.
I'm really pleased - I won't
give you death by PowerPoint -
I'm really pleased that
it's come out quite well.
Because of its status it
required the attention of
these folk: it not only has
preserved the plate for the
future but allows it to be
properly housed and presented
in this Museum in absolute
best practice and I would have
to say learning a little bit
of Ian's work that it's also a
pointer for those owning
the Dirk Hartog plate.
The other thing that occurred
very much for us in this post
1980s, 1990s, was the change
in perception of Dirk Hartog
Island from purely
a Dutch place.
It has a lot more going for it
and you'll notice the presence
between the laying of the
Hartog Plate and the
de Vlamingh plate of William
Dampier's arrival.
You'll also see the arrival of
Macassans and St Aloüarn -
a Frenchman and other French folk
including Rose de Freycinet.
The fact that Dampier is
forgotten in the middle of
this I think is related to our
Dutch-centric approach here in
Western Australia, with
Dampier way ahead of even
Cook and Banks in being our
first natural historian,
in describing the flora and
fauna, in even making a
collection which
can be viewed today.
In fact it is Dampier who
first saw the Sturt Pea and
it should be called the
'Dampiera Formosa'.
In fact you can go and see the
Sturt Pea that he collected
in 1699 in London.
I was privileged to be with
Hugh to view that collection.
The plates are now joined
in importance with this,
the proof of the
'French annexation'.
We could have good wines a lot
earlier and there's my good
friend and colleague Bob Sheppard
and myself with the coin as found.
These join the Dutch relics.
We have a very strong French
element now to our work
contrasting and comparing
the Dutch and we even note -
thanks to Nic Bigourdan my
colleague - that the French
were taking note of the VOC.
In fact Nic has translated in
recent times a journal that
was in French of their
interaction with the Dutch,
or their learning of the Dutch.
So we have gone a lot broader
than we once were and one
would suggest that of
course we should have.
But given that we were very
focused in those days with
many, many wrecks to deal
with, many threats to them,
it's logical that we did not but it
is equally logical that we do now.
The Macassans, Rose de
Freycinet, Dampier they're the
first cultural exchange other
than William Dampier's stay at
Cape Leveque - what is now
known as Cape Leveque - with
the Aboriginal people at Shark
Bay with Rose de Freycinet and
of course Rose de
Freycinet's own story.
Today we also get
into the mind of folk.
We get the specialists
to help us do so.
Baudin for example, writing
up there that he couldn't
understand how people could
seize lands, from folk who do
not deserve the name "savages"
as being given to them.
We're looking at a most recent
publication on the one on the
left European Perceptions of
Terra Australis, looking at
the Baudin thing, the way he
was vilely written out of the
voyage, one by myself
on 'Who do you trust?
Discrepancies between official
and unofficial accounts'.
People write for an awful lot
of reasons and the unofficial
accounts are often the truest
but coming back to the VOC,
an extremely important chapter
in this book on this one here,
'Changing Perceptions of Terra
Australis through the prism
of the Batavia shipwreck', a
very learned piece of work and
quite long, which I recommend to
anybody interested in the perceptions.
So we've gone from the picture
on the left which was produced
at the time that Phil and Hugh
and Max Cramer and everyone
else was doing their work, to
around about the time, in the
'80s and so on with this map
by Scott Sledge showing a much
broader interest in the
colonial sites, to this one
here which is the most modern
showing that we've really
burgeoned in our interests
as one would expect.
I love this - the common man.
We do have many, many Dutch
scholars working with us
nowadays and they're looking
at it from a wide variety of
perspectives including
of course the art.
One would hesitate to say that
would represent the group here
but I think it's a wonderful
thing that we have.
But talking about the common
man, we have literature that
looks for all of us.
Peter FitzSimons' I think
is more for those not too
interested in the truth but a
good story and I must tell you
Peter's a friend and I
assisted him with the work and
he knows what I believe.
It's a good story but there's
a lot of Peter in there.
My preference of course is
for some of those by our
colleagues here and of course
Mike Dash's work which, I think,
is without par.
You'll see there Phillip
Playford's Carpet of Silver
and lots of Hugh
Edwards' work.
You might not have
seen this thing here.
It's a graph that I ran across
accidentally showing the
publications and the Batavia
of course is really one that's
been published so often going
right back to the numbers of
works that you see here
in this little bar graph.
Lots of scholars at work
now in Holland and so on,
initially wondering what
Jeremy Green, Myra or Pat
Baker and company were doing
here are now realising their
own importance and you're
finding Dutch scholars
realising that theirs was
the first multinational.
Theirs was the first
company to issue stock.
Theirs was the
first to mint money.
Theirs was able to
wage war as a company.
I know a lot of the Americans
would like to do that - some of
the neocons I suppose, and they were
the first to establish colonies.
Our studies and studies that
have come to our attention
have also shown us the terrible
brutality of colonialism.
And I've got to tell you,
I don't think anything has changed.
The British were not immune
from the Dutch brutality but
I've got to tell you that every
colonial power does it to
every other group
that they colonise.
There are obviously negatives
and positives in what every
group does and here is the
extraordinary breadth of the
Dutch East-India bases around
the ocean and they are being
studied now individually
by many scholars.
Research papers are
coming in very regularly,
some beautifully illustrated,
some giving contemporary
illustrations and so on.
This one, as the editor of The Great
 Circle - I received just the other day.
Myra had a look at it for me 
and said it was beautifully written.
It's interesting in
its title though.
It's the transfer
of knowledge.
So again as I was saying,
we're getting away from purely
the objects in the ships into
sometimes people's minds and
this one on the right here by
Peter Reynders, Why did the
Largest Corporation
in the World go Broke?
and this of course, he's
referring to the VOC.
Rupert, one of our good
friends of the Museum is
a great supporter and did an
awful lot of work chasing the
Gilt Dragon folk and other stories,
a great scholar actually.
Even though many people were
not that impressed with some
of his work, especially in
linguistics, I would have to
say that across the board
Rupert has been extremely good
and his latest just before
he died was on the Immenhorn
which was a voyage known I
think only to Jeremy Green,
Jim Henderson and Myra and
a few others but little known
to other people as a
visitation to this coast.
The universities have grabbed
the VOC with alacrity.
The universities: Flinders
here, many overseas,
Gothenburg of course,
Notre Dame over here with
Shane Burke and UWA of course.
That's one of the course
structures over there and one
of those manifestations is
Bob Sheppard's Honours at UWA.
So from this, which was the
fixation we had- which is a
wonderful fixation I've got
to tell you - there's myself
well-dressed as usual on
bottom right, Geoff Kimpton
our chief diver, Bob Richards.
'Fixation' is the wrong word but
concentration on the objects
underwater, to this and this is where
we are today with the Gilt Dragon.
I got hammered by a scholar
just yesterday for using the
words "Gilt Dragon" and
quite rightly so but as you saw,
I struggle with the
words sometimes.
I find "Gilt Dragon" so much
easier and so I apologise for
the Dutch amongst you for
not saying "Vergulde Draeck".
This is where Bob has been
concentrating and I've stolen
some of Myra's slides here
which you'll recognise and
I've got to say we were a bit late,
more than a bit late in getting there.
I think we should have
been here a lot earlier.
A key question that Bob
has answered and he now has
brought the archaeological
community along with him in
answering this question.
I'm hoping Bob will also tell
the story of Alan Robinson,
the great 'pirate', because
this is very much part of it
just as much as some of the
pirates have been part of
everything else
we've ever done.
Peter and Jill
Worsley are here.
Their book Windswept Coast,
the illustration is from there
and they've done wonderful
work in putting the Dutch
within a broader context.
And here is Bob's
Honours thesis.
I was pleased to be a
supervisor of it and here
is Bob with the famous Gilt
Dragon urn which he's just had
studies returned to him from
Japan which are - not the urn,
the incense urn, yep it's not
an incense urn - but he'll
tell you more about that in
the lecture coming up and
there he is with Peter Veth,
one of our great archaeologists.
Bob's lecture is on
the 12th of this month.
I'm not going to pre-empt it
except to say that Bob has
examined the land camps over
the last 12 years plus the
stories and he has come to a
conclusion that got him the
Honours degree and he is part
of a group that is going up
there to examine
some of his findings.
The question that Bob is
attending to is:
"What happened to those 68 men?",
"What happened to those who 
were lost looking for the Dragon?"
and I'm not going to say
anymore except to tell you
that he also has a blog which
we often reproduce on our
Facebook we have Facebook,
Twitter and all those things nowadays.
Always you get hoaxes and one
of the things Wendy did was to
have a look at one of the
hoaxes to do with the Dragon
which appears just north of
here and it did appear soon
after the wrecks were found
in this form here on rocks.
It's been seized upon by
numerous people who insist
that it's real and that
'whoever' at the Museum who
don't have any expertise in
these sorts of things and of
course when you don't have
expertise,
you bring in those who do have it.
The engraving is here today.
You can see down the bottom
here and Wendy and her
associates have shown
that it's almost certainly
contemporary with the finding
of the wreck and the fact that
in between the time it was
first seen in this picture and
this one here, if it was going to
get to that stage in 40 years,
how did it last for
300 is an obvious question?
But she's attended to all
sorts of issues like the fonts
that are used and so on and
so on and some wonderful work.
We've also had to deal with
in the back rooms things like
Henry's work, Henry claiming
that there was a Dutch
settlement here and so on.
The evidence for it
is limited at best.
We're a public institution and
I'm a public archaeologist.
So we're developing
exhibitions and we're
spreading ourselves around
and the Dutch need to be seen
today in the context of the
great oceanographic events.
Edmund Matuta, a great
favourite of mine, the voyages
of the Portuguese and the thing at
the bottom there is Nick Burningham's.
I would say a pretty
definitive work on what Cheng
Ho's boats really did look
like and I'm using "Cheng Ho"
as an Anglicised version.
Nick has done his estimates
and gives it about 57 metres
as a maximum for that sort of thing
and Nick will publish on that in time.
Some of the materials that
we have are sent over.
Here's the artefact
management team at the time.
Why they're wearing crash
helmets I don't know but it seems
that that's the thing we have to
do nowadays and 'High Viz' vests.
It's a great picture and the
Dutch were so keen on what was
happening here with Myra,
Jennifer, Wendy and Ross that
they sent this container over
which was suitably inscribed
on all sides with wonderful
VOC images and so on and this
particular one was on
its way to an exhibition.
So, that's how they appeared but
they have been shown in recent
years throughout Holland and
there's some quite beautiful
exhibits that have focused on
the Dutch and of course the
Dutch now are rightly
very proud of their Dutch
shipwrecks and the works
that Jeremy and company have
pioneered and are now
returning back to them in this form.
And there's some of the
objects at the bottom and the
middle slide, the one I've
squished in, pays homage to
those artefact managers who so
wonderfully pack and send and
catalogue and do all the
things that I'm hopeless in doing.
We also have sent exhibitions
to the regions Geraldton of
course, one at Kalbarri there.
There's a new one down in the
Shipwreck Museum crediting the
finders of the Gilt Dragon of
which Graeme Henderson -
our former Director and one of
the
leaders of our colonial wreck
program - is here today and
it's really, I think very
correct that we give due
credence to the finders,
the Hughs, the Maxs, the
Phils and all the others.
Most recently an exhibition
at the Concert Hall with
Geoff Kimpton's magnificent
model of the Batavia there.
For a man who builds facades
and ships and was once brought
out up from 1,000 feet
underwater in a 'Big Jim'
suit, he's just shown remarkable skill in producing this model.
And then we got ourselves
all our objects repatriated.
It's quite interesting, the
Dutch were repatriated and
there's Wendy and the Dutch
Consul and the Minister and
of course Alec, Jeremy and
the Minister again and the
Premier - such an event.
Behind the scenes there's an
enormous amount of management
of these things.
Here's our artefact management
team at work cataloguing and
also they have audits,
regular audits to ensure that
everything is where it
should be, even down to the
appropriate drawer and so on.
So, it's very important that
this be done but you don't
hear about it, you don't get
to see it but there is a team that
get involved under Myra's
good guidance in doing so.
As public archaeologists we're
committed to the Museum, of
course and of course the New
Museum is very much on our
horizon, with Corioli from our
staff now very much embedded
within the New Museum and with
its curators joining us only
today for a tour to see what sort
of crossovers there may have been.
The little girl and the little
boy on the right are the most
magnificent pictures because
again - I like to hark back
and I know lots of other
people do - to the Indigenous
links that we have.
And with the Zuytdorp after
1986, our horizons lifted from
the silver much to the people
and the most magnificent
picture I think that we have
in the collection of Charlie
Mallard with the console
from the Zuytdorp, the most
magnificent human picture with
the exception of Samson I would suggest.
So here we are
focusing elsewhere.
Here's Geoff Kimpton and our
on-site conservator which
again, is a major
behind-the-scenes issue
conservation which you
don't see much about.
Jon Carpenter looking at this
most glorious officer's cup,
a glass that Geoff recovered
from the Zuytdorp with the
wreck behind but I would say
equally important is an
original of the sort of plate
that they hammered to make the
Hartog and de Vlamingh plates.
But our focus needed a site
plan and any good shipwreck
site plan has to be good to
enable you to say the sorts
of things you want to say
about what it means.
Here however, we actually used
aerial photography and there's
Geoff, also a
very good artist.
We actually did the work
underwater with a builder's
tape, one of those
retractable ones.
To do so, we used aerial
photography and here,
DOLA put in huge amounts of effort
for us in putting a graticule
across the wreck, allowing us
to see through the water and
then for Geoff - I hold the
zero end of tapes by the way,
I need to tell you - for
Geoff to measure the distance
between the rocks and between
this anchor and that anchor
and the rocks that we could
see in that picture and that
was how we came to have our
site plan, the one that you see here.
Thanks also to a man called
Stanley Hewitt, a retired
architect draftsman who
one day came in looking for
something to do and very
quickly got onto that.
Volunteers are very much a big
part of the Museum and I see
Curtis here today and numerous
others like the Worsleys and
other folk here who help us,
Jill and others who are in the
gallery, "Copper" John there the
Whole load of folk who assist us.
It's essential.
The big question though is this.
And our work was able to
show that Phil Playford's
postulation that they got
off, his record of there being
evidence of occupation at the
top was possible, using this
record that we put because
even though it comes from
a scholar such as Phil, these
things have to be tested.
We now know the Zuytdorp
actually lay up against
the reef because the
bell of the Zuytdorp is
actually stuck here in the 
reef. It's not on the ground.
It's there and that can only
have been there if something
was supporting it,
as it fixed in.
That was Stanley
image by the way.
He was also an
artist of some note.
So to answer it we bring in
our best archaeologists that
we can get at the time
to answer the questions.
There's Jon Carpenter taking
video of Fiona Weaver and
Richard Cassells and we
actually took a quantum leap
and brought in a metal
detector who actually brought
himself in to the
program, Bob Sheppard.
And Bob was actually wanting
to write a novel on the
Zuytdorp and then very quickly
told us of his skills and they
were applied in searching for
the movement of the survivors
away from the wreck using
metallic objects that
obviously the Aboriginal
people would not have used.
At the time this was
seriously looked down upon.
We also took the Museum's then
watch keeper, Dom Lamera who
had been hunting for the Dutch
in his own right and he joined
and took us to all the wells
and soaks and with Bob and
with that list of pretty
high-powered archaeologists
below, we examined the wells
and soaks that Bob was able to
point, that Dom was able to show
us and Geoff and I were able to find.
The Zuytdorp has also been a
watershed in the use of metal
detection in maritime
in archaeology.
Here, Bob normally trails a
chain behind him which marks
the ground that he's been
- so thorough - and here is
something that we used up
at Wale Well with Phillip
Playford in making sure that
he was able to say
"I've been through everything.
It's just the car tracks."
But what has happened in the
joining of his metal detection
work with the archaeologists
and going for minimum
disturbance and placing flags
of different colours to
indicate what metal lies
beneath - this for copper,
this for iron, this for silver
- we are able to tell the
archaeologists, "Well if you
don't dig over there, you're
going to miss that over there,"
and in fact, if it had
not been for Bob, the French
bottle at Dirk Hartog Island
would still be there today.
So the Zuytdorp has seen the
introduction of heritage metal
detection skills under Bob and
his son Zack, into maritime
archaeology: with St Aloüarn,
the French wreck Perseverant,
Ned Kelly's work, Batavia's
Graveyard, Long Island and the Gilt Dragon.
So, interesting development
there and not without quite
some considerable effort
on our part and Bob's in
validating the study but it's
there now thanks to Bob.
There was no Dutch -
Indigenous interaction at the
Zuytdorp that we can prove.
Kate here, is at our
normal afternoon sundowner
contemplating the fact that
she has dated the Aboriginal
sites to four to five
thousand years BP.
We also supported Phillip who
joined - very kindly joined -
our team to assist us and let
us know what he knew about the
place and its people and
the Indigenous sites, in his
postulation that the Dutch
moved north to a place called
Wale Well which you'll see
just at the bottom of Dirk
Hartog Island - sorry, of
Shark Bay - and that they
would be there and thanks
to Bob and Tony Cockbain who
actually found the object,
this relic was found.
Phil equally importantly
was able to show that these
objects are from the Kalbarri
region and that they had been
moved the 70 or so miles north
by Aboriginal folk in trade.
So what this has proven to us
is that there certainly was
movement of Aboriginal
cultural material in the
region behind the wreck.
What we don't think has
happened is that they were
actually living
near the coast.
Phillip has plans to go back there
and that has the support of the Museum.
Our works are there -
Phillip's award-winning Carpet
of Silver there, my own
technical reports and so on
and those things appear
as one would expect.
However, we were beaten -
Geoff and I and the rest of us
who like to push it a bit -
by the advent of health and
safety legislation and the
wheels literally fell off.
It got that stupid that we
weren't even allowed to take
the four wheel drive into
the field because Lend Lease
wouldn't let you take your
four wheel drive in without
great sort of penalties
and all that sort of stuff.
Geoff by the way is at the
bottom of that line you can
see in the bottom left,
there's a line going into the
water and he's at the bottom
of that and that's yours truly
jumping in at the top.
Deb's only seen these
pictures of late.
So that was the end of our
field work for that period.
However, we didn't stop.
Wendy became a fundamental
part of it all.
Here's her report on the scans
of that console, beginning to
study the dendrochronology,
the timbers and so on.
This is an enormous
ramification.
Some of her work is leading to
the realisation that some of
the timbers used on some of
our ships were actually also
some of the timbers used
to frame some of the great
artworks of the world. 
Interesting stuff.
More to come and this
is part of her report.
As always, scholars
don't always agree.
Wendy also helped develop a
group to look at the ingots
that Geoff and I raised over
the years, a very important
study, very interesting
study in trade, those ingots.
Some wonderful work Jim
Stedman - one of the
archaeologists from UWA - led
as part of his Honours and
Wendy put it together in an
internationally-recognisable form.
Wendy is big on different
spelling, being Dutch and all
that and insisted that "It's
this." However, what we've
learnt is that there are many
ways of spelling it and we've
stayed here in Western
Australia with the ones
that we've been led to from
the earlier scholars.
Arguments continue.
As I said, I got it in the
neck about using Gilt Dragon
and then how the way we'd
spelt "Zeewijk" in the flyer,
just about a day
before I came here.
It all ended nicely but
that's how it works.
There was also a hoax on the
Zuytdorp which again some of
the so-called specialists in
rock art demanded that it was
real but Phillip quite clearly
showed that it was not.
Apart from Wendy who showed
that it was not from other
reasons, there being a
wonderful picture on the
bottom right which was part of
Phillip's early group in
'54, showing the place that the
Zuytdorp inscription was -
with the chappy who's hat is
being blown off because he's
standing in a blowhole - and
the place where the Zuytdorp's
supposed to be, clearly
not there in 1954.
So that inscription clearly post-dates
'54, thanks to some images.
Hoaxes sometimes go beyond
that and Dominic - sad to say,
not only under amnesty
declared some beautiful coins
but didn't declare a lot of the
Schellingen and eventually
later on was dobbed in by a
relative and his silver was
found in his chook run or
somewhere of that nature -
and this is the sort of
behind-the-scenes thing that
Myra, Jen and Wendy and all
the crowd have to deal with,
is looking at these seizures 
and getting everything correct.
They're in those you-beaut
sort of evidence bags and all
that sort of stuff.
You don't see this.
You don't hear about it.
This is one of the other
things is our links to the
general public and other
interests in research groups
of which this one is very
strong - or was and they're
very strong and did some
beautiful work - but they were
very strong on the issue
of the Indigenous European
connections as one of the
things and so are the Dutch.
The Dutch love it.
These are a couple of excerpts
from Dutch works on the blonde
Aborigines but to date none
of that has been resolved.
The Porphyria Variegata link,
which was very keen at one
stage, has been shown not to
have any greater than a normal
incidence in populations.
So while they are allowed to
do that and can do that, we
have to be much more circumspect
in the way we manage such things.
Down the bottom there's an
interesting new book on the
Zuytdorp - Peter Purchase -
and we also have to point -
and sometimes not to pleasure
to those who point elsewhere -
to other issues such as the
landing of 120 Malay boys
between ages 12 to 14 on
this ship, the Xantho.
They are from Batavia.
So if you look to Dutch genes
in the population of Shark Bay,
one would have to look
first to the Malay folk who
were abandoned quite often by
Charles Broadhurst and many of
whom stayed and became the mainstays
of the Shark Bay population.
We also need to look at this
again, often considered to be
a Dutch East-Indiaman.
Colin Jack-Hinton from the Museum, one
of the people who suggested it was.
It lies at Walga Rock inland
from Kalbarri and Stanley,
my artist, had a look at this
and this was sort of quite
incidental in his preparation
of another image of Zuytdorp,
in the suggestion that
this is a mainmast.
That thing in the middle of the
Aboriginal paint picture is a mast.
It appears however that it
- and if I can draw your
attention also to the sail -
it appears however that it's
equally likely to be a
steamship which Ian Crawford
called me one day and said
"Could your Xantho have had guns?"
and I said "No Ian but it could
have had false gun ports,"
and he said - as did Charlie
Dortch soon after - felt that
it's possible that the Walga
Rock painting is actually a
steamship with what they call a
"woodbine funnel" to create a big draft.
Gun ports were common on
steamers and on sailing ships
but in those days the other day we
realised thanks to Alex Kilpa
- one my colleagues - that so
too were rectangular scuttles
on passenger steamers and
the Xantho for example was
a passenger steamer - a paddle
steamer before being converted
to a screw steamer.
So, if we put our rectangular
scuttles on our supposed
Xantho then we need to accept
that the Walga Rock painting
could equally be a steam ship.
I have an Honours student now
studying that as part of her Honours.
The other thing I'd suggest to
you is the lateen sail which
is shown on all the Dutch
East-India ships does not
match the sail in our Walga
Rock picture which shows more
readily a 19th Century mizzen.
One other study that we've got
involved in of course is this
one with the Zuytdorp, station
folk who found the wreck.
Their built heritage, their
social heritage and members
of the team are here today who
have joined with us,
Karen Bassett from the Museum.
This is one of Phillip's plans
from one of his early ones
showing the wreck site
and their built heritage.
I would suggest to you this is
extremely important to preserve.
Equally too, 'Betties' at the
bend of the Murchison River
where a lot of them lived and
there's the most remarkable
oral histories and we have to
preserve these before a fire goes through.
And luckily the team, some
shown here and were able to
find at least a
number of them.
We still have
some more to find.
Zeewijk magnificent image.
Chris Halls, Marcus Conrad in
The Countryman - Old wreck may
be the Aagtekerke because
these two divers had just been
diving up there and had found
tusks and there on the left
is Max Cramer, the late Max
Cramer and Hugh Edwards.
And the suggestion that this
could be the Aagtekerke and
not the Zeewijk at the time,
was very well-founded because
here is some research that was
produced by Robert Parthesius
showing that only three ships
that only one ship actually
carried tusks of the three
missing in Western Australia -
or missing possibly in Western
Australia Fortuyn, Aagtekerke
and Zeewijk - and only Aagtekerke
had tusks as part of its cargo.
So, for Chris Halls to suggest
that the divers in following
Aagtekerke were right, is
absolutely to be expected.
The Museum arrives in the form
of Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg
who now trundles along on her
scooter and writes children's
books in Sweden it was
her job that I took.
When she left to chase a
Swedish prince, the job came
up and I was pleased to get 
it. There's her report.
You can read every one of them. 
They're all on the web.
Here is her site plan showing
the wreck out at sea, the area
searched and you can see
there the cannons and so on.
Here is the work that was done
on the island in searching for
the relics and so on and here
is two of our great notables
in shipwreck archaeology
on the island conducting a
magnetometer search Jeremy
Green and Graeme Henderson.
They also did a magnetometer
search out of a helicopter.
That helicopter is trialling
a magnetometer and leading
Graeme to conclude when only
one wreck was found, other
than the ones, colonial ones
known, that the Aagtekerke
is most likely not on the Half
Moon Reef, or certainly not
in the southern Abrolhos.
There's Catharina's
work there.
We've got into the mind
a bit here, nowadays.
Martin Gibbs' shipwreck
survivor camps.
Lots of interesting things
now being done by folk that
we hadn't even dreamt of and
of course this is one of the
reasons why archaeologists
have to present and record
to the 'nth' degree.
Hugh never forgot about
the ivory and then obtained
backing from Kerry Stokes
had Fugro fly for him a
magnetometer search and
presented his reasons.
I must take some
credit for this Hugh.
When he and I went up to Max
Cramer's funeral we discussed
this a lot and though I said
to Hugh, "I don't think so.
I think Hugh that you should
present your case," and Hugh
did so, to some effect, to
the Museum and presented the
evidence that he had been
given from Fugro and so on,
such that it caused the
Museum's Maritime Archaeology
Advisory Committee, again
a behind-the-scenes thing,
to talk about the work that he was
doing and what's required further.
Most recently Hugh has been
back to follow more research
and he's received quite
some press on the subject.
He's also received the backing
of the Museum in it and here
you see the Dutch Embassy
asking also for support to
commence research in
following up his work.
One of my students - Csilla
here, quite a brilliant young
girl, a family excellent in
archives could read old Dutch -
so I had her look at the
story of the Fortuyn to see
where that might be and you'll
see on the bottom left there
at a meeting that Nic
Bigourdan's attending for us,
one of the subjects is the
search for the Fortuyn and
you'll see amongst those
things, HMAS Sydney, AE1, AE2
a much more rounded approach to
shipwrecks there but Fortuyn is part of it.
Csilla has concluded that it 
may be at Christmas or at Cocos.
Robert's report came in
assisted by the Foundation and
Robert's conclusions are
that he doesn't think so.
However, when he was part of
the group that was here, like
the group which was chaired by
Graeme Henderson with Jeremy
there, the conclusion was that
even though some don't think
so, the work still must be
done and because there has to
be final proof.
As I've said to Hugh - because
I like
to have my two bob's worth -
"Hugh, there's much more here About
where the Sloepie was built".
There's the wonderful stories
of the people and one of the
great things you've done Hugh
- whether the wreck is found
or not - is to put a focus
back on the Zeewijk such that
we can now understand
it in better terms.
Csilla for example, then took
on a much bigger work for us
and Jeremy and I supervised
this one, on providing a
database, a modern database of
the losses from the VOC ships,
the Batavia and Zeewijk.
It's great stuff.
Modern young scholars are just
wonderful in the way that they
get about things but here she
has listed all those who are
expected to be possibly still
buried or were buried before
the Broadhurst's guano
industry from the Zeewijk.
Jeremy and others have begun
ensuring that archives are
searched and there's also been
searches of the work and the
reports of those who first
saw Zeewijk records -
sorry Zeewijk material
- on the reefs.
Again, you can read them all.
Finally, only a week or two
ago Jeremy came back from the
Abrolhos and produced this
report which again you can
read, on his looking at
dereferencing a 36-year-old survey plan.
The point being made is that
the work that Catharina and
others had done, could not be
properly referenced in modern
terms to the standards we
require and here for example,
airborne magnetometry
happening, you need pinpoint
accuracy with these things
even though you can cover
great ground very quickly.
Here's the sorts of
results that you get.
Here for example are three
indicators of a shipwreck up
at Ningaloo, one proving to be
the Correio Da Azia, another
being a shipwreck that was
not even in the records and
we apparently know nothing of
it just yet even though Graeme
has been exhaustive in his
research for 'Unfinished
Voyages' but this wreck appears
in Indigenous legend.
So it's interesting that the
Aboriginal stories have been
proven in this case.
This is what we're looking to
do what Jeremy's done in the
interim is match the Fugro
data with the data from
Catharina using a rock, a huge
great rock which appears on
both plans - the Fugro plan
and Catharina's plan shown on
that red arrow top right and
what he has found is that they
do match to within good
parameters and now we're
into the next stage where we
can start going with Hugh and
Fugro and others to
finalise that work.
We are public archaeologists.
We work in the gallery.
We like to have the people
around us when we work.
I think that's the
essence of a good museum.
I learnt this watching Geoff
Kimpton build the Batavia.
He was in there in his
overalls and when he wasn't
welding and swearing as I told
the people from the New Museum
today, the gallery was open and
people could watch him at work.
That's a true living museum.
Here's Wendy at work doing her
shipwreck - her ship studies
and she has a course in it
now, at Flinders University.
A beautiful picture of
Wendy and Bill Leonard.
The great Bill Leonard, for
those who don't know, built
Endeavour and Duyfken and the
set for Master and Commander.
New work on old ships.
The trouble is it's all
rotting away and there's
Vicki Richards, one of our
conservators again behind the
scenes looking at the problem
of acid formation in the
Batavia timbers, caused by
sulphate-reducing bacteria.
It's there in
every one of them.
It's there in the Viking
ships, in Mary Rose, in Vasa,
in the Bremen Cog.
And she has worked with her
colleagues, Ian MacLeod, Ian
Godfrey and many others,
to go overseas to assist them
and also to come back with
the answers for here.
Again, behind the scenes.
Again something you won't see
or hear much of unless you
read those sorts of journals.
As I said, read the
abstract and the conclusion.
That's the easiest way.
They're onto it well.
Other studies you don't see
are Walter Bloom's, lectures
to the Numismatic community
and they're always interested
in all sorts of esoteric
things, as collectors are and
they have every right to all
this sort of information and
it's out there
in our databases.
But most interestingly, on
top of one of his older things
I've superimposed a new thing.
Now, I bet none of you can
handle this 'laser ablation
inductively coupled
plasma mass spectrometry'
Elemental Finger Printing being
run by some of the team
Liesel Gentilli doing her PhD on
top of the work that Walter's
doing and this is behind the scenes,
including DNA work on that ivory.
The graveyards, the wreck,
our commitment to the divers,
to kids, the underwater
display case, the
Museum-Without-Walls.
Your Museum is the first to
establish a wreck trail in the
Southern Hemisphere.
We like to see ourselves as
leaders and we have to work
hard to stay there and we do
that with some of the young
folk that we've
now taken on board.
This is still a beautiful
picture Henrietta over the top
of the remains of the Batavia.
What this also does is show
you how small a part of the
wreck we actually have because
it's stretched all the way up
to those anchors.
If you're going and having a
look
today look for the hole in the reef.
In fact, it's exactly what I
said to some of my friends who
were trundling up there for a dive -
the McLean's - how to find it.
I said "Look for the hole
in the reef," and they did.
There Pat Baker has
superimposed the ship over it.
There today you can have a
look and see Jeremy in that hole.
You can just go and Google
that and you can actually take
this tour, in a virtual sense.
So we've actually changed and gone
a long way beyond where we were.
Declaring of historic listing
under the Heritage Acts and so
on something that's taken a
while but now is well in place.
The terrestrial sites at
Beacon Island and Long Island.
The commencements of
the excavations in 2001.
The continuation of Martin
Gibbs's work on survival
strategies, there a thesis by
Ben Marwick, based upon things
- and again one of Myra's
slides - based upon all sorts
of things and reports
different to the ones that
we used to deal with.
The advent of the
young into our world.
Post-disaster behaviour and
this is one of course that
many of you know a bit about.
One of the most horrific
pictures I think in the collection.
Nothing seems to change it appears.
And of course some of these,
the good in the bad, is that
you're able then to use some
of these remains to answer
questions about health and
welfare and so on, of these
people and of course,
helping to tell their story.
Here's Myra and Juliet Pasveer,
one of the forensic scientists.
Another team of forensic
scientists here.
They had to chuck some poor
person out needing an
MRI scan, it appears.
Other experts and the papers
are just extraordinary.
Dan Franklin.
Here we have Dr Watling's.
And then of course this
is what excites everyone but
I challenge any of you and I'm
going to - I'm not going to
donate my head to the job -
but I was going to say that
what should happen is they
should be given a head of
somebody who we all know and
be given the job of seeing if
it works and whether it looks
anything like that head.
A fairly simple thing to do but I
would have thought but I'll keep
mine on for now thanks. 
But isn't it fantastic stuff.
Apparently it is based on
science and there's
Stephen Knott doing his work.
This is all stuff that's
coming out and of course
Csilla's databases and then
some wonderful stuff that's
been happening with the Dutch
archives, finding the original
documents and reading them.
Here, you'll see Pelsaert's
- Francisco Pelsaert's signature.
Beacon Island survey
is underway now.
Ground-penetrating radar. 
There's Bob on Beacon Island.
There's the places that the
team, including myself, were
part of in the survey
of Long Island.
They were the reports.
You've probably all seen the
Time Team and how good 'GeoPhys' is.
Well 'GeoPhys' sometimes doesn't
work and ground-penetrating radar
has not proved successful 
on Beacon Island.
Here is the beginnings of the
regreening, first that patch
you see which is the
beginnings of the removal
of parts of the vegetation to
examine where there may be
graves and that's been
returned back to natural.
The removal of the shacks.
This amazing work being
undertaken here by some of our
scientists from UWA
and Curtin University.
Why he was doing that I didn't
know until I'd seen him and of
course some of the
more common things.
If you're going to remove these
things you must record them.
Why?
Because the fishers are just
as much an important part of
our society as anything else
and if you're going to remove
evidence of their wonderful
work for the economy and for
themselves as society,
you must record it.
Now look at this.
Paul Bourke and company.
This is some of
the 3D records.
There's the Minister
announcing the removal
of the huts and this is a bubble
thingy inside the huts.
So the huts have been recorded
before they're removed, in a
form that you can then
disassemble and see exactly
as the school room on
Beacon Island was.
One of the living huts
and my favourite, this.
Then of course the islands
need to be protected while the
archaeology occurs and this is
occurring right now, such that
the ground can't be disturbed
in the interim as a team
called the Roaring Forties
team goes up there and
commences its work on a grant
that was received to look at
these sites and to
apply new technology.
I think Geoff and I will have
a quiet bet as to whether they
can produce a plan as good as
ours for Zuytdorp and Stanley
but you know, we'll
see how they go.
The gauntlet's thrown down.
This is the team.
That's the people you saw,
early on, plus some of our
staff who are not on the team.
It's quite an amazing team,
right from all around the
world that is now going to
take the East-India studies
and some of the pre-colonial
wrecks including the Rapid
which Graeme worked and so on
and do their sort of science
and all those wonderful
things with it.
So, watch this space and they
hopefully will achieve these aims.
One of the things they will do
is present at a thing called
IKUWA in 2016 which is a major
conference that's happening
here and you see there in
the middle the team that has
brought IKUWA to us.
On the left, the old
schoolbook which I still use
on the Maritime Exploration
of Australia by Jacob and
Vellios, a school group of
young scientists coming in to
talk to our conservators,
Ian Godfrey and co and on the
right and to finish off, the
development of a website by
Carmelo Amalfi which you'll
see Hugh there as part of the
launch with the National Trust
and the Dutch Ambassador.
Thank you.
Audience applause
