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PREFACE.

Table of Contents

When the chart of the Duyfken first came to my notice, I recognised that I had before me a fascinating document--a copy of the earliest record of the history of Australia as transcribed by the hand of man. It so interested me that I wrote an article upon it, which was published in two instalments in the Sydney Morning Herald on the 2nd and 9th of December, 1933.

My interest continued. I had made a visit to Java in 1929, returning convinced of the importance to Australia of these near-neighbour countries, of which we know so little, and with a profound respect for the Dutch as colonisers. It was therefore a congenial task I set myself when I resolved to find out what was known about the Dutch navigator who in 1606 sailed from Bantam to explore the southern coast of New Guinea, and extended his voyage to make the first discovery of Australian shores.

Who was Willem Jansz, or Janszoon (in plain English, William Johnson), the captain of the Duyfken? Who was Jan Lodewycksz van Roossengin, the Sub-cargo? What were the circumstances under which the expedition was made? What did they have to say about the strange new country they had found?

I searched in vain, in Dutch and Australian histories, for a connected narrative of the voyage. The log of the Duyfken had been lost. Like many another document of historical importance, its value was unrecognised by those who handled it in those busy and exciting early years of the Dutch East India Company. We do not have to go far from home to find examples of the same indifference and neglect.

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If the log, or copies of it, were sent to the headquarters of the company at Amsterdam, they may have been sent to the company's cartographers for the preparation of charts, and not returned; or some iconoclastic clerk may have decided that they took up too much room on the shelves of the record room, and sent them to the incinerator or the pulping-mill, or even to the butcher's; or through careless storage, they may have merely decayed. I do not exclude the possibility that they were stolen, but whatever happened, they disappeared.

There is some evidence that they were sought for in the Indies in 1616, without success; and it is certain that some particulars of the voyage, and a copy of the chart, were available to Jan Carstensz, who followed the Duyfken's track when he went to the Gulf of Carpentaria in command of the Pera and Arnhem in 1623.

Willem Jansz, the captain of the Duyfken, was then an Admiral, and a member of the Council of the Indies, but he was with his fleet in the Philippines when arrangements for the Carstensz voyage were made, and had scarcely returned to Batavia before Carstensz left Amboina. For that reason, Carstensz would have proceeded without the knowledge which Jansz could have given him, which accounts for the paucity of information about the Duyfken voyage in the Pera's log and chart.

The Duyfken chart had a better fate than the log or journal. It was still in existence in Amsterdam when Hessel Gerritsz made his Map of the Pacific in 1622, and placed the Duyfken geography upon it, thus providing us with the first map that contains any part of Australia; it was still in existence about 1670, when a copy was made, which eventually went to the Imperial Library in Vienna and remained buried there for 200 years.

With this copy of the chart as a beginning, I have made searches through the Dutch material available in Australia, the result of which is embodied in the following pages. Piecing together like a mosaic the items so gathered, it is here shown for the first time in English that Willem Jansz was in all probability the Willem Jansz who first went to the Indies in 1598, and, of a certainty, was the Willem Jansz who made a second discovery of the Australian coast in 1618. (Incidentally, on this voyage,

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as Supercargo of the Mauritius, he had with him Anthony van Diemen, travelling as a naval cadet under the assumed name of Teunis Meeuwsen, who became Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies in 1636, and inspired Tasman's voyages in 1642 and 1644.)

Willem Jansz became an Admiral in 1620, and in the following year led a combined Dutch and English fleet against the Spaniards at Manilla.

The Duyfken was possibly the Duyfken of the Dutch first fleet (1595); certainly went to the Indies with Willem Schouten as captain in 1601, and with Willem Jansz as captain in 1603. It was a vessel of 30 lasten or 60 (English) tons, and would have measured about 63 feet in length, 17 or 18 feet in width, with a draught of 7 feet, and carrying 20 men.

The story of the early Dutch discoveries on the coasts of Australia is full of adventure, romance and tragedy. It is a story that has not yet been told. Through these voyages the history of Australia is linked with that of the Dutch East Indies from the very beginning. Jansz, Dirk Hartog, Houtman, Carstensz, Thyssens, Pelsart and Tasman--these and other Dutch discoverers of 1606-1644 commenced the work of placing a continent on the map which Cook triumphantly completed in 1770.

Australia's defence and its economy are as closely linked with the Dutch East Indies as its history, though we have failed to recognise it. The history, literature, science, art, music and trade of these richly-productive and and densely-populated countries which are our nearest northern neighbours are almost a closed book to us. The war has taught us that we must open wide that book of knowledge, if we are to survive as a factor in the Pacific.

T. D. M.

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