Nationaalarchief Reference number NL-HaNA, VOC, 1.04.02 inv.nr. 1225
The documentary record of the early European explorations of the Western Australian coast is almost entirely preserved in European collections, both public and private. Very little is in Western Australian collections today, though there are exceptions like the group of 18 drawings, engravings, and watercolours associated with the French explorer Louis de Freycinet, purchased at auction in 2002 by the State Library of Western Australia: https://slwa.wa.gov.au/freycinet/
There are also significant items in the older and larger collections of institutions in the eastern states of Australia. An interesting example is the document recording the travels of Alexander Collie and William Preston along the south-west coast of Western Australia in November 1829, which was bought by the State Library of New South Wales in 1936 after being owned by the prodigious English collector Sir Thomas Phillipps and his descendants since the 1860s (SLNSW MSS A2092).
The most important collections of this kind of material are in the archives of the British, Dutch, and French government agencies responsible for activities like exploration, trade, and colonization. The archives of the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, or VOC) contain ships’ logs, maps, charts, and other administrative and financial documents relevant to the 17th and 18th century VOC voyages to New Holland.
There have been many efforts over the years to make historical documents like these more widely available to Western Australian researchers. Transcriptions, translations, and editions have appeared in print, and microfilm copies have been made for Australian libraries. More recently, a growing selection of these materials have been digitized and made accessible over the Web by the institution which holds them. The Australian Joint Copying Project (AJCP) is a good example; between 1948 and 1997, it microfilmed more than 5 million documents from The National Archives and other private and institutional collections in the United Kingdom. These are now being digitized by the National Library of Australia: https://www.nla.gov.au/content/australian-joint-copying-project
A new project of the Western Australian Museum in partnership with the Nationaalarchief of the Netherlands is digitizing ships’ logs from the VOC archives relevant to shipwrecks off the Western Australian coast. Three logs from the record series NL-HaNA, VOC, 1.04.02 are already available: http://museum.wa.gov.au/online-collections/projects/digital-archive-shipwreck-journals
This log was written by the skipper of the Emeloordt – one of the two ships sent from Batavia (Jakarta) in January 1658 to search for survivors from the Vergulde Draeck (Gilt Dragon), which had been wrecked near the present settlement of Ledge Point near Perth in April 1656. They failed to find any survivors, but a boat crew from the second ship, the Waeckende Boey, found what seems to have been some wreckage and a camp site, and may even have seen the wreck itself, if an account published in 1676 is reliable. Both ships saw fires on the shore as they sailed north towards the Abrolhos Islands, and both seem to have encountered the local indigenous people when they went ashore. These are likely to have been from the Yued or Juat group of the Noongar people.
This is a translation of the entry for Monday 11th March 1658 (f. 212v):
"In the morning at sunrise we saw our boat returning from the land in the east where the sea was rough and where a small island lay 1½ miles from the shore and a reef which extends north with very rough sea in between and 2½ miles long along the coast ¾ miles from the beach on the latitude of 30 degrees and 25 miles as I found, and the miscalculation 8 degrees 25 minutes north-westerly. Got our boat on board again at 10 o'clock in the evening. They told us that they had been to 3 houses, and 5 extraordinary persons of a very large build had beckoned them to approach them and, putting their hands under their heads, mimed an invitation to sleep but they, not being stupid enough to put themselves in the hands of such savage people of which we have had good examples, returned to their boat and when they were in their boat they signalled with their lantern and flag that they should come to them but they were very timorous and they could not get them to their boat. When it grew dark they left them and they rested in their boat all night. On land they found many thickets and in some places also cultivated land, which had been burned off, in some places arable or cultivated land, but they saw no fruit except some herbs which had a fragrant scent; saw nothing more of fresh water or trees going inland, but many sand dunes after having walked along the beach as well as inland for 3 miles, but saw many fires burning."
Burrows, Toby. 2018. “The legacy of Sir Thomas Phillipps in Australia and New Zealand”, Script & Print, Vol. 42, No. 2, 94-116
Gerritsen, Rupert. 2011. Selected transcriptions, translations, and collation of information for a textual analysis relating to material evidence from the Vergulde Draeck and the 68 missing crew and passengers from that vessel, reportedly found on the coast of Western Australia in the period 1656 – 1658. Canberra: Batavia Online Publishing.
Heeres, J. E. (ed.) 1899. The part borne by the Dutch in the discovery of Australia 1606-1765. London: Luzac.
Howgego, R. J. 2003. Encyclopedia of exploration to 1800. Potts Point: Hordern House.
Pearson, Michael. 2005. Great Southern Land: the maritime exploration of Terra Australis. Canberra: Department of the Environment and Heritage.
Sigmond, J. P. and Zuiderbaan, L. H. 1995. Dutch discoveries of Australia: shipwrecks, treasures and early voyages off the west coast. Amsterdam: Batavian Lion.
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