Presentation by Roland Spuij President Dutch Australian Cultural CentreFor the Abel Tasman Museum, Lutjegast on 10 October 2022 See also: Historic Maps of the explorers Maps from the Exhibition Maps of the Pacific. Abel Tasman Abel Tasman Museum Lutjegast, Netherlands
Shortly before noon on Thursday 14 August 1986 the Netherlands Antilles flag heavy lift cargo ship ‘GABRIELLA’ capsized and sank alongside No. 2 Products Berth in Port Kembla harbour New South Wales. The ship capsized and sank on its side very rapidly while discharging a lift of 237.95 tonnes. Two Read more…
(Source: Wikipedia) SS Van Heemskerk was a freighter built by N.V. Nederlandsche Scheepsbouw-Maatschappij. The ship of 2,996 Gross register tonnage (GRT) was launched 31 August 1909 and delivered for operation by Koninklijke Paketvaart-Maatschappij (KPM) in the Dutch East Indies trade. Van Heemskerk was one of twenty-one KPM vessels that took Read more…
Most of the vital reinforcement of New Guinea in 1942 and 1943 – during the War in the South West Pacific – including troops, vehicles, weapons and supplies for the Milne Bay, Buna and Gona operations, was undertaken by Dutch vessels. The operation collectively known as Operation Lilliput, used the Read more…
A new book has been published about the doomed fate of the VOC ship the Batavia in 1629. In this case the historical story forms the background to fiction through the eyes of 9 year old Dutch girl Mayken. Read the review of ”The Night Ship” by Jess Kidd as Read more…
The DACC has special relationship with the Abel Tasman Museum in Lutjegast, a town in Groningen, where Abel Tasman was born. There have been visits from Australian to Lutjegast and the other way around. There is more information on their website. The images below are displays from the Abel Tasman Read more…
When the Japanese invaded the Netherlands East Indies (NEI) during February and early March 1942, many Dutch people fled to Australia, most ended up in Darwin and Broome but a few fled via the Gulf of Carpentaria. This remote area of northwest Queensland was so open to invasion that a Read more…
Leeuwin (Lioness) was a Dutch galleon that mapped some of the southwest corner of Australia in March 1622. It was the seventh European ship to sight the continent. Leeuwin‘s logbook has been lost, so very little is known of the voyage. Until 2022, it was not known who captained the Read more…
Dutch settlers in South Australia. Although the Dutch seem to be the first to have discovered Australia, including parts of Tasmania and South Australia, they have never made a great impact as a group of settlers. As there was never any real religious persecution or high unemployment in Holland, there Read more…
The Society was formed in 2000 by a group of history enthusiasts that were: Concerned at the lack of general knowledge about maritime events that took place in the 17th and 18th centuries off and on Western Australia’s (WA) coastline hundreds of years before the settlement of WA in 1829 Read more…