The Battle of Milne Bay, fought in August and September 1942, resulted in the first decisive defeat of Japanese land forces during the Pacific War. Australian troops, supported by United States engineers and Allied air power, repelled a Japanese attempt to capture the newly constructed airfields at the eastern end 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
Although the Dutch seem to be the first Europeans 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 never was the kind 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
Derk Johannes Kippers was a Dutch merchant seaman and qualified wireless operator whose maritime career connected the Netherlands, the Netherlands East Indies and Australia. During the Second World War, he served aboard the KPM vessel Swartenhondt, one of the Dutch merchant ships employed in support of Allied operations in New Read more
In 2022 I explored the south western part of the Gulf of Carpentaria. We were at the mouth of the Norman River at Karumba. The Dutch explores didn’t come that far south in the Gulf. Nevertheless we got an idea of the landscape and in particular the endless savanna along Read more
Page is redirected to: KPM, Australia and the Pacific War