In 1606, a small Dutch ship called Duyfken made landfall on the west coast of the Cape York Peninsula in Queensland. The ship belonged to the Dutch East India Company who traded goods, such as spices and precious metals, around the world. It had sailed south from Indonesia to look for new land, resources and opportunities to trade.

Duyfken had landed on the Country of the Wik people who had lived there for millennia. The captain, Willem Janszoon (Jansz), and his crew of twenty men, were the first Europeans on record to meet the First Nations people of Australia. The contact predates James Cook’s arrival in 1770 by 164 years and is a part of our history that is often overlooked.

Before starting this unit of work, ask students the following and discuss as a class:

• Who were the first people to live in Australia? 
• How long do you think they have lived here? 
• Who are the traditional owners of the Country where your school or home is located?

Before learning about the voyage of the Duyfken, establish if students already know about any groups of people from other countries who visited Australia. 

• Who might have visited Aboriginal people from another place?
• Where did these people travel from? 
• How would these people have travelled? 
• Why did they visit?
• When might this have happened? 

The Wik people are First Nations Australians who have lived in Northern Queensland for tens of thousands of years. They are the traditional custodians of the land and waterways from the west coast to the centre of the Cape York Peninsula. This area extends from beaches to coastal swamps, river estuaries, mangroves, inland forests and marshy islands. There are more than five Wik languages spoken in the region. One of them, Wik-Mungan, is the only thriving Aboriginal language on the Queensland mainland spoken as a first language.

A different group of First Nations people are the Yolgnu people from north-eastern Arnhem land in the Northern Territory.

Before travellers from Europe mapped these waters, trade was common between people from this area, and fishermen from Asia. 

Explore this additional activity to learn about this trade between Northern coastal Aboriginal communities and Makassan (or Macassan) fishermen from Indonesia. The Makassans visited to trade trepang (sea cucumbers), which were popular as a food and medicine in places like China.

Makassan Trade

In the late 1500s and early 1600s, people living in Europe were becoming increasingly interested in the rest of the world. Of particular interest were raw materials such as precious metals, new foods like sugar, tea and spices, as well as manufactured goods, such as fabrics and pottery.

All of these products were seen as popular and valuable. This meant they could sell for very high prices. Some spices like nutmeg were worth their weight in gold!

The people who transported these goods from Asia to Europe went on this dangerous journey because they wanted to get rich. Ships were a great form of transport as their cargo holds could carry much more than other forms of land transport at the time, such as horses and camels. Ships could also travel over oceans to find new and rare resources in faraway lands.

The Dutch East India Company, also known as the VOC (from the name in Dutch, Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie), was a large, wealthy company from north-western Europe, in a country we now call The Netherlands.

The company was established in 1602 and shipped goods between Asia and Europe for almost 200 years. These journeys were long, sometimes lasting years, so ships stopped at ports along the way to trade, rest and replenish supplies.

This was the Age of Discovery. A time when seafarers were sailing to different parts of the world for the first time. They were looking for new territory and resources, making maps and gathering scientific knowledge. They set up colonies that had negative impacts on the rights, freedom and cultures of Indigenous peoples around the world.

The Duyfken (meaning ‘Little Dove’ in Dutch) was a ship built in around 1595 in The Netherlands. It was a small wooden ship that was designed to be fast and agile, able to help in maritime battles, transport cargo for trade and undertake voyages of exploration.

At the time, ships travelled from The Netherlands in fleets, small groups of ships that could help protect each other. This was because people from European countries fought to gain control of valuable trading routes. The Duyfken sailed in Dutch fleets, fought in battles, and sometimes made voyages on its own.

Unfortunately, the original Duyfken no longer exists and we don’t have any plans or drawings of it. However, in the late 1990s, a replica was built in Fremantle, Western Australia using traditional Dutch ship building techniques and other historical sources. The Duyfken replica is now at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney.

The Duyfken is about 25m long and 6m at the widest point. A ship of this size would have had approximately 20 sailors on board.

In your playground, measure out the size of the Duyfken. Compare it to the size of: 

• HMB Endeavour (the ship Captain Cook sailed up Australia’s East Coast) (33m long and almost 9m wide)
• A bus (12m long and 2.5m wide)
• A modern Boeing 747 Jet Aeroplane (70m long and 6m wide, with a wingspan of approximately 60m)

How would you feel being in each of these spaces with 20 other people for an hour? Or a day? Or even a year?

Willem Janszoon was the captain of Duyfken. He was in charge of sailing the ship and making sure that everyone on board stayed safe.

Activity

Watch the story from the captain's perspective. 

While this animation isn’t the real Willem Janszoon, nor are they his exact words, this is what he might have looked like and diaries from his colleagues give us a sense of what he may have thought.

The Dutch were a colonial power that dominated parts of the world for two centuries. This means they set up colonies in places that were already home to First Nations peoples. First Nations people around the world were often treated unfairly or hurt by colonial powers from Europe, such as the Dutch.

Reconciliation is when people who have had a conflict or disagreement try to understand each other and respect their differences.

Sometimes, reconciliation is needed when a group of people has been treated unfairly or hurt by another group, such as in some countries where the government mistreated the First Nations people.

In 2000, the replica Duyfken visited the Wik people in the Cape York Peninsula. What do you think happened on this occasion? Did you find any signs of reconciliation on the virtual tour of the ship?

Activity

Draw or write a message to show what reconciliation means to you.

Explain what your message means.