Australian quadricentennial news

Tiwi people commemorate Dutch navigators

The first Dutch landings in Australia occurred in the early 1600s.*

Then, just on 300 years ago, in April, 1705, a party of Dutch sailors under the command of Commander Maarten van Delft spent about three months on the Tiwi islands, writing detailed recordings of the Tiwi people, their culture and unique homeland. (The largest of the Tiwi Islands are Melville and Bathurst Islands, just 80 km off the coast of Darwin.)

First contact was difficult and violent, but soon the Dutch and Tiwi Aboriginal people got on well. On May 1, a tricentennial festival was held in the islands, attended by Dr Hans Sondaal, the Ambassador of the Netherlands.

"Commander van Delft`s instructions in 1705 were to capture some of these unknown people and return with them to Batavia; instructions he chose to ignore. Van Delft also, having wounded a Tiwi during their 1705 landing on Melville Island, returned his men to the beach to attend this wounded Tiwi man. These first contacts of reconciliation encouraged the Dutch explorers to remain some weeks with the Tiwi."
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Tiwi islanders mark Dutch landing
Tiwi Islands celebrate anniversary of Dutch arrival

* Australia 400
*2006 will be the 400th anniversary of European sighting of the continent of Australia:

"In 1606 Captain Willem Janszoon, in the vessel Duyfken, sailed into Australian waters, the first recorded European to do so. Captain Louis Vaéz de Torres, in the San Pedro and the very small Los Tres Reijes, sailed through Torres Strait later that year. Both captains and their crews sighted Cape York Peninsula."
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