They looked a forlorn group on the jetty at Rottnest Island. It was a mixed group of 17 and 18-year-olds with Eskies and bags haphazardly strewn about in the burning sun. I overheard a conversation with a youthful passer-by.
“”G’day. Thought youse were going back Thursdee.”
“”Nah. We’ve been evicted off the island.”
“”Yeah. Geddout. Whadda they do that for?”
“”Dunno.”
Well, if she didn’t know, I did. The West Australian had reported the details over the weekend. Perth teenagers on the weekend that schools finished had flocked to Rottnest Island as they do every year. In past years they had killed some quokkas — the small wallaby marsupial endangered on the mainland that thrives on the island. (It looks like a rat, hence the name given to the island by the Dutch in the early 17th century — Rats’ Nest.) This year among the students there was a sexual assault and dozens of arrests for violent drunken behaviour.
A sense of self-preservation made me refrain from correcting the girl’s law. She had not been evicted because she was not a tenant with rights of occupancy, but a merely licensee with a contract — a contract she and her mates were clearly in breach of.
I was delighted at this turn of events. With these rats off the island it would be more enjoyable for me.
In my time, we may have got drunk and been mildly disorderly at the end of the school year but we drew the line at assault and killing native fauna.
Never go to Rottnest Island on the weekend the schoolies break up. For the other 51 weeks the place is a delight — history, diving, seafood, WA wines, cycling, no cars.
Rottnest was named by Willem de Vlamingh in 1696. De Vlamingh had been sent by the Dutch East India Company to confirm the best route to Batavia (now Jakarta), the capital of the Indies.
Before 1611, the Dutch used to go around the Cape of Good Hope on the southern tip of Africa and then head north-east in a direct line to the Indies. Then Hendrick Brouwer found that if they headed due west and then turned north later they would have favourable winds the whole way. The trip was longer in kilometres, but shorter by several months with longer periods in mild latitudes.
In those days, however, sailors had trouble determining their longitude, though latitude was no trouble. To determine longitude you needed an accurate timepiece to tell you what the time was at Greenwich (0 degrees) and compare it to local time. Clocks (especially those being carried at sea) were not very accurate. The other method, compass and estimating speed at sea were also not very accurate. Many Dutch sailors overstepped the mark and hit the coast of Western Australia. Some with disastrous consequences.
The most disastrous was the voyage of the Batavia. It is one of the great stories of Australian history, told vividly at the Western Australian Maritime Museum in Fremantle.
The Batavia was on its maiden voyage in 1629. When it turned north to the Indies. The captain imagined himself further to the west than he was. The ship struck Morning Reef in the Wallabi Group of the Houtman Abrolhos Islands and broke apart.
About 250 of the 316 people aboard got on life boats to reach the nearby islands.
Imagine it: several months aboard a 55-metre boat to be wrecked on barren dry islands in the middle of nowhere.
The commander (Pelsaert) and captain (Jacobsz) took the two long boats to go for water on the mainland 80kms away. The coast was endless cliffs and surf and they had gone so far north they could not go back so they headed for Batavia, 2000kms away. It took just two weeks. It took several months to get a rescue boat back to the castaways.
In the meantime, back at the islands, under-merchant Jeronimus Cornelisz had a plan to mutiny and seize and rescue ship and live a life of piracy. He arranged for the soldiers to go to another island in search of water and left them stranded. He appointed himself governor and then killed 120 survivors on his own island. The rescue ship arrived on the very day he launched an attack on the loyalist soldiers’ island. Pelsaert and the rescue ship were warned. Cornelisz and most of the mutineers were rounded up and sentenced to having a hand severed before being hanged. The sentence was carried out on the islands.
Two other mutineers were left on the mainland before the rescue ship left for the Indies. Our first white settlers.
Since signs of habitation were found on the island in the 1960s marine archaeologists have raised and preserved a great deal of the Batavia which can be seen at the maritime museum. You get the engrossing feeling of age that I thought could not happen in an Australian museum — 370-year-old sophisticated artefacts found on this continent.
The Batavia carried a great deal of stone for building a Batavia, including a beautiful portico, now reconstructed at the museum. Part of the stern of the ship is also there. See it.
This month, a replica of the Batavia arrived in Sydney. The replica took more than 10 years to build at a cost of 22 million guilders.
In Fremantle, as part of the museum, you can seen a replica of the Duftken (ch sp). It is smaller than the Batavia. In 16XX is sailed east across the top of Australia, missing Arnhem Land and hitting the western side of Cape York without discovering the Torres Strait.
Back on Rottnest you can see the difficulty for these Dutch sailors. At Cape Vlamingh on its western end the wind whips up the white caps. The trees grow bowed against the wind, almost horizontal. Inexorably, those ships would be pushed on to the barren, waterless, Western Australian coast.
De Vlamingh feared the rats, though the Batavia survivors saw they were harmless herbivores and ate them.
On Rottnest you can stay at the Rottnest Hotel which was the former summer residence of the Western Australian Governor, at a lodge or the campground. You can rent bikes and cycle around the island. There are dozens of secluded beaches, salt lakes and a gun from a UK battleship which was used up to World War II still is remarkable condition.
The diving is exquisite. The more so because no matter what direction the wind there is always a sheltered site. Sea grass, kelp, western lobsters abound.
But beware the rats.