SHIPWRECKS ALONG THE KALBARRI COASTLINE

The remote and windswept coastline of Kalbarri has been the tragic setting of many shipwrecks over time. One of the more famous shipwrecks was Batavia, a ship of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). It was built in Amsterdam in 1628, armed with 24 cast-iron cannons and a number of bronze guns. Shipwrecked on her maiden voyage on 4th June 1629, she struck Morning Reef, part of the Abrolhos Islands group, and was made famous by the subsequent mutiny and massacre that took place among the survivors. Commander Pelsaert left survivors on the island to make the miraculous journey to Java in a tiny long boat for help. The crew plotted mutiny while Wiebbe Hayes and his followers held the mutineers at bay until Pelsaert returned. Some of the mutineers were sentenced to death, some taken home for sentencing and two cast ashore at Kalbarri, believed to be at the site of Wittecarra Creek.

In 1712, the Zuytdorp, also a Dutch East India Company vessel was wrecked along the high limestone cliffs between Kalbarri and Steep Point, while voyaging to Batavia (Jakarta, Indonesia). It carried a rich cargo of 248,000 freshly minted silver coins along with 200 passengers. Hundreds of coins have been recovered from the famous ‘carpet of silver’ in and around the wreck. The precise circumstances of the wreck remain a mystery, because no survivors reached Batavia to tell the tale. Some did live for a time in Shark Bay, where they were helped by local Aboriginal people. This contact with Europeans was probably the first ever made by Australia’s Indigenous people to last longer than a brief encounter experienced in previous exploration voyagers by Europeans.