Duyfken 1606 Replica

Duyfken sailed back in to Fremantle this morning.

From the website. www.duyfken.com.au

Duyfken is remarkable not only because she was the first Dutch "jacht" to sail from Indonesia to Australia in 350 years but because the impetus to build the ship and sail the expedition came not from governments or corporations, but through an enormous community effort.

The community-based foundation achieved what many thought at the time was impossible. It raised $3.9 million to build a ship to help tell the little known story of Australia's first recorded European visitors. A strong motivation was to counter two of Australia's popular historical myths: that Dirk Hartog was the first European to step ashore in Australia and that Captain Cook "discovered" Australia.

The 2000 Duyfken Expedition brought the little known historical truth to people in Australia and all over the world.

The first recorded chart of the Australian coastline was made by Duyfken's Dutch skipper, Captain Willem Janszoon. The first time recorded in history when Aboriginal Australians met people from the outside world occurred during Duyfken's 1606 voyage of exploration. Indeed, the indigenous people of Cape York talk about the Duyfken landing in their oral history. For the crew of the original Duyfken, theirs was a voyage beyond the known world at the time. They thought that a land of gold known as "Nova Guinea" could exist to the southeast and they set out to find it. What they found was the eastern coastline of the Gulf of Carpentaria on Australia's Cape York Peninsula and the oldest living culture on earth -- but no gold.

Visit the website for much more detail