Dutch Courier - The Dutch in Australia, 1606-2006

The Dutch in Australia, 1606-2006

by Nonja Peters

The collection of the National Archives of Australia contains many records about Dutch settlement and participation in Australia in the twentieth century.
Mariners, merchants and passengers on ships belonging to the Dutch East Indies Company (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie) were the first recorded Europeans to set foot on Australian soil.
Their arrival in Australia happened mainly by chance at a time when the instruments used to determine longitude were still in their infancy. It was not uncommon for ships that left Cape Town in South Africa for the East Indies to travel too far east before turning north-east to Batavia (present-day Jakarta), the capital of the Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia). Many of these ships came to grief on the Western Australian coast. Some survivors were rescued but many were not. Aboriginal oral history has it that the fortunate ones cohabited with Aborigines. Dutch East Indies Company ships stopped visiting Western Australian shores in 1796 after the collapse of the company.
Over a century later, only 600 Dutch-born people were living in Australia. It was not until 1942-45 that Dutch numbers increased significantly when Dutch military personnel arrived in Australia to help with the defence and evacuation of Dutch residents of the Netherlands East Indies.

On 19 January 1942, the Netherlands East Indies and Australian governments reached an agreement that all financial responsibilities for Dutch women and children evacuated to Australia would fall on the Netherlands East Indies Administration. After this, evacuations started in earnest.
Many evacuees fled to Broome, on the north coast of Western Australia, because it was one of the closest points to Java on the Australian mainland and could take both land-based aircraft and flying boats. During this period as many as 57 aircraft arrived in Broome on any one day and 7 000 to 8 000 passengers passed through the base in a fortnight.
Broome was not, however, a safe haven. On 3 March 1942, nine Japanese Zero fighter planes attacked a squadron of 15 flying boats waiting to refuel in Roebuck Bay. Fourteen of these boats were crammed with Dutch women and children who had fled Java the night before and were en route to other destinations. Many of these evacuees were injured or killed in the attack. Those who died are buried in Karrakatta Cemetery in Perth, Western Australia.
During the war the Netherlands East Indies Government became the only foreign government-in-exile on Australian soil. Towards the end of the war, however, the relationship between the Australian and Netherlands East Indies governments shifted from amicable to antagonistic when Australian waterside workers' unions and the Communist Party of Australia supported the Indonesian Nationalist Movement by boycotting Dutch shipping in 1944-45.
In the years following World War II, the Australian Government began to actively recruit European-born migrants to reverse population stagnation, overcome crucial labour shortages and maintain the war-boosted economy. Between 1951 and 1970, about 160 000 Dutch nationals migrated to Australia. Many ships, including the Groote Beer, Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, Nelly, Sibajak, Skaubryn and Waterman, and some KLM Airlines flights, were specially chartered to carry migrants from the Netherlands.

Today there are close to 95 000 residents in Australia who were born in the Netherlands and a further 240 000 Australians who claim Dutch ancestry. Over the last 50 years, the Dutch have had a huge impact on the building and construction industry in Australia, and have contributed significantly to the scientific, artistic and economic development of the country they now call home.

How to find records about Dutch settlement and participation in Australia
The collection of the National Archives of Australia contains many records about Dutch settlement and participation in Australia and Australia's relationship with the Netherlands during the twentieth century. Records in the National Archives collection are available for public access once they are 30 years old. Contact details for the Archives National Reference Service are given below.

If members of your family migrated to Australia during the twentieth century, the National Archives of Australia will probably hold their migration records, as well as records documenting their other activities, including:

* service for Australia in World War I or World War II;
* naturalisation as Australian citizens;
* working for the Australian government - perhaps in a post office or as a Customs officer - or selling land to it; or
* applying to patent their inventions, registering their trademarks or copyrighting their creative work.

To find these records, you should first do a keyword search on RecordSearch, the National Archives' online records database, which is available on the Archives' website (www.naa.gov.au).
Use variations of the surname of the family you wish to find records on. Remember that names on official records may not necessarily be spelled as you expect, so try search techniques where you substitute 'c' for 'k', 'i' for 'y' and 's' for 'z'. Changes to first names were very common with Dutch migrants - eg Marijke to Mary, Sjannie to Joan, Gerardus to Jerry and Jan to John.

As many war service record entries on RecordSearch list place of birth, you might also like to try a keyword search using the names of towns in the Netherlands. You can also do keyword searches using the names of any businesses or organisations with which your relative was involved.

Once you have identified a record in the National Archives' collection, you can view it in the relevant reading room (the location of record is noted on RecordSearch), or if it is digitised, view it online on RecordSearch. If the record is held in Canberra you can request that a digital copy be placed online once it has been assessed for public access. If you've any questions about these processes please contact the National Reference Service.
To help those seeking their family's migration records, the Archives has recently introduced the Making Australia Home service, providing documents in a keepsake folder for $25.00. A brochure written in Dutch explaining this service and including an application form is available in the 'Family History' section on the Archives' website (www.naa.gov.au).

The National Archives also produces fact sheets and research guides on topics such as immigration records, which can be a great help in pointing you in the right direction. Fact Sheet 156, Records relating to Dutch migration held in Sydney, and Fact Sheet 170, Migrant hostels in New South Wales, 1946-78, and other fact sheets and guides can be downloaded for free from the 'Publications' section of the Archives' website (www.naa.gov.au).

Need help?
Many of the National Archives' millions of individual records can be located by a keyword search, but some records relating to Dutch-Australians cannot. If you would like more help to locate records about your family, contact the National Archives' reference service:

National Reference Service
PO Box 7425
Canberra Business Centre
ACT Australia 2610

Tel: 1300 886 881 (overseas callers: 61 2 6212 3900)
Fax: 1300 886 882 (overseas callers: 61 2 6212 3999)
Email:ref@naa.gov.au

About the author

Dr Nonja Peters is Director of the Migration, Ethnicity, Refugees and Citizenship Research Unit, Curtin University of Technology, Western Australia. Dr Peters has published widely on issues relating to migration. Her book Milk and Honey but No Gold: Postwar Migration to Western Australia from 1945-64 was short-listed for the WA Premier's 2001 Literary Awards, the Queensland Premier's 2002 Literary Award for History, and the NSW State Records John and Patricia Ward History Prize.

Dr Peters was born in the Netherlands and immigrated to Australia with her family when she was five-and-a-half years old. Her current research interest is the Dutch diaspora to Australia and around the world. Dr Peter's research focuses on migration, identity and belonging.