One hundred and fifty years before the First Fleet arrived at Botany Bay in 1788, a Dutch soldier called Wouter Loos steps onto the beach on the other side of the Australian continent in what is now called Hutt River (Western Australia).
He is marooned onto the continent for his part in the notorious mutiny of the Dutch retourship, The Batavia. There the history ends. No one knows what became of him….
The local indigenous community believe he is the return of a dead brother, now half ghost. He is taken in by the community where he fathers a son.
He lives there in relative harmony until joined by three other Dutch castaways. One of these, a violent psychopath, rapes an Indigenous girl, which leads to expulsion of the white ghosts, and a promulgation against any further contact with the white ghosts.
Two hundred years later a British explorer, George Grey, stumbles upon the village in which Wouter had lived. The legend of the fearful white ghosts has endured to this day, causing the whole village population to flee the the white ghosts approach.
When Grey reports his findings to Governor Hutt, Hutt believes the village is the unauthorised settlement of ticket-of-leave men. He discounts the possibility that there may have been a Dutch presence pre-British settlement. He orders the complete destruction of the village. The year is 1839.
Ninety years later, when travelling in the Hutt River area, Daisy Bates meets descendants of Wouter Loos. She witnesses displacement and abuse of Indigenous People, and tries to help the situation in her capacity as Protector of the Aborigines.
In the modern day, historian Robert Sorrensen hunts for historical evidence of the Dutch presence in Western Australia from the seventeenth century. Against the background of a native title settlement, he finds proof that the Dutch were indeed in Australia long before the British arrived.
This story spans the centuries from 1629 to present day Australia in a vivid narrative told through the eyes of European Australians. All of the white characters in this story are real. All the Indigenous characters, with one exception, are imaginary.
This is a true story, based on a mix of historical research and imagination.
Genre Bender
Historical, True Story, Australian Colonial History, Dark Themes
About The Author
Born in 1959, I wrote my first novella at age 13. I wonder whatever became of that manuscript? Maybe I qualify as a nerd, not sure, I have certainly been called more derogative names than that one, but I started collecting antiquarian books in my teens. Not only for reading, but holding, smelling the old pages, looking at those back-to-front Fs in books from the seventeenth century. I preferred sitting alone doing my French translations than joining everyone else for Saturday sport. I used to write them out with a feathered quill. Yikes, okay let's add antiquarian to nerd. Maybe introvert too. Gosh, who is this person?
I studied Arts/Law at Monash University, then found my way into book editing for a major non fiction publisher. After some years I went freelance, whilst living and studying in a Buddhist community. Here I also began studying esoteric arts, meditation as well as complementary medicine. I eventually became a clinician, specialising in chronic fatigue syndrome, and wrote many books on that subject. In recent years I returned to fiction, having completed a Masters in Creative Writing.
I don't know why I have an interest in seventeenth century Europe, since I live on the other side of the word, and down under at that. If I had to guess at where was my past life, that would be my first choice. My DNA places me as mostly Scottish, but I found I have 1 per cent Scandinavian. I decided it was time to give some air time to my 1 per cent Scandi self, and thus was born the name Jan Andersen.
