At our meeting of August 28, speaker Tony Thomas spelt out the historical mystery of Dutch colonists in Australia . Australia's "Bush Tucker Man", Major Les Hiddins, has spent 30 years investigating whether 90 survivors from the wreck of the Dutch 'great ship' Concordia in 1708 landed on the NW coast and trekked 2000km east to approximately Palm Valley, where they settled and lived on fish, yams, maize and game. A British military explorers' party came across the 300 descendants there in 1832 and stayed with them eight days. A detailed report of this surfaced in the Leeds Mercury of 1834.
By the time the first explorers passed through the centre in 1860-70, no physical trace of the Dutch was in evidence. Yet many independent facts corroborate the "Dutch settlers" story. If true it must cause a re-write of the history of white settlement in Australia. Academic historians show no interest so far.