Thursday, 1 May 2025
Arcadis, Sydney
Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC KC

Bujari Gamarruwa

Diyn Babana, Gamarada Gadigal Ngura

In greeting you in the language of the Gadigal, and pay my respects to their Elders past, present, and emerging.

Thank you, Consul-General,[1] for your invitation to this year’s  Koningsdag National Day celebration, a national holiday for the Dutch, the only day as I understand it when sales at local Vrijmarkts are free of VAT – literally, and in fact, a free market.

As a child here in Australia, my image, and indeed knowledge of Holland, as it was then called was as a totally flat country, sitting lower than the sea and protected by dykes or what we would call levees.  We knew of the famous story where one day the dykes sprung a leak and a little boy stayed up all night with his finger in the hole until help arrived next day.  That story, of course, was fiction - American fiction as it turns out and the author Mary Elisabeth Mapes, although she had a Dutch grandfather, had never visited the country. 

However, the fabled bravery and nationalistic spirit of the little boy is reflected in the true life adventures of those who sailed the high seas in the ships of the Dutch East India Company, placing Amsterdam at the centre of world trade and which became the inspiration for some of the epic artistic output of the time – some of it found in unusual places, such as on the lids of the popular musical instrument of the day, the harpsichord.

One of the most famous artworks, now in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, was painted on the lid of the new harpsichord purchased from the renowned Ruckers family by Amsterdam’s city organist from the Oude Kerk, Jan Sweelinck in 1604, just two years after the Dutch East India Company was founded.  This painting, a glorious allegorical vision of “Amsterdam at the centre of world trade” was by the court painter and portraitist Pieter Isaacsz, [2] who, it appears, lived a double life as a spy for both the Netherlands and Denmark,[3] having both ancestries, and it would seem also Sweden.

The painting personifies Amsterdam as a Golden Maid wearing pearls, a ship at her ready, clasping a golden horn of plenty, her hand on a celestial globe as she looks out upon the oceans, civilisations and continents - Europe, Africa, the Americas, and the islands of what is now known as Indonesia.[4]

Missing was the uncharted ‘great south land’ which had appeared in a 1570 Dutch atlas, the Ortelius atlas, as the mysterious “Terra Australis Nondum Cognita” – literally, “southern land not yet known”.[5]  It was not until 1606 that the first European ship reached the ‘great south land -  the Dutch yacht, the Duyfken, -‘Little Dove’- commanded by Willem Janszoon, which landed on Cape York but which he believed to be and mapped as New Guinea.[6] His clash with the Wik peoples saw the first deaths as a result of contact.[7]

A replica of the Duyfken is moored at the Maritime Museum at Darling Harbour.

The ‘Great South Land’ became known as ‘New Holland’, the name that was used in official documents of the United Kingdom until 1828, 40 years after English settlement of the colony in 1788, something about which the Dutch were not too pleased. 

In 1786, it seems to have been a serious case of ‘FOMO’ [Fear of Missing Out] that led to representations by the Dutch – and the French – against the projected British settlement at Botany Bay, something which was chronicled with something between derision and outrage in English newspapers of the time.[8]

New South Wales is the only state to have a city – Orange - named in honour of a Dutch Prince - William of Orange later to be King William II, with whom Sir Thomas Mitchell, the Surveyor General of New South Wales, had served in the Peninsular Wars against Napoleon when both were aides-de-camp to the Duke of Wellington.[9] 

Following the Japanese invasion and occupation of the Dutch East Indies in 1942, Sydney became the operational centre for the repair and maintenance of Dutch ships, and it was reported that, at one point, they were lined up outside Luna Park.^[10]

After the war, and following Indonesia’s independence in 1945,[11] Dutch migrants, including servicemen and women, migrated to NSW, joining descendants of 19^th century migrants – including William Paling, who started a musical instrument business in Sydney’s George Street, which flourished until the 1980s.[12]

Today, there are many things taken for granted in everyday life which have Dutch origins:  Gouda cheese, cocoa powder, orange carrots, stroopwaffel, tulips, the Dutch auction, the Mercator projection, the world’s first atlas, Delftware, Fair Trade, gin, the Freedom of the Seas, the yacht, the microscope, the Fahrenheit scale, the pendulum clock, and technologies from the cassette through to Bluetooth.

Then there is your continued contribution to the international community with the location at the Hague of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. 

To the Dutch Consulate and community here in NSW, thank you for your friendship and your significant contributions to our NSW society, culture and community.

Fijne Koningsdag![13]

“Proost”!

[1] Hugo Klijn, Consul-General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands

[2] 1568-1625

[3] https://hnanews.org/hnar/reviews/pieter-isaacsz-1568-1625-court-painter-art-dealer-spy/

[4] Rijksmuseum: The Masterpieces Guide, page 34-35

[5] Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theatre of the World) by Flemish cartographer, Abraham Ortelius:

https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/stories/world-book

[6] https://www.library.gov.au/research/research-guides-0/europeans-and-terra-australis#

https://historion.net/short-history-australia/chapter-ii-dutch-and-new-holland

[7] https://www.wikvsqueensland.com/peoples.html

[8] Britain’s Whitehall Evening Post reported: “As to the Dutch claiming a right to Botany Bay, because they first discovered the vast tract of land called New Holland, those who first discovered New-York, might with as much justice lay claim to the Floridas, because they make a part of the vast continent of America”. At that time, Florida was held by the Spanish.

https://dutchaustralianculturalcentre.com.au/archive/dutch-australian-history/dutch-claims-to-new-holland-and-the-british-colonization-in-1788/

[9] https://dutchaustralianculturalcentre.com.au/archive/dutch-australian-history/prince-of-orange-honoured-in-orange/

[10] The Dutch in NSW: A Thematic History, Kirsten Velthuis:

https://dacc.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Dutch-NSW-2005.pdf - page 20

[11] 17 August 1945

[12] https://dacc.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Dutch-NSW-2005.pdf - page 21

[13] ‘Happy King’s Day!’