Zuytdorp

Zuytdorp, also Zuiddorp (meaning 'South Village', after Zuiddorpe, an extant village in the south of Zeeland in the Netherlands, near the Belgian border) was an 18th-century trading ship of the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, commonly abbreviated VOC).

On 1 August 1711, Zuytdorp was dispatched from the Netherlands to the trading port of Batavia (now Jakarta, Indonesia) bearing a load of freshly minted silver coins. Many trading ships travelled the Brouwer Route, using the strong Roaring Forties winds to carry them across the Indian Ocean to within sight of the west coast of Australia (then called New Holland), whence they would turn north towards Batavia.

Zuytdorp did not arrive at its destination and was never heard from again. No search was undertaken, presumably because the VOC did not know whether or where the ship wrecked, or if it had been taken by pirates. Expensive efforts had been made previously to search for other missing ships, which had failed even when an approximate wreck location was known.

In the mid-20th century, the wreck of the Zuytdorp was identified on a remote part of the Western Australian coast, between Kalbarri and Shark Bay, approximately 40 kilometres (25 mi) north of the Murchison River. That section of coastline, subsequently named the Zuytdorp Cliffs, was the preserve of Aboriginal people and had been one of the last uncolonised areas until sheep stations were established there in the late 19th century. It has been speculated that survivors of the wreck may have traded with or intermarried with local Aboriginal communities between Kalbarri and Shark Bay.

In 1834, there had been news of an unidentified shipwreck on the shore when Aboriginal people told a farmer near Perth about a wreck – the colonists presumed it was a recent wreck and sent rescue parties who failed to find it or any survivors. In 1927, wreckage was seen by an Indigenous-European family group (including Ada and Ernest Drage, Tom and Lurleen Pepper, Charlie Mallard) on a cliff top near the border of Murchison house and Tamala Stations. Bertie and Pearl Drage, Jack Brand and Mrs Brand, and two Aboriginal workers, including a man named Nyarda, are also understood to have been involved. Tamala Station head stockman Tom Pepper reported the find to the authorities, with their first visit to the site occurring in 1941. In 1954, Pepper gave Phillip Playford directions to the wreckage and Playford identified the relics as from Zuytdorp.