Waiting at the domestic terminal at Cairns Airport recently for a flight back to Melbourne, I noticed a destination flash up on the departures board: Groote Eylandt. It’s a strange name for place in Australia — I even have no idea how the locals pronounce it. But it’s immediately obvious that it’s a form of Dutch, although not using particularly modern spelling, meaning “large island”. In order to demonstrate how large it is, Groote Eylandt is about the same size as the province of Groningen, or the Australian Capital Territory.
A few things have got me thinking lately about Australia’s past. Firstly, a post from Nick Bryant, the BBC correspondent in Sydney, about the strength of British culture in Australia. I was recently in England and everything (apart from the money) felt incredibly familiar, despite it being only my second trip through UK immigration.
Secondly, the history I was taught in secondary school was pretty shabby. We began with the First Fleet and continued through the 1800s, focussing on the gold rush. We were taught very little about the indigenous peoples and pretty much nothing prior to 1788, although I was aware that the Dutch had done some exploring. I read Gary Crew’s Strange Objects a long, long time ago, but the story of the Batavia had completely slipped my mind until I visited the replica in Lelystad last year. Some of the survivors of the shipwrecked Batavia reached the mainland and met the indigenous peoples, long before the British did.
Thirdly, the history of Dutch Brazil got me thinking how it would have been different if the Dutch had managed to keep control there. Given that the Dutch skirted around the northern and western coasts of Australia in the 1600s (leading to place names such as Groote Eylandt that are still used today) but never settled, what would have been different if Australia had remained New Holland?
I’m an engineer, not an historian nor a writer of alternative history, so I haven’t come up with anything radical. Nick Bryant mentions a lot of influence on media and sport. The influence from England has led to cricket, netball and rugby being popular sports in Australia. Hockey also originated in England, and is one of the few sports I can think of in which both the Netherlands and Australia are strong. Maybe korfball would have become more popular than netball.
If the Dutch had stayed for any length of time, I guess a form of Dutch would have become the standard language in Australia. Possibly another language could have triumphed, but it’s reasonable to expect that it would contain a lot of Dutch loanwords, as can be seen in Indonesian. There is a large amount of British programming on Australian TV, which helps with keeping the British influence alive, especially with respect to language. Possibly the New Holland public broadcaster schedules would be filled with Dutch programmes.
An interesting thought though is seeing as Australia is quite large, the Dutch could have settled in the north and the west, and the British could still have settled in the east. We could have ended up with a split situation, with two official languages/European cultures etc. alongside the cultures of the indigenous peoples. Who knows what that would have led to. In any case, it’s quite funny that Abel Tasman determined that Groote Eylandt was exactly that, when he was just 50km from a much bigger island.
2 Comments
November 1, 2009 at 11:30 pm
My guess is that a “split situation”, with the Dutch controlling the north/west and the British in the east/south, would lead either to a result somewhat similar to South America (large landmass divided into several countries with vastly different and unrelated cultures) or to something like Canada (single country with vastly different cultures in different areas). Which one of those would depend, probably, on how good was the relationship between the British and the Dutch at the time…
On second thought, the large desert in the middle of the country might act as a de facto border between the two cultures, which would then tend towards creating two independent countries. Or three, if the Dutch kept Van Diemen’s Land as well.
November 3, 2009 at 9:12 pm
Olá, Wilson — was hoping you’d have some thoughts on Brazil, however I guess the Dutch occupation was a bit distant from you, both spatially and temporally.
I thought of examples of split countries after I posted — am currently reading Guns, Germs and Steel which mentions New Guinea a lot, which is a smaller island split in two.
It’s a strange thought though, having several countries with different cultures in the one space (hello Europe). That sometimes leads to turmoil over boundaries and who’s united with whom (the Québécois are not entirely happy; your knowledge of South America is better than mine, although it seems to have been fairly stable over the last century or so), although I think you’re right in that the desert would provide some sort of border.
Anyway, bags living on the British side — they’d have better food and TV
However, I watched Goodbye Lenin! last night — maybe people would try to jump sides …
PS. Think I might go back to writing about food and TV rather than attempting historical analysis/speculation … :S