Wiebbe Hayes Stone Fort

Wiebbe Hayes Stone Fort
Wiebbe Hayes Stone Fort
	The fort in 2001
General information
Type	Defensive structure
Location	West Wallabi Island
Country	Australia
Coordinates	28°27′41″S 113°42′15″E / 28.4613357°S 113.7041114°E
Construction started	1629
Western Australia Heritage Register
Official name	Ruins of Two Stone Huts
Type	Heritage Council
Designated	31 July 1995
Part of	Houtman Abrolhos Islands
Reference no.	3990
Australian National Heritage List
Official name	Batavia Shipwreck Site and Survivor Camps Area 1629
Type	Historic
Criteria	A, C, D, G
Designated	6 April 2006
Reference no.	105887

The Wiebbe Hayes Stone Fort on West Wallabi Island (also known as Wiebbe Hayes Island) is the oldest surviving European building in Australia and was built in 1629 by survivors of the Batavia shipwreck and massacre.^[1] West Wallabi Island is 63 km (39 mi) from the coast of Western Australia.

History

Following the Batavia shipwreck in 1629, a group of the marooned soldiers under the command of Wiebbe Hayes were put ashore on West Wallabi Island to search for water. A group of mutineers who took control of the other survivors left Hayes' group there, secretly hoping that they would starve or die of thirst. However, the soldiers discovered that they were able to wade to East Wallabi Island, where there was a fresh water spring. Furthermore, West and East Wallabi Island are the only islands in the group upon which the tammar wallaby lives. Thus the soldiers had access to sources of both food and water that were unavailable to the mutineers.

Later the mutineers mounted a series of attacks, which the soldiers repulsed. The remnants of improvised defensive walls and stone shelters built by Wiebbe Hayes and his men on West Wallabi Island are Australia's oldest known European structures,^[2]^[3]^: 37^[4] more than a century and a half before expeditions to the Australian continent by James Cook and Arthur Phillip.^[1] The remnants of "the fort ... [are] nothing more than a tiny, sandstone-coloured rectangle in the scrub about 100 metres [110 yd] from the sea. It is unimpressive and isolated and yet this simple structure, just some loose rocks piled up to make a simple fortress, is the first building Europeans constructed in Australia."^[1]

References

^ ^a ^b ^c Elder, Bruce (30 July 2005). "The brutal shore". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 7 March 2020.
^ "Batavia has". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 2003. Retrieved 7 March 2020.
^ Michael Pearson (2005). Margaret Cresswell (ed.). Great Southern Land: The Maritime Exploration of Terra Australis (PDF). Canberra: Department of the Environment and Heritage. ISBN 0-642-55185-5. OCLC 67617194. OL 26818732M. Wikidata Q110529184. Retrieved 9 February 2021.
^ "National Heritage Places - Batavia Shipwreck Site and Survivor Camps Area 1629 - Houtman Abrolhos". Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, Government of Western Australia. 2020. Retrieved 7 March 2020.

Parry, Chris (27 July 2015). "Echoes of history in WA's Abrolhos Islands". The West Australian. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
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"Beardman jug, excavated from the wreck site of the BATAVIA – History". Australian National Maritime Museum. 2018. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
Bevacqua, B. (1974). The Slaughter Point Site: An Archaeological Investigation of a Site Associated with the Batavia Shipwreck (PDF) (Report). Department of Maritime Archaeology, Western Australian Museum. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
Beasley, Carolyn (6 February 2020). "Australia's new national park: the Houtman Abrolhos Islands". Australian Geographic. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
"Batavia Shipwreck Ruins". National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. 2009. Retrieved 9 February 2021.
Gapps, Stephen (8 February 2010). "A musket barrel made of copper?". Australian National Maritime Museum. Retrieved 9 February 2021.