- Source: Wiebbe Hayes Stone Fort
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. 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, led by Jeronimus Cornelisz, took control of the other survivors and 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,: 37 more than a century and a half before expeditions to the Australian continent by James Cook and Arthur Phillip. 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."
See also
List of the oldest buildings in the world
References
Further reading
Parry, Chris (27 July 2015). "Echoes of history in WA's Abrolhos Islands". The West Australian. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
Ariese, Csilla E. (2010). A Twisted Truth – The VOC ship Batavia: comparing history & archaeology (PDF) (BA Thesis). Gothenburg: Göteborgs Universitet. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
"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.