Rupert Gerritsen was an Australian historian and a noted authority on Indigenous Australian prehistory. Coupled with his work on early Australian cartography, he played an influential part in re-charting Australian history prior to its settlement by the British in 1788, and noted evidence of agriculture and settlements on the continent before the arrival of settlers.
Early years
Rupert Gerritsen was born in Geraldton, Western Australia in 1953, of Dutch parents. He grew up in Geraldton, where he experienced first hand the excitement of the discovery of the wreck of the Batavia in 1963 and came to know some of those involved in its discovery and the discovery of other 17th and 18th century shipwrecks on the coast of Western Australia. From 1960s through to the 1980s he was involved in radical politics and social activism and promoted social justice and empowerment. Professionally he was engaged for many years in Western Australia and the ACT in youth work, community work and mental health, and specialise in developmental work.
And Their Ghosts May Be Heard is a detailed exploration of the fate of the Dutch mariners cast away on the Western Australian coast in the 1600s and early 1700s. Gerritsen was involved in establishing that some 16% of Nhanda, an Aboriginal language of the central west coast of Western Australia, was apparently derived from Dutch as a result of interaction with marooned sailors. This discovery led to major reevaluation in the perceptions of the early prehistory, in that Aboriginal Australians were not mute witnesses to the unfolding events of history but active participants who embraced parts of European culture long before the British settlement of the continent. Gerritsen also researched the location where two mutineers from the Batavia mutiny, possibly Australia's first European settlers, were marooned on 16 November 1629. As a consequence of his research Gerritsen established that Hutt River, north of Perth, was the site where Wouter Loos and Jan Pelgrom de Bye first set foot on mainland Australia. These discoveries wrought a complete change in the methodology of recording Western Australian pre-history. Many subsequent scholars have embraced this new historical paradigm in their works. After the appearance of Ghosts, Gerritsen published a range of papers and monographs in diverse fields, from archaeology to historical linguistics. Australia and the Origins of Agriculture put forward evidence that some Indigenous Australian groups in traditional circumstances were engaged in food production, including agriculture, and lived in large permanent settlements.
Other research
Gerritsen undertook research and published extensively on a diverse range of subjects, including:
Identification of the oldest ceremonial object in the world, a 28,000-year-old cylcon found at Cuddie Springs.
Ethnographic and ethnogenic evidence of interaction between Indigenous Australians and megafauna.
A study of the global prehistory of water craft and island colonisation, leading to a new theory on the original colonisation of Australia.
Various co-authored papers on the Freycinet Map of 1811, the first full map of Australia to be published, and identifying the first world map showing a full map of Australia, published in 1810.
A number of papers identifying events during the Batavia Mutiny in 1629 as the first criminal prosecutions, the first military conflict and the first naval engagements in Australian history.
Gerritsen was a Petherick Researcher at the National Library of Australia from April 1995. and focussed his research and writing on early Australian history.
Gerritsen died in Canberra on Sunday 3 November 2013. Australia and the Origins of Agriculture and other work by Gerritsen was influential in the shaping of Bruce Pascoe's acclaimed work, Dark Emu.
Gerritsen was co-founder, along with Peter Reynders, of Australia on the Map: 1606–2006, and was that organisation's National Secretary. At his death he was Chair of its successor organisation, the Australia on the Map Division of the Australasian Hydrographic Society which aims to make Australians more aware of Australia's early history and heritage, beginning in 1606. Under the Australia on the Map Division of the Australasian Hydrographic Society, Gerritsen had sole or joint responsibility for a number of projects, including the "Search for the Deadwater Wreck".
Selected publications
The Freycinet Map of 1811: Proceedings of the Symposium Commemorating the 200th Anniversary of the Publication of the First Map of Australia
Beyond the Frontier: Explorations in Ethnohistory, 2011
Australia's First Criminal Prosecutions in 1629, 2011
And Their Ghosts May Be Heard..., 1994 and 2nd ed. 2002
A Further Translation of Selected Chapters of Dr Erhard Eylmann's Die Eingeborenen der Kolonie Südaustralien , Translated and transcribed by W.C. Gerritsen and Rupert Gerritsen, 2002
The Traditional Settlement Pattern in South West Victoria Reconsidered, 2000
Nhanda Villages of the Victoria District, Western Australia, 2002
An anonymous account of a journey from Augusta to the Vasse in 1833, Unpublished, 1999
