Graeme Henderson Charts Misadventures In Paradise

Everyone, well everyone around Freo, and anyone who has ever had a passing interest in shipwrecks, knows Graeme Henderson. Here’s our revealing podcast with Graeme from a couple years back.

Graeme Henderson. Credit Fremantle Shipping News, Michael Barker

We caught up with Graeme again recently as he has a new, intriguing maritime history book out – Misadventures in Nature’s Paradise: Australia’s Cocos (Keeling) Islands and Christmas Island during the Dutch Era, published by UWA Publishing.

Graeme is well placed to write on this topic. As a 16 year old, way back when, he made his name by discovering the famous Gilt Dragon wreck off our West Australian coast. Since that early immersion into the world of shipwrecks, Graeme has played a crucial role in developing maritime archaeology and maritime museums in Australia. He was the first Director of the Western Australian Maritime Museum, from 1992 to 2005, during which time he was also Project Director for developing the new Maritime Museum on Victoria Quay. In the 1990s, he extended activities internationally, establishing the ICOMOS International Committee on Underwater Cultural Heritage Inc! which played the lead role in developing the UNESCO Convention for the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage. These days he chairs Wreck Check, an Australian not-for-profit formed to research maritime cultural heritage.

Graeme is also the author of over 100 works in maritime history and archaeology, including 10 books. His latest, which he has co-authored with historical maritime archaeologists Robert de Hoop and Andrew Viduka, is titled Misadventures in Nature’s Paradise. The authors explores the earliest history of Australia’s Indian Ocean territories of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands and Christmas Island. It is the inaugural publication of the UWA Oceans Institute Monograph Series.

The project began as a search for clues to locations of two 18th-century Dutch shipwrecks, Fortuyn (lost in 1724) and Aagtekerke (lost in 1726), and was expanded into a general account of the early island histories and associated mythological Indian Ocean islands and creatures.

Misadventures is, according to the authors, ‘a story about the earliest
history of these islands – including the events leading to their discovery, and later, to their settlement in the nineteenth century’. The book, through meticulous archival, cartographic and archaeological research, resets the earliest history of these islands.

The authors build on a lofty pedigree of previous travellers and writers, including Marco Polo, Antonio Pigafetta, Cornelis de Houtman, Hendrik Brouwer, Jonathan Swift and William Dampier. These explorers had, through various publications, increased Europe’s interest in the southern Indian Ocean without them ever having stepped ashore on either the Cocos (Keeling) Islands or Christmas Island.

Graeme and his co-authors tease out some of the real-life ramifications of the Indian Ocean and European myths upon the destiny of the Cocos (Keeling) and Christmas islands and provide evidence that indicates several 18th-century Dutch ships foundered close by. But their wrecks still await discovery.

The book features engaging colour images and maps and really would make great summer holiday reading for anyone interested in history, especially maritime history and Australian history.

HOW TO BUY IT? Misadventures in Nature’s Paradise: Australia’s Cocos (Keeling) Islands and Christmas Island during the Dutch Era, Published by UWA Publishing December 2022, Paperback $49.99 incl GST, eBook $29.99 incl GST is available online and all good bookstores.

We were most fortunate that Graeme Henderson agreed to met with our editor, Michael Barker, to discuss the book and make the podcast below about it.

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