TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Occupying approximately a volley-court-large space in Fremantle, Perth, Australia, the Shipwreck Galleries is home for the ruin of the Batavia ship used to be owned by the VOC (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie), the Dutch East Indies Company that once ruled the now-called Jakarta city.

We visited the site after a recommendation by our travel guide, Ryan Zaknich who wanted to show us something that has a ‘connection’ with Indonesia.

“Usually people are interested and feel connected with new place when they find something that is related to something they familiar with,” said Ryan, the founder of Two Feet & A Heartbeat, a local travel agent providing historical travel experience.

Me and my fellow journalist, who came from Jakarta to attend invitation from the Tourism of Western Australia, the Tourism Agency of Western Australia, for the Royal de Luxe’s performance of their theatrical show ‘The Giants’, agreed to the recommendation. Ryan thought that we should see the ‘phinisi ship that wrecked in the water of Western Australia in 1629 when it sailed from the Netherlands to Indonesia. The ship name was ‘Batavia’.

Batavia carried 300 passengers, including women and children, and was capatained by Franciscon Pelsaert. When they left Cape of Good Hope, accross the Atlantic, two of the ship crews, Adrian Jacobsz and Jeronimus Cornelisz, planned a coupe to take over the ship. Nobody knows what happened exactly, but on the early morning of Jun 4th, 1629, the wooden ship hit Morning Reef in Houtman Abrolhos nearby Western Australia waters, and sunk!. The wreckages were started to be recovered from the water in 1972 and preserved at the Shipwreck Halleries.

Together with the ruin, the museum also displays the stone facade found with the ship. The facade – believed to be a ‘gate’—is said to be specially made for an important building in Batavia. Anchor, skulls and bones of the passengers taken from the Beacon Island are also on display.

According to the gallery management, around 250 passengers of the ship were rescued to the Beacon Island. But, when Captain Pelsaert left the island to look for help, Cornelisz killed more than one hundred of the unhealthy survivors, including women and children, to save water and food stock.

Suddenly I felt the urge to touch the ruins: this ship must have been played a role in the early periods of the Dutch colonialism in Indonesia, which only ended 350 years later!

PHILIPUS PARERA