© Lesley Silvester and Mike Murray
Other Information on Contact Shipwreck stories
There are also some tantalising incidents which suggest contact with survivors from some of the early Dutch shipwrecks. In some cases survivors are known to have reached shore, but subsequent rescue parties have failed to find any trace of them. A number of legends exist in WA concerning Aboriginals with European features and light or reddish hair.
There are suggestions made that some Aboriginal languages contain Dutch or Portuguese sounding words and that some Aboriginal place names in Northern Australia are of Portuguese origin. Many of these theories relate to several enigmatic wreck incidents, in particular the two mutineers from the Batavia who were marooned, the large number of known survivors from the Vergulde Draeck and the possible survivors from the Zuytdorp. Each of the stories from these wrecks would be worthy of a TV miniseries if not a major movie.