Rupert Gerritsen

Rupert Gerritsen (1953–2013) 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. He died in Canberra, A.C.T. on Sunday 3 November 2013.

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.

Although not his first work published, And Their Ghosts May Be Heard, (1994, 2nd edition in 2002), is perhaps the best known. It is a detailed exploration of the fate of the Dutch mariners castaway on the Western Australian coast in the 1600s and early 1700s.

Gerritsen was involved in establishing that possibly some 16% of Nhanda, an Aboriginal language of the central west coast of Western Australia, was derived from Dutch as a result of interaction with marooned sailors. This groundbreaking discovery has led to major reevaluation in the perceptions of the early prehistory in that Aboriginal Australians were not mute witnesses to the unfolding events history but active participants who embraced parts of European culture long before the British settlement of the continent.

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