The Lost White Tribes of Australia Part 1: 1656 Australia's First Settlement

The story of The Lost White Tribes of Australia by Henry Van Zanden confirms longstanding rumours, never previously proven true, that a community of Dutch-descended people was found only a day’s ride from Perth in the 19th century.

The “white tribe” was discovered by an official expedition in 1832, more than forty years after Britain began colonising the continent and three years after the Crown seized the western third of the continent from the Netherlands.

The community was living proof that foreigners had occupied the continent long before the British, and once its existence became known, the UK’s claim to sovereignty could be threatened. So it was kept a secret and has remained so to this day.

Mr Van Zanden writes that the truth was concealed by the invention of a tale that the tribe lived somewhere in Central Australia - a tale that was repeated as recently as 2001 in the book Stories of Exploration and Survival by the Bush Tucker Man, Les Hiddens.

The deception became a public exercise with the publication of newspaper stories, the first appearing in the Leeds Mercury in 1834. Mr Van Zanden argues that it was “planted” by the Swan River Colony’s governor James Stirling, and that he repeated the practice elsewhere.

What is remarkable about Mr Van Zanden’s narrative is that he himself discovered the primary documentary and physical evidence that established the case. He came across a map showing the location of the settlement while carrying out research at the Mitchell Library and tracked down the ruins of the village beside the Moore River, north of Perth.

A small community, all as white as himself, he said about three hundred; that they lived in houses enclosed all together within a great wall to defend them from black men; that their fathers came here 170 years ago, from a distant land across the sea...

Lt. Robert Dale 1832 Western Australia