Jan Andersen

Born in 1959, I wrote my first novella at age 13. I wonder whatever became of that manuscript? Maybe I qualify as a nerd, not sure, I have certainly been called more derogative names than that one, but I started collecting antiquarian books in my teens. Not only for reading, but holding, smelling the old pages, looking at those back-to-front Fs in books from the seventeenth century. I preferred sitting alone doing my French translations than joining everyone else for Saturday sport. I used to write them out with a feathered quill. Yikes, okay let's add antiquarian to nerd. Maybe introvert too. Gosh, who is this person?

I studied Arts/Law at Monash University, then found my way into book editing for a major non fiction publisher. After some years I went freelance, whilst living and studying in a Buddhist community. Here I also began studying esoteric arts, meditation as well as complementary medicine. I eventually became a clinician, specialising in chronic fatigue syndrome, and wrote many books on that subject. In recent years I returned to fiction, having completed a Masters in Creative Writing.

I don't know why I have an interest in seventeenth century Europe, since I live on the other side of the word, and down under at that. If I had to guess at where was my past life, that would be my first choice. My DNA places me as mostly Scottish, but I found I have 1 per cent Scandinavian. I decided it was time to give some air time to my 1 per cent Scandi self, and thus was born the name Jan Andersen.

In 2006, whilst visiting the WA Shipwrecks Museum in Fremantle, Western Australia, I inadvertently placed my hands upon the ancient timbers of the hull of the Dutch retourship, The Batavia. This is arguably one of the most notorious of all the Dutch shipwrecks along the coast of Australia. Shipwrecked on the reef, a hour’s sail from Geraldton, The Batavia struck reef in the winter of 1629. In the ensuing three months, while waiting for a rescue ship, mutineers raped and murdered 150 people, including children.

My hotel was a short walk from the museum, situated right on the boat harbour, and my window opened out onto the vast Indian Ocean, the place of many shipwrecks just like the Batavia. The moon was full, and it cast it’s silvery path along the ocean into my window. That night I had a nightmare. I dreamed there was an evil force, hidden, trying to remain secret, behind a large wooden door, behind which untold attrocities were happening. I awoke in a sweat and went into the bathroom. It was then I saw what others later jokingly described as a stigmata on my left forehead, just over the eyebrow. A browny-red mark, the shape of a crucifix, had appeared. My initial remark, ‘What the hell?’ In the morning it was more pronounced, and earned it’s fanciful name from my wife.

I am not prone to nightmares. And I am definitely not prone to religious phenomena.

I didn’t realise until later that I had connected with a recorded memory, embedded in those ancient timbers of The Batavia. Today, I realise that memory can be recorded in many ways. Just as we record photos on film, or sounds and images on our silicon chips, so can memory be recorded in many places. In walls of a house, for example. We glimpse or feel something. This memory is recorded in places where strong emotional events have occurred. Whether the walls of houses (thus the “haunted house”) or ancient ship timbers, or places in the natural world, we can gain access to what was once there.

The story of The Batavia would not leave me alone. I had never heard of it before that chance encounter in 2006. I slowly began sourcing every available book and article on the subject, some of them privately printed. The story had hold of me. For it was here I learned that a 24 year-old soldier, Wouter Loos, was set ashore at Hutt River, thereby becoming Australia’s first white settler. The Dutch on Western Australia's coast? 150 years before Captain Cook arrived on the east coast? How come we weren't taught this in history class?

In 2018 I decided to return to Western Australia. Here I explored the Hutt River region - the setting for my story about Wouter Loos from The Batavia. It was here, on 16 November 1629, that Wouter came ashore. Standing in his footprints on the beach, I followed where he would have traversed, along the Hutt River. A few hundred metres inland from the beach, you enter a highly charged area. Sheltered from the crashing surf, everything is still. Not a bird chirp. Not a kangaroo. Not a lizard. I picked up a river stone for a souvenir, only to put it back five minutes later, for I could tell I was not permitted to remove anything. The guardians of the place would not have that.

In the flats, between the river and Mount Victoria, just east of Pink Lake, is the place where the “native town” - so named by the British explorer, George Grey, and described in Searching For Wouter, was located. It is here that Wouter took part in the building of this “town”, with pitched rooves, wells, and stone-lined pathways.

It was while staying at Hutt River, that I received the story of Wouter. There is no substitute for visiting the site of your story. And just as I have portrayed in Searching for Wouter, I no longer see time as linear; it is both circular and parallel. You can gain a glimpse into the past or the future, when the boundary between the parallels becomes porous. This is most likely to happen at dusk. Also at both the full and the new moon. I was attuned to Wouter’s story because I had read so much about the history (at least the part that is known). And then I stepped into his old abode.

To sharpen the historical narrative of this really important story, I took my manuscript in hand into the Masters in Creative Writing program at Macquarie University. There many of my peers and supervisors got to meet Wouter and friends. I trust you will all enjoy Wouter’s company as much as I have.