Rupert Gerritsen

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Rupert Gerritsen (1953–3 November 2013) was an Australian historian and expert on Indigenous Australian prehistory and early Australian maps. He helped reshape how we understand Australia’s history before British settlement in 1788, showing evidence of agriculture and settled communities on the continent.

He was born in Geraldton, Western Australia, to Dutch parents. He grew up there and took an early interest in shipwrecks, including the Batavia, which were discovered along Western Australia’s coast.

From the 1960s to the 1980s he was active in radical politics and anti-conscription. In 1972 he placed a bomb in Perth’s Department of Labour and National Service. The device did not detonate. He fled, was arrested, extradited, and later pled guilty, serving one year in prison.

Professionally, Gerritsen spent many years in Western Australia and the Australian Capital Territory working in youth work, community work and mental health, focusing on development.

In writing, he explored the fate of Dutch sailors cast ashore on WA’s coast in the 1600s and 1700s. His 1994 book And Their Ghosts May Be Heard discussed these mariners and a claim that some Nhanda words came from Dutch; linguists later refuted this link. He also identified the site where mutineers from the Batavia first reached mainland Australia, at Hutt River, a discovery that helped change how Western Australia’s prehistory was studied.

Gerritsen published across archaeology and historical linguistics. He argued in Australia and the Origins of Agriculture that some Indigenous groups practiced farming and lived in large settlements.

He worked as a Petherick Researcher at the National Library of Australia from 1995 and was active in history organizations, co-founding Australia on the Map: 1606–2006 with Peter Reynders and serving as National Secretary. Later he chaired the Australia on the Map Division of the Australasian Hydrographic Society, which runs projects like the Search for the Deadwater Wreck.

In 2007 Queen Beatrix knighted him as a Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau. He won the Dorothy Prescott Prize in 2012 for a paper presented at the Brisbane International Geospatial Forum.

Rupert Gerritsen died in Canberra on 3 November 2013. His work helped influence Bruce Pascoe’s book Dark Emu and sparked renewed interest in Australia’s deep history.