Encountering Karl : Willem de Vlamingh and the VOC on Noongar Boodjar

[Extract] This essay examines key feelings that Dutch East India Company (VOC) crews attached to fires they saw in the southwest of the Australian continent, and understood to be the work of Indigenous peoples. It considers both their own feelings and those they projected onto Indigenous populations. To do this, I use a case study of Willem de Vlamingh’s expedition of 1696–97, analyzing documents that conveyed perceptions of the fires and fire culture that the crews encountered on Whadjuk Noongar boodjar (Land or Country), the lands in and around what is now occupied by the city of Perth, Western Australia.[2] On this expedition to explore the region, VOC crews saw Indigenous peoples but reported they had not been able to meet with them. However, this essay argues that, through fire, Indigenous and VOC peoples were interacting, and the VOC records contain interpretations of these interactions