Dutch Australian Genealogy Group

10/09/2026

10/09/2026

The Netherlands remembers 1953.

Far fewer people remember what happened in 1825.

On 3 February, a powerful northwesterly storm combined with spring tide and drove water toward the Dutch coast.

Zuiderzee dikes began failing.

The disaster continued through 4 and 5 February.

Friesland was hit catastrophically.

Dikes failed near Lemmer, Nijemirdum, Mirns and between Workum and Hindeloopen.

Nearly two-thirds of the province was flooded.

Overijssel suffered even more human casualties.

Around Kampen, Vollenhove, Zwartsluis and surrounding communities, dikes broke in more than seventy places.

People climbed onto roofs and into trees.

Boats moved through flooded settlements searching for survivors.

Livestock disappeared beneath the water.

More than 2,000 houses became uninhabitable.

The documented national death toll reached 379 people, with 305 deaths in Overijssel alone.

Contemporary artists recorded dramatic rescues.

Yet the catastrophe gradually faded from national memory.

Today it is sometimes called the “Forgotten Flood.”

Its scale makes that name remarkable.

Long before the famous disaster of 1953, enormous parts of the northern Netherlands had already experienced the same terrifying Dutch nightmare:

a storm, failing dikes and seawater suddenly moving across land that had seemed safely protected.

09/09/2026

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08/09/2026

On 28 January 1256, Willem II, Count of Holland and King of the Romans, led an army into West Friesland, now part of North Holland. Near Hoogwoud, his horse broke through the frozen Berkmeer. West Frisian fighters reached him and k***d him, then hid his body.

Willem's d*ath caused a major stir and was recorded in foreign chronicles. His son Floris V was still a small child, so adult guardians governed Holland in his name. The missing body also became a personal and political issue for the young count.

Floris grew up determined to defeat the West Frisians. His first campaign in 1272 failed, but in 1282 he returned with another army and reached Hoogwoud. Later accounts say an old local man revealed the secret burial place. Floris had his father's remains dug up and taken to Middelburg Abbey.

The recovery became part of Floris's long struggle to bring West Friesland under Holland's control.

Today, Dutch museums and historical institutions still preserve the story of Willem's death and the recovery of his body 26 years later. It shows how a ruler's remains carried political and family meaning in the Middle Ages. Even the dead remained part of the conflict.

07/09/2026

In 1997, archaeologists were investigating land near Hardinxveld-Giessendam before construction of the Betuweroute freight railway.

Then they uncovered a grave.

Inside was the remarkably complete skeleton of a woman who had lived around 7,500 years ago.

She became known as Trijntje.

The nickname was a playful reference to the railway project that led to her discovery.

Trijntje lived during the Mesolithic, when the western Netherlands looked completely different from today.

Much of the region consisted of wetlands, rivers and marshes.

Her community lived seasonally on a “donk” — an ancient river dune rising above the surrounding water.

They hunted deer and wild boar, caught fish including pike, travelled by canoe and gathered wild plants.

Trijntje was between roughly forty and sixty years old when she died.

Her skeleton was sufficiently complete for researchers to reconstruct her appearance.

Even more remarkably, three dogs were buried near her.

The discovery demonstrated that communities were living successfully in the watery Dutch delta thousands of years before dikes, polders or cities existed.

And the circumstances of the discovery created an extraordinary collision between two eras.

One of the Netherlands’ most modern infrastructure projects had uncovered one of its oldest known inhabitants.

A freight railway intended to connect Rotterdam with Germany accidentally opened a window into life in the Netherlands around 5500 BC.

07/09/2026

In October 1934, the Dutch KLM airliner Uiver was racing from England to Australia.

It was a Douglas DC-2 carrying four crew members, three passengers and thousands of letters.

Then, near the end of the journey, disaster threatened.

During the flight toward Melbourne, the Uiver entered a violent thunderstorm.

Radio communication and navigation became difficult.

The aircraft became lost above southeastern Australia.

Below was the town of Albury.

Residents could hear the aircraft circling in the darkness.

The town responded with an extraordinary improvised rescue.

Albury’s lights were switched on and off to signal the town’s name in Morse code.

A local radio announcer called on residents to drive to the racecourse.

Cars arrived.

Their headlights were arranged to create a makeshift illuminated landing strip.

Captain Koene Parmentier saw the lights.

The Uiver descended onto the rain-soaked racecourse and landed safely.

Then another problem appeared.

The aircraft became stuck in mud.

Residents helped free it the following morning so it could continue toward Melbourne.

The Uiver ultimately won the handicap section of the MacRobertson Air Race and finished second in the speed competition.

The flight became a sensation in the Netherlands.

But perhaps its most extraordinary chapter happened thousands of kilometres away.

An Australian town with no prepared airport saved a Dutch passenger aircraft using Morse code, a radio broadcast and rows of automobile headlights.

07/09/2026

In 1672, the Dutch Republic suddenly faced an enormous crisis. France invaded with a large army, while England attacked the Netherlands at sea. The German states of Münster and Cologne also joined the war. This meant the Dutch had to fight several enemies at the same time. The year later became known as the Disaster Year.

The Dutch army was not strong enough to stop the French advance quickly. French soldiers moved deep into the country, and several towns and regions fell under enemy control. Panic spread because many people feared that the Dutch Republic could be completely defeated and might even stop existing.

To protect the most important part of Holland, the Dutch used a special defensive strategy: they deliberately flooded large areas of land. This Dutch Water Line made it difficult for enemy soldiers, horses, and cannons to move forward. At the same time, the Dutch navy under Michiel de Ruyter fought England and France at sea.

The Netherlands eventually managed to survive. William III of Orange gained more power, and the Dutch army became stronger. In the following years, the enemies withdrew or made peace. The Disaster Year showed how close the Dutch Republic came to total defeat, but also how water defenses, the army, and the Dutch navy helped prevent the country from being conquered.

06/09/2026

In June 1598, five ships sailed from Rotterdam on an extraordinarily ambitious voyage.

They planned to reach Asia by sailing west.

The fleet would cross the Atlantic, pass through the Strait of Magellan and enter the Pacific.

The ships were De Hoop, De Liefde, Het Geloof, De Trouw and De Blijde Boodschap.

Almost everything went wrong.

Storms, disease, hunger, violence and separation devastated the expedition.

Het Geloof eventually returned to Rotterdam.

De Blijde Boodschap fell into Spanish hands.

De Trouw was captured in Asia.

De Hoop disappeared while crossing the Pacific.

That left De Liefde.

On 19 April 1600, the battered Dutch ship reached an island off Japan.

Most of its original crew were dead.

Among the survivors were Dutch sailors Jan Joosten and Jacob Quaeckernaeck and English navigator William Adams.

Japanese authorities seized the vessel.

Yet the arrival had enormous consequences.

Several survivors entered Japanese society, while Adams eventually became an adviser to Tokugawa Ieyasu.

Dutch-Japanese commercial relations developed soon afterward.

There is an even stranger surviving connection.

De Liefde had originally been named Erasmus and carried a wooden image of the Rotterdam philosopher on its stern.

The ship itself disappeared.

But the Erasmus figure survived in Japan for centuries before its identity was recognized in the twentieth century.

One disastrous voyage from Rotterdam had accidentally created one of the earliest lasting connections between the Netherlands and Japan.