Medaille Hollandaise. Trowee a la Baie des Chiens-marins (Nouvelle-Hollande).

The first recorded European sighting of the Western Australian coast was by Dirk Hartog on the Dutch ship the Eendracht on 25 October 1616. He commemorated this event by nailing a flattened pewter plate to a post on the island. The plate remained undisturbed until 4 February 1697 when Willem de Vlamingh replaced the Hartog plate with a new plate. He engraved Hartog’s account and added details of his own voyage on the Geelvinck and then took the Hartog plate to Batavia where ultimately it was placed in the Rijksmuseum. Then in September 1818 Louis Freycinet returned to Shark Bay as commander of the Uranie to recover the Vlamingh plate that he had previously seen when on the Baudin voyages visit to Shark Bay. He took the plate and gave it to the Academie Royale des inscriptions et belle-lettres de Institute de France in Paris. The plate bears the inscription translated into English On the 25th October, arrived here the ship Eendracht of Amsterdam the first merchant, Gilles Mibais, of Luyck Captain Dirk Hartog of Amsterdam the 27th ditto set sail for Bantam undermerchant Jan Stoyn, upper steersman, Pieter Dockes, from Bil, Ao, 1616.