What do all those nails mean?

If the survival of Hartog’s and de Vlamingh’s plates on the north end of Dirk Hartog Island seems like a miracle, what about the posts to which they were nailed? Surely, you would think, exposed to the weather and occasional bushfire, for hundreds of years, they should have been destroyed decades ago. However, here is the wooden post to which de Vlamingh attached his plate, or ‘mess dish’, and the improvised post to which the French explorer Hamelin had it re-attached in 1801. Willem de Vlamingh’s original post is believed to be of Rottnest Island Cypress, gathered when he visited the island in 1697. When French explorers discovered the plate in 1801, they found it only just hanging onto its original post, which was leaning over at a crazy angle. The expedition leader, Hamelin, ordered the plate re-erected, nailed this time to a broken spar from his ship’s own stores. An examination of the nail holes in the plate shows that the Dutch used square decking nails to attach it to their post while the French used small, round sheathing nails for the purpose. In 1818 the French explorer De Freycinet collected the plate but left the post. In 1820 the British explorer Philip Parker King found Hamelin’s post while charting the northwest coast and had his ship’s carpenter mark his initials in the wood using iron nails. And here they now stand, amazing survivors of the era of the exploration of the ‘New World’.

Memorial posts with brass plates erected by the Government of Western Australia, 1908.
Credit: WA Museum

New Posts: 1997 New Rottnest Island pine posts erected as part of the de Vlamingh re-enactment
Credit:  WA Museum