“Willem de Vlamingh was sent in 1696 to search for two VOC ships, Ridderschap van Holland (Knighthood of Holland), which had gone missing on its way to Batavia in 1694, and Vergulde Draeck (Gilt Dragon), lost in 1656. He was also instructed to chart parts of the western coast of New Holland not previously mapped by the Dutch. Although no trace of the VOC ships was found, de Vlamingh and his crew mapped 1,500 kilometres (932 mi) of coastline, landed on Rottnest Island, and ventured up the Swan River, becoming the first Europeans to sight the Western Australian black swan.”
Kim Martins 2023 – https://www.worldhistory.org/Dutch_East_India_Company/
The black swan has its own mythology – in honour of Humphrey McQueen’s book The Black Swan of Trespass – worth checking out- and below there are more than enough snippets to follow up to gather the story:
For example (rather than the Nolan ‘portrait’) here is Ern Malley pictured in a tribute by Garry Shead (The Apotheosis of Ern Malley, Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide, 26 November – 20 December 2003).
From the Adelaide catalogue via the fakers own journal Quadrant: discussion of how ideas were buried in a frisson of controversy – “the idea that a creative person in this material world is almost inevitably a sacrifice” (Sasha Grishin cited in McDonald, J., ‘The Eternal Ern’, Quadrant Magazine, issue six, 2009
The Black Swan of Trespass “scandal” is worth your time – see here for another version of the hoax. I am more interested that the title of one of the notebooks that contained the so-called fakes is Durer: Innsbruck, 1495. The first poem in the Ern Malley sequence is ‘from’ there:
I had read in books that art is not easy
But no one warned that the mind repeats
In its ignorance the vision of others. I am still
The black swan of trespass on alien waters.
The last four lines of the short poem (you can hear it read, with care, here):
The Hoax was a conservative piece of mischief that got more traction than might have been expected (media sensation, obscenity trial, collapse of the Angry Penguins publishing venture) but the Hoaxers went on to found the despicable aforementioned “Quadrant” magazine, putting the lie to the idea that we now live in an era of false news – it was ever thus.
It is not that surprising to be taken by obscure details and I am still somewhat curious at the motivations as to why “Malley” would name his notebook after Albrecht Durer, maker of images of that rhino in 1515, also not seen in person.
Trinketization 