Rupert Gerritsen

Gerritsen claimed that some 16% of Nhanda, an Aboriginal language of the central west coast of Western Australia, was apparently derived from Dutch as a result of interaction with marooned sailors.

[7] This discovery led to major reevaluation in the perceptions of the early prehistory, in that Aboriginal Australians were not mute witnesses to the unfolding events of history but active participants who embraced parts of European culture long before the British settlement of the continent.

[10] As a consequence of his research Gerritsen established that Hutt River, 500 kilometres (310 mi) north of Perth, was the site where Wouter Loos and Jan Pelgrom de Bye first set foot on mainland Australia.

In recognition of his work on Australian pre-history and its Dutch influence, in 2007, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands conferred upon Gerritsen the honour of Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau.

[citation needed] In August 2012 Gerritsen was awarded the Dorothy Prescott Prize for the paper, "Getting the strait facts straight", he gave at the Brisbane International Geospatial Forum.

[17] Under the Australia on the Map Division of the Australasian Hydrographic Society, Gerritsen had sole or joint responsibility for a number of projects, including the "Search for the Deadwater Wreck".