Station

Dirk Hartog (baptized 30 October 1580, Amsterdam – buried 11 October 1621, Amsterdam) was a 17th-century Dutch sailor and explorer. Dirk Hartog's expedition was the second European group to land on Australian soil, He was the first to leave behind an artifact to record his visit, the Hartog plate. His name is sometimes alternatively spelled Dirck Hartog or Dierick Hartochsz. Ernest Giles referred to him as Theodoric Hertoge. Born into a seafaring family, at the age of 30 he received his first ship's command, and spent several years engaged in successful trading ventures in the Baltic and Mediterranean seas.

He then gained employment with the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in 1616, and was appointed master of a ship (the Eendracht, meaning "Concord" or "Unity") in a fleet voyaging from the Netherlands to the Dutch East Indies. Setting sail in January 1616 in the company of several other VOC ships, Hartog and the Eendracht became separated from the others in a storm, and arrived independently at the Cape of Good Hope (later to become the site of Cape Town, South Africa).