ON board the Duyfken replica, Mirjam Hilgeman and Andrew Bibby have more than learnt the ropes.
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As crew members on the replica of the 16th century Dutch sailing ship, they have mastered an even more ancient and arcane art: finding love.
The engaged couple met on the Duyfken more than a decade ago.
"We joined two weeks apart," said Mr Bibby.
"Andrew started first," added Ms Hilgeman.
"Yep, so Mirjam is forever the rookie."
Mr Bibby, who is the ship's bosun, and Dutch-born deckhand Ms Hilgeman are among 14 crew in Newcastle at the moment, rerigging the Duyfken ready to sail the vessel to its new home at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney.
The tiny vessel, about 20 metres long, was at the Thales shipyard in Carrington, sandwiched between a couple of decommissioned Navy ships and the new ferries also bound for Sydney Harbour.
On Friday, the crew members were manoeuvring wooden yards, which weighed up to 900 kilograms, as well as installing ropes. Only the sailors don't call them that. In learning the ropes, the crew navigate their way through a different language. So there are martnets, halyards, and catharpins. And there is a lot of "rope" on board.
"She takes about four kilometres all up," Mr Bibby said.
"People who are astounded by the pyramids don't know what you can do with a long enough piece of rope."
The replica of the Duyfken arrived in Newcastle harbour earlier in the week on the deck of a cargo ship, having been carried from Fremantle in Western Australia. COVID restrictions meant the Duyfken could not have been sailed to its new home.
While the Duyfken was at sea on the deck of another ship, Mirjam Hilgeman was anxious.
"She's only been away 10 days, but it felt like a lifetime," Ms Hilgeman said. "Her on a voyage on her own is like a kid going off overseas. 'Are you going to be okay?'. So it was good to see she was all fine when she arrived."
The original Duyfken was the first European ship recorded to have reached Australia. The vessel belonging to the Dutch East Indies Company sailed from modern-day Indonesia to the coastline around Cape York in 1606.
"The Duyfken tells the story of the very first point of contact between First Nations peoples and Europeans in Australia, 164 years before that much more famous voyage of Cook," said Michael Harvey, the assistant director of the Australian National Maritime Museum.
The Duyfken replica was built in WA in the late 1990s to raise awareness of that long Dutch maritime connection to Australia. The replica took shape using not just traditional shipbuilding techniques but materials that reached across the globe.
As he stood on the wharf, looking at the little vessel, Peter Bowman, the CEO of the Duyfken 1606 Replica Foundation, said the timber for the hull was European oak, sourced from forests in Latvia. Even that timber told another story from history.
"Ironically in some of the timbers there we've still got shrapnel from the First World War," Mr Bowman said.
The foundation is handing the Duyfken replica to the Australian National Maritime Museum, after the money hunt to keep the ship operating became more difficult this year when the WA government's funding ended. While the ship's departure prompted criticism in the west, Mr Bowman said he thought the new home in Sydney would be good for the Duyfken and its profile.
"I'm pretty pragmatic, I reckon it's fantastic," he said. "When I started learning about, and understanding, the ship and its significance in Australia's history, we would have been quite selfish just to keep on the west coast, that's how I see it."
Andrew Bibby saw the move as positive.
"We know now her future is guaranteed, which is quite a comforting thing," he said.
The museum's Michael Harvey said the Duyfken was a valuable addition to its fleet.
"As a working replica, it's a vessel we'll be able to take people out on the harbour on," he said. "And because it's small, it's very agile."
But first the job of rerigging the Duyfken has to be completed. The ship is expected to set sail from Newcastle on Monday and arrive in Sydney the following day.
And amid the cramped quarters will be the couple who sails together, on fair seas and foul, delighted to be back on the Duyfken.
"She's a beautiful replica," said Ms Hilgeman. "She's astonishingly made, she sails beautifully, she tells the story, and she's a great little vessel."
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