Jan Andersen

Author

Jan Andersen

Jan Andersen is the author of Searching For Wouter: The Story of Australia’s First White Settler. His second novel, To Kill or Not to Kill, is due for release in early 2027. Jan Andersen studied Arts/Law at Monash University (Melbourne) and has a Masters in Creative Writing from Macquarie University (Sydney). You can sign up to get updates about their writing here.

In 2006, whilst visiting the WA Shipwrecks Museum in Fremantle, Western Australia, I inadvertently placed my hands upon the ancient timbers of the hull of the Dutch retourship, The Batavia. This is arguably one of the most notorious of all the Dutch shipwrecks along the coast of Australia. Shipwrecked on the reef, a hour’s sail from Geraldton, The Batavia struck reef in the winter of 1629. In the ensuing three months, while waiting for a rescue ship, mutineers raped and murdered 150 people, including children.

My hotel was a short walk from the museum, situated right on the boat harbour, and my window opened out onto the vast Indian Ocean, the place of many shipwrecks just like the Batavia. The moon was full, and it cast it’s silvery pathy along the ocean into my window. That night I had a nightmare. I dreamed there was an evil force, hidden, trying to remain secret, behind a large wooden door, behind which untold attrocities were happening. I awoke in a sweat and went into the bathroom. It was then I saw what others later jokingly described as a stigmata on my left forehead, just over the eyebrow. A browny-red mark, the shape of a crucifix, had appeared. My initial remark, ‘What the hell?’ In the morning it was more pronounced, and earned it’s fanciful name from my wife.

I am not prone to nightmares. And I am definitely not prone to religious phenomena.

I didn’t realise until later that I had connected with a recorded memory, embedded in those ancient timbers of The Batavia. Today, I reaslise that memory can be recorded in many ways. Just as we record photos on film, or sounds and images on our silicon chips, so can memory be recorded in many places. In walls of a house, for example. We glimpse or feel something. This memory is recorded in places where strong emotional events have occurred. In the walls of houses (thus the “haunted house”) and within the timbers of old ships.

The story of The Batavia would not leave me alone. I had never heard of it before that chance encounter in 2006. I slowly began sourcing every available book and article on the subject, some of them privately printed. The story had hold of me. For it was here I learned that a 24 year-old soldier, Wouter Loos, was set ashore at Hutt River, thereby becoming Australia’s first white settler.

Years later, in 2017, I started writing. As soon as I began, I remembered something long forgotten. I forgot that I wrote a novella at the age of 13. It was a vampire story. Then at age 16 I won a short story competition. Then I stopped writing. I decided to be sensible. I went to university to study Arts/Law. In 2017 I finally picked up my pen once more.....(continued in the blog section)

Jan Andersen is the author of Searching For Wouter: The Story of Australia’s First White Settler. His second novel, To Kill or Not to Kill, is due for release in early 2027. Jan Andersen studied Arts/Law at Monash University (Melbourne) and has a Masters in Creative Writing from Macquarie University (Sydney). You can sign up to get updates about their writing here.

In 2006, whilst visiting the WA Shipwrecks Museum in Fremantle, Western...

Books

Searching For Wouter: The Story of Australia’s First White Settler

Indie Reader Approved 4 Star Rating: "...a bold, meticulously researched work of historical fiction that resurrects one of Australia’s most overlooked colonial mysteries. It is an ambitious entry that rewards patient readers with genuine literary and historical depth."

One hundred and fifty years before the First Fleet arrived at Botany Bay in 1788, a Dutch soldier called Wouter Loos steps onto the beach on the other side of the Australian continent in what is now called Hutt River (Western Australia). He is marooned onto the continent for his part in the notorious mutiny of the Dutch retourship, The Batavia....

To Kill or Not to Kill

One of Melbourne’s top criminal lawyers, Gerardo, invites a young man, George, to dinner at his favourite restaurant in Lygon Street, ostensibly to discuss financial planning. While George is using the bathroom, Gerardo spikes his drink. He then drives George into his home garage and, whilst chanting Buddhist prayers, quietly murders him.

The...

Praise

The Myth before the myth: 1629, buried

The founding myth of European Australia runs through 1788, and Captain Cook, and Searching For Wouter: The Story of Australia's First White Settler spends its entire length quietly dismantling that timeline. Jan Andersen's subject is Wouter Loos, a 24-year-old Dutch soldier exiled to the Western Australian coast in 1629 following the Batavia mutiny — 150 years before the first fleet, and precisely where the historical record stops. What the novel does with that silence is the interesting part: Andersen imagines Wouter's integration into an indigenous community, the family he builds there, and the descendants who carry his trace forward across centuries. The structure moves between the 1600s, the mid-1800s, the 1900s, and 2018, where a modern attempt to locate Wouter's remains closes the loop. Coming to this without prior knowledge of the Batavia story, I found myself pausing to verify which elements were documented and which were imagined — the references at the back confirm the research investment is real, and that anchoring makes the speculative dimensions easier to trust.

The novel's most interesting instinct is its restraint. Wouter navigating cultural unfamiliarity, building a life from the materials of banishment — these quieter passages carry more weight than the violent episodes surrounding the mutiny, which occasionally crowd out the reflective dimension the book does best. The multiple POVs create an intimacy with the material that a single perspective wouldn't achieve. The pacing is deliberate, and readers wanting propulsion will feel the slower sections. The darker themes are rendered with enough intensity to unsettle without tipping into gratuitousness.

SEARCHING FOR WOUTER is historical fiction driven by genuine curiosity about what the archive leaves unfilled. Andersen is less interested in heroising Wouter than in asking what adaptation and survival look like when the documentary record simply runs out — and that question, it turns out, is more than enough to sustain a novel.

– Alejandro Soto

Fascinating!

SEARCHING FOR WOUTER is an amazing piece of historical fiction. The author divides the story into several times periods: 1600s, mid 1800s, 1900s, and then 2018. Each recalling journals of various events, providing evidence that the Dutch were the first white settlers in Australia rather than the English.

While the tales are fictional, the main characters are real and the details believable. The story has inspired me to want to research the topic further through the references provided at the end of the book.

This is a must-read for anyone interested in Austraila as it provides history and details of the geography and climate. It also provides an in-depth look at the native lifestyles and beliefs that would be interesting to anyone who is inclined towards anthropology.

– Donna Emperardor

A young soldier Wouter Loos is at sea on the way to the East Indies when they go off course and end up disembarking from the ship. He ends up stranded on a small island with all the passengers who have to find a spot to settle and wait for what is to come.

On the island, Wouter has to deal with challenges such as protecting Mayken and her baby from Jeronimus, who has appointed himself the captain -general of the island and his men and is always harboring the idea of how he can get rid of them from the face of the earth.

When Wouter Loos is banished to a remote island by commander Pelseart , it marks the beginning of living his life with natives and let’s say it’s quite an interesting experience to say the least.

The fact that there are narrations from different people as well as the ship itself makes this story very interesting as we get to see the whole story from their perspectives.

– Catherine Humphrey

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Blog

April 16, 2026

Channelling the Story of Wouter Loos

In 2006, whilst visiting the WA Shipwrecks Museum in Fremantle, Western Australia, I inadvertently placed my hands upon the ancient timbers of the hull of the Dutch retourship, The Batavia. This is arguably one of the most notorious of all the Dutch shipwrecks along the coast of Australia. Shipwrecked on the reef, a hour’s sail from Geraldton, The Batavia struck reef in the winter of 1629. In the ensuing three months, while waiting for a rescue ship, mutineers raped and murdered 150 people,...