300 YEARS AGO

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 290, 8 December 1942, Page 4

300 YEARS AGO

ABEL TASMAN'S VISIT

DOMINION CELEBRATIONS

A Netherlands delegation, consisting of Dr. Charles O. van der Plas, Major-General L. P. van Temmen, Mr. J. van Hoist Pellekaan and Lieutenant Commander H. V. Quispel, arrived in Auckland this afternoori to take part in the Tasman tercentenary celebrations to be held in the r;u.„ ! c n ?' commencing at Hokitika next Saturday. Dr. van der Plas is the head of tne delegation, and personally represents Queen Wilhelmina, the Queen of the Netherlands. The delegation was met on arrival by the Minister of Internal Affairs. Parry, who will be Minister in attendance on the party during their stay in New Zealand. The GovernorGeneral, Sir Cyril Newall, was represe£Led , y . Commodore Rotheram. The visitors will be welcomed at a reception in the Town Hall w ~: ls . aft ernoon and will leave for Wellington by the Limited. They will , gues u s of . the Government at a State luncheon in Parliament Buildti*™ «nn n ? r £ OW ', An offi cial recep--11 take Place at Hokitika on Saturday and on December 18 a cereutake place at Tarakohe Au'. w , here a memorial to Cap-' Jansoon Tasman has been u-° J the rarest point of land which Tasman approached on nis famous voyage of discovery. A monument has also been erected at Okanto (Westland). An extract from Tasman's log dated December 13, 1642, reads: "Towards noon saw large high." He was referring „,-n n v, December 19 the delegation ? Ju ese J}} at the official opening of the Abel Tasman Memorial Park at Tasman Bay, Nelson Province, where Tasman brought his p i S thGir first anchorage in New Zealand waters. The area of this park is 38,000 acres, the land having ~?een dedicated as a permanent memorial to Tasman. Delegates' Careers t J?£ vai ?T der Plas graduated from Leiden University in 1911, afterYt ar< i S T entering the civil service of the Netherlands Indies., He speaks ten languages, including a number of Indonesian and other Eastern languages. From 1921 to 1926 Dr. van der Plas was Netherlands Consul at Jeddan, Arabia, and took a great interest in Indonesian pilgrims to Mecca. From 1936 to 1941 he was Governor of the province of East Java, and in his last year of office was appointed a member of the Council of the Netherlands Indies. Just prior to the fall of Java, Dr. van der Plas, with a number of other officials, was instructed to leave Java to form a nucleus of an administration outside occupied territory with a view to preparing for reconstruction of the country after the war. He travelled to England by way of Australia and the United States. While in London he was appointed member of a special advisory council to the Minister of the Colonies and also president of the Netherlands Indies Commission for Australia and New Zealand at Melbourne In this position he will replace the original president, Dr. J. E. van Hoogstraten, who will go to London as soon as Dr. van der Plas takes over. Major-General van Temmen, of the Royal Netherlands Indies Army, was born in Batavia in 1884. He was educated in Holland, and in 1907 went to the Indies as an artillery officer. He took pat;t in the Timor expedition in 1911 and many other expeditions. During the Great War he commanded an artillery b«tery in the Netherlands. On his return to the Indies he became commander of the Java Remount Depot. When war with Japan broke out he was sent to China as chief of a military mission, and was later appointed military attache at Chungking, a post he occupied until a few months ago. Mr. von Hoist Pellekaan, who is 43 years of age, is secretary and member of the Netherlands Indies Commission for Australia and New Zealand. Lieutenant-Commander Quispel, of the Royal Netherlands Navy received his commission in 1927. *Eight years afterwards he became director of the bureau of naval recruiting at Batavia. In 1938 he was appointed director of the information branch of the Navy Department. In March of this year he went to Colombo, and from there went to Australia to take up a post he now holds as head of the Netherlands Indies Government information service at Melbourne.