Gun has history in sights
by: Xavier La Canna From: The Courier-Mail January 11, 2012 12:00AM
A DARWIN boy may help re-write Australia's history after unearthing what he believes is a 500-year-old Portuguese gun on a Northern Territory beach.
Christopher Doukas made the discovery at Dundee Beach, about two hours' drive from Darwin, when tides dipped to exceptional lows in January 2010 and he could walk out a long way from shore.
Now 13, Christopher saw the swivel gun barrel poking out of mud, dug it out with his father and took it back home.
"As soon as we got it back into Darwin, my dad got an angle grinder and nicked a little bit of it. We saw it was bronze, so we knew it was old," Christopher said.
Internet research showed the item, about the size of a rifle, bore a striking resemblance to Portuguese swivel guns, used as anti-personnel weapons on ships in the 16th century.
Last July, Christopher's mother Barbara alerted staff at the Darwin Museum to the find and sent in photos that she was told seemed to indicate it was the genuine article.
But it has been only in recent weeks, after speaking to her local MP, that she was asked to bring it in for further examination.
Christopher said a similar item had sold in Britain for pound8000 (about $12,000), and he would be interested in selling the gun to a museum.
Portugal occupied Timor from 1515 until 1975 but it is hotly debated whether Portuguese explorers made it to Australia, just 700km away.
Early maps from France in the 1500s appear to show part of northern Australia, which some have cited as evidence Portuguese explorers arrived during that period, although that claim is controversial.
Top End historian Peter Forrest was sceptical Portuguese explorers reached northern Australia in the 1500s but if the find was genuinely from that period it would be grist for the mill for people who believed the theory, he said.
It still had to be demonstrated that the location of the find had a connection with Portuguese contact and the item hadn't washed up or been left by antique dealers in the 1800s.
Mr Forrest said there was no independent evidence of Portuguese contact and quite a lot of evidence that there was no contact. "I think it is jumping to a very premature conclusion to link that object with a Portuguese presence in the Top End," he said.
The earliest authenticated European contact with Australia was in 1606 by Dutch vessel Duyfken.
Here:
http://www.couriermail.com.au/ipad/gun-has-history-in-sights/story-fn6ck51p-1226241146851
and here:
http://www.ntnews.com.au/article/2012/01/10/282451_ntnews.html
Photo gallery, here:
http://tools.ntnews.com.au/photo-gallery/photo_gallery_popup_preview.php?category_id=5301&offset=0
