THE TULIP certainly originated from Turkey and Iran, presented to the West by Suleyman the Magnificent, but there can be no doubt that in most people’s minds it is Dutch, through and through.

Now, to celebrate the Dirk Hartog 2016 anniversary year, the new Dutch ambassador Erica Schouten has presented the ‘Dirk Hartog’ tulip to Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove and Lady Cosgrove, “to show gratitude for the warm relationship with the people of Australia”.

2016 marks the 400th anniversary of the first European contact with Western Australia. On October 25, 1616, as all Australian schoolchildren know, Dutch sailor Dirk Hartog made landfall in the Shark Bay area of WA, where he left an inscribed pewter plate. Not long after Hartog died, in the Netherlands were consumed with ‘tulip mania’ where tulip bulbs sometimes had the same value as a house.

To mark this event, many celebrations and commemorations are taking place throughout the year across Australia and the Netherlands and not surprisingly, tulips take centre stage.

The Dirk Hartog tulip was cultivated in the Netherlands by Frank Timmerman, owner of plant nursery ‘Goede Tulpen’, which translates as ‘Good Tulips’. The tulip, especially selected for its dual shade of orange, has travelled over 16,500 kilometres to be at on roughly the same route as Hartog took to Australia.

Floriade itself was in part the brainchild of Christiaan Slotemaker de Bruine, a Dutch landscape architect in Canberra. He commenced the design of Floriade in 1986 and based it on the world famous ‘Keukenhof’ garden in The Netherlands.

The tulip was given its Australia baptism by the Governor-General, Lady Cosgrove and the ambassador with special Dirk Hartog wine.

Horticulture, staff at the Embassy  of the Kingdom of the Netherlands predict, will be one of the topics of conversation during the parallel trade mission later this year that  coincides with the royal visit to Australia by  King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima.