Read two obituaries for Phillip Playford, an outstanding Western Australian geologist, who died in July this year. Playford also took an interest in the shipwreck of the Zuytdorpoff the Western Australian coast which lead to his award-winning book Carpet Of Silver: The Wreck Of The Zuytdorp. He also wrote the Australian Dictionary of Biography’s entry on Dutch mariner Dirk Hartog, (who landed on the west coast of Australia in 1816, the oldest known record of a landing by Europeans in Australia) and geologists, Edward Hardman and Charles Nicolay.