THE Dutch King and Queen will visit WA this month as part of a week-long official visit to Australia.

King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands will be in Perth on October 31 and November 1 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the landing of Dutch explorer Dirk Hartog in WA.

Premier Colin Barnett said the royal couple would officially open the Travellers and Traders in the Indian Ocean World exhibition at the WA Maritime Museum and unveil Hartog’s pewter dish, which is on loan from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

“The inscribed pewter dish left at Cape Inscription by Hartog in 1616 is the oldest known European object found on Australian soil, and due to its fragility, will likely not return to WA again,” he said.

The King and Queen will also view a scale model of the New Museum for WA and visit the Hub for Immersive Visualisation and eResearch at Curtin University to learn about the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope project.