Rottnest Island: The dark history behind an Australian paradise

From the shorelines of Perth in southwestern Australia, a towering blue hill can be seen jutting out of the horizon. Some days it seems so close you could touch it. Other days it’s hidden by mist or passing ships.

“Sometimes it wants to be seen and sometimes it wants to hide in the shadows,” says Glen Stasiuk, lecturer at Murdoch University and director of the 2014 documentary “Wadjemup: Black Prison — White Playground.” “It’s this entity. It has a heartbeat.”

Rottnest Island, or Wadjemup, as it’s known by the local Aboriginal Noongar people, lies 19 kilometers (11.8 miles) off the coast of Fremantle. More than 800,000 people visit each year to enjoy its white sand beaches, crystal-clear waters, and native quokka: an adorable, Instagram-famous marsupial that smiles in selfies.

It’s a spiritual place for Wadjemup’s traditional custodians, explains Len Collard, emeritus professor at the University of Western Australia and Noongar Elder. “In the Noongar story,” he says, “when people die, their spirit leaves their body and travels out west to the islands, to the place of ghosts.”

“Wadjemup was always an abode of the spirits,” Collard explains, “but it definitely became a more spiritual place after the colonial regime, after it became the site of Australia’s largest number of Aboriginal deaths in custody.”

Aboriginal Australians are one of the oldest continuous civilizations on the planet, having been the custodians of the Australian land, seas and skies, or “Country” as they call it, for at least 65,000 years. Britain claimed the east of Australia in 1770 and its First Fleet of largely convict settlers arrived in 1788. During the colonial period that followed, violent conflicts broke out between the local Aboriginal people and the British.

Wadjemup became a prison for Aboriginal boys and men in 1838. The first prisoners arrived by boat, sleeping in a coastal cave as they mined limestone and built the prison itself.

The majority of inmates were accused of stealing livestock or flour rations, says Stasiuk. He explains that the system was already “completely foreign” to the men and boys, who were charged, arrested and sentenced in a language they didn’t understand. Suddenly, they found themselves sent away to an island, unsure if or when they would see their loved ones again.

Some inmates travelled long and traumatizing distances, including from the Kimberley, an Outback region more than 2,000 kilometers (1,243 miles) away. Stasiuk says those from the desert had never even seen the sea. In a practice not uncommon for the time, according to Collard, many were transported while enchained by the neck, arms and legs.

Once on Wadjemup, prisoners were forced into harsh labor as they mined materials and constructed the island’s infrastructure. “The jetty, the cottages, the prison, the governor’s house,” says Stasiuk, “all this was built by Aboriginal prisoners.” Collard says this construction helped the colony justify its expense in setting up the prison, as the Aboriginal people could be further used as cheap labor on future projects after leaving the island.

Life in their cells was no easier, and the prison was overcrowded and rife with disease. These brutal conditions were worsened at the hands of Henry Vincent, one particularly “barbaric” superintendent, according to Stasiuk. “Vincent had one eye and came from the Napoleonic wars,” he explains. “He would chain men up in their cells, beat prisoners and shoot at them.”

Stasiuk explains that Vincent was never convicted of any of these crimes and a street on the island would stay named after him until 2022.

By the end of the 19th century, calls to close the prison stirred in tandem with the creation of more mainland prisons and a growing desire for the recreational use of Wadjemup. In 1902, after 93 years of operation, the prison was officially closed.

Almost 4,000 Indigenous men and boys were incarcerated on Wadjemup. Of the 373 of them who died there, most were buried in unmarked graves.

Today, many tourists who visit Wadjemup are unaware of its harrowing history. They cycle down its wide roads as the sun beats down, snorkel through its coral reefs, or stroll the colonial town with an ice cream dripping down their hand. It’s a stark contrast — this idyllic destination and its buried, haunting past.

The island began its reinvention as a tourist hot spot shortly after the prison closed, with the main cell block converted into vacation accommodation in 1911. As its walls were demolished and plumbing and electricity installed, the building’s heritage was destroyed, says Collard. More than that, tourists were now “paying for a room, getting into a bed, and making love where these men had died,” he explains.

Worse still, the burial ground containing the unmarked graves of those inmates who had died became a campsite known as Tentland. For the next 90 years, vacationers would sleep just two feet above one of Australia’s largest Indigenous burial sites.

Stasiuk recounts visiting Tentland in the 1970s before knowing this history. “I went and I got sick,” he explains. “Then I went again and ended up in hospital. I couldn’t understand. The doctors couldn’t understand. I was otherwise physically healthy.” Then he told his grandmother. She had an answer immediately. “It’s warra,” she told him. “It’s bad.”

Even though skeletal remains were discovered on the site in 1970, it wasn’t until 2007 that the campground officially closed. In 2018, the former prison ceased operations as a tourist resort.

There are now multiple camping accommodations on offer in Rottnest Island, unconnected to the Tentland site.

To Noongar people like Collard, Wadjemup remains deeply symbolic. “It’s like a sentinel,” he explains. “A lighthouse that throws out light to show people something’s there.”

Stasiuk agrees, saying it’s vital to remember the Aboriginal history of the island.

In 2020, the Rottnest Island Authority began facilitating the Wadjemup Project “to formally acknowledge the island’s history of Aboriginal incarceration and deaths in custody through truth-telling, ceremony and memorialisation.”

The Project involves honoring the burial ground, conserving the original prison building and holding a cultural ceremony to facilitate healing. The Wadjemup Wirin Bidi, or Spirit Trail, was held in 2024, with around 200 Aboriginal people from across the country attending private cultural ceremonies to lay those buried on the island to rest and free their spirits.

This complex history melds with the island’s modern tourist identity in the form of Aboriginal cultural tours.

A spokesperson for Rottnest Island Authority told CNN that it’s committed to continue working with the Aboriginal community “to ensure that the island’s history is shared openly and honestly.”

Casey Kickett is a local Noongar guide, the director of Koordas Crew and a member of the Wadjemup Aboriginal Reference Group. Koordas Crew organizes activities for children, including painting workshops and bush track tours, that are designed to introduce kids to the positive side of Wadjemup’s culture. She hopes this will leave them more open to learning about the darker histories when they’re older and ready.

Kickett describes her work as a stepping stone between the beautiful island and its tragic history. Because the island “really is a beautiful place,” insists Collard, as he reiterates how much he loves to visit Wadjemup, despite the terrors that unfolded there.

“My people are buried there,” he says, “and I enjoy it so much when I go over and say g’day to them.”

Kickett encourages all tourists visiting this beautiful, complex island to stay safe with a simple ritual. “When you hop off the jetty,” she advises, “throw some sand in the water. Introduce yourself to Country, to our ancestors.”

Collard agrees. “The next time you get over there,” he says, “make sure you go to them and say hello. Tell my people you know about what happened to them and that you personally will do your very best to rectify the past in our present.”