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A grim discovery on a typically brisk, sunny autumn day underscored the dark history behind Western Australia’s favourite holiday island this week.
As tourists milled about the busy town centre, works on the main bus stand next to Rottnest Island’s Holy Trinity Catholic Church came to an abrupt halt on Wednesday when human remains were uncovered.
Police opened a probe, accompanied by the state anthropologist, and the remains were quickly confirmed to be human the following day.
However, there would have been little surprise when, on Friday, specialist advice indicated the remains were of an Indigenous person.
Because while Rottnest is renowned internationally for the turquoise waters that lap at its many pristine beaches – not to mention the Insta-famous resident marsupial which inspired its Dutch name – for WA’s Noongar people, Wadjemup is also a painful reminder of the state’s colonial past.
A couple of hundred metres from the Holy Trinity Catholic Church, where the remains were found on Wednesday, sits the Quod, a large, octagonal building which was among the earliest structures built on the island in the early 1800s.
About 3700 Aboriginal men and boys were sent to Rottnest between 1838 and 1931 – prisoners as young as eight and as old as 70, who were removed from communities as far north as Wyndham, in the state’s Kimberley.
And it was those sent to the island in the brutal, early years who built the Quod, which served as the second, main prison.
They were sent across the nearly 20-kilometre stretch of water for offences ranging from petty theft to murder. Hundreds never made it back to the mainland.
Overcrowding, a lack of sanitation and nutrition, extreme weather, and physical and psychological abuse contributed to the prisoners’ deaths.
At its peak, the Quod held almost 170 Aboriginal men, despite only being designed to hold a maximum of 106 prisoners.
Many were buried in unmarked graves. In 1894, the WA government moved to open Rottnest to the public as a summer resort, and campers in the “tentland” close to the main settlement would soon pitch their tents over the very land Indigenous prisoners were buried on.
That continued until as recently as 2007, when the camping area was moved from the area known to contain unmarked graves, which would later be recognised as the Wadjemup Aboriginal Burial Ground.
The Quod itself was also converted to accommodation in the 1900s – even serving for a time as an internment camp for German and Austrian officers during World War I – and formed part of the Rottnest Island Lodge.
But the Lodge has now been renovated – it is now the upmarket The Lodge Wadjemup – and work is under way to memorialise what is Australia’s biggest single death-in-custody site.
The Wadjemup Project aims to renovate the Quod, map out the Wadjemup Aboriginal Burial Ground – including through the use of ground-penetrating radar – and honour the at least 373 Aboriginal men and boys buried there.
The project is currently in its second phase, with the first involving truth-telling about the previously obscured history of the island, and why it remains such a painful place for WA’s Aboriginal people.
“Despite the substantial corpus of resources and the many opportunities to learn and understand, this history is largely invisible in the landscape, and many Western Australians and visitors to Wadjemup are unaware of these past injustices,” a Wadjemup Project progress report, published in 2022, said.
“This is due mainly to a legacy of concealment. In addition, many Aboriginal people do not feel safe or comfortable returning to the Island.
“The reasons for this are multifaceted, but primarily it is fair to say that Wadjemup has outstanding and unfinished business.”
A major milestone came in 2024, when the Wadjedemup Wirin Bidi (Spirit Trail) Commemoration Day invited the public to recognise a new chapter, which acknowledged the island’s Indigenous past.
The increased focus on Rottnest Island’s colonial history has come as the island experiences a surge in visitors, with many overseas tourists drawn out on day trips or stays by WA Tourism marketing and celebrity “selfies” with the ever-grinning resident quokkas.
In the 2024-25 financial year, 878,287 visitors arrived via ferry – the main way to access Rottnest, save for private vessels or the ever-popular channel swims – with 30 per cent of those from interstate or overseas.
The WA government announced $27.5 million for the Wadjemup Project in 2023, which included the memorialisation of the grave sites and the work carried out at the Quod.
Heritage builder Colgan Industries was awarded the contract for the memorialisation, which was predicted to be completed by the end of the year.
However, as Wednesday’s discovery showed, the island’s dark and, for many, painful history is never far from the surface.
with AAP
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