Rottnest Island is the perfect getaway from Perth: a little island of turquoise water, white sand and 63 beaches and bays, just half an hour by ferry from Fremantle. There are no private cars, so you do everything by bike, on foot or by bus, with the sea always in sight. And it has a world-famous star: the quokka, a cat-sized marsupial that seems to smile in photos and has turned the island into the kingdom of the 'quokka selfie'. For many people it's the loveliest, most relaxed day of a whole trip to Western Australia.
But behind the postcard beaches lies a much deeper and more painful history. For the Whadjuk Noongar people, the island is Wadjemup, 'the place across the water where the spirits are': a sacred site linked to their creation stories. And for almost a century (1838-1931) it was a brutal prison where the colonial government locked up some 4,000 Aboriginal men and boys from all over WA. Hundreds of them died and lie in unmarked graves. Today the island is going through a process of reconciliation: acknowledging that history while remaining a holiday paradise.
This guide sorts out all the practical stuff: which ferry to take and how much it costs (admission fee extra), whether to go by bike or bus, the best beaches and bays for snorkelling, where and when to see quokkas respectfully, how many nights to stay and how to make the most of the discounts. It also tells the story of Wadjemup without sugar-coating it, so you can enjoy the island with respect and context. Everything verified as of July 2026.
For the Whadjuk Noongar people the island is Wadjemup, a sacred place linked to their creation stories (the 'cold times', or Nyitting) and to the journey of spirits after death. It was joined to the mainland until about 7,000 years ago, when the sea rose. In 1696 the Dutchman Willem de Vlamingh mistook the quokkas for giant rats and named it 't Eylandt 't Rottnest ('rat nest island'). Between 1838 and 1931 it served as a prison for Aboriginal men and boys from all over WA: some 4,000 imprisoned, hundreds dead, at least 373 unmarked graves. The full story (sacred Wadjemup, the prison and reconciliation) is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓Australia's largest state, covering almost a third of the continent: the ancestral land of the Noongar people and dozens of desert nations, colonised from the Swan River Colony in 1829, transformed by Kalgoorlie gold and today a global iron ore powerhouse. Its capital, Perth, is the most isolated major city on the planet.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Before the quokka selfies, before the ferries and the bikes, this island had a name and a significance that few visitors know about: Wadjemup. That's what the Whadjuk Noongar, its Traditional Owners, call it, and the name means, roughly, 'the place across the water where the spirits are'. For the Noongar, Wadjemup isn't a beach destination: it's one of the most sacred places in their culture, tied to the creation stories and to the journey of souls after death.
There's a deep reason for this, and science backs it up. Until about 7,000 years ago, Wadjemup wasn't an island: it was joined to the mainland, and the Noongar walked there as part of their Country. When the last ice age ended and sea levels rose, the ocean cut the land off. That event (the sea swallowing the path to the island) stayed alive in Noongar oral memory, in the stories of the Nyitting, the 'cold times' of creation, when two spirit-brothers shaped the land. According to Whadjuk tradition, when a person dies, the whale (Mamong) carries them to their final rest, and Wadjemup is linked to that passage into the spirit world.
That's why, for thousands of years, the Noongar visited the island but didn't live on it permanently: it was a place of ceremony and respect, not of settlement. Understanding this completely changes the way you walk on Rottnest. The turquoise beaches and the quokkas share the island with a sacred geography that was there long before any European name, and that is still alive for the Whadjuk Noongar people today.
The first European to leave a record of the island was the Dutch navigator Willem de Vlamingh, who landed in December 1696 during a Dutch East India Company expedition along the west coast of 'New Holland'. De Vlamingh and his men explored the island, marvelled at its vegetation and its water, and came across a little animal they had never seen before: small, furry, about the size of a cat, hopping among the bushes. The Dutch mistook it for some kind of giant rat.
That's where the name the island still carries on maps comes from: De Vlamingh named it 't Eylandt 't Rottnest, 'the rats' nest island'. Over time, 'Rottnest' was simplified and became the official name. The irony is huge: that supposed rodent was the quokka, today one of the most loved and photographed animals on the planet, a harmless and curious marsupial that turned the island into a global tourist magnet. The European name, then, comes from a zoological misunderstanding.
For more than a century, the island remained, for Europeans, little more than a dot on navigation charts. British colonisation of Western Australia only got going in earnest in 1829, with the founding of the Swan River Colony (the future Perth). And very soon, that colony would find a sinister use for Wadjemup that would mark the island forever.
Here is the darkest part of the island's history, the part that for a long time was hidden behind the beach postcard. From 1838, barely a decade after the colony was founded, the Western Australian government turned Wadjemup into a prison exclusively for Aboriginal men and boys. For almost a century, until 1931, some 3,700 to 4,000 Aboriginal males from across the state (many arrested for 'crimes' such as killing livestock on their own land or resisting the colonial advance) were sent to the island and locked up in the Quod, an octagonal building, in tiny cells and in appalling conditions.
The horror is hard to overstate. The prisoners came from dozens of different Aboriginal nations, torn from their families and their Country, some from thousands of kilometres away. Overcrowding, poor food and introduced diseases caused a terrible death toll; there were also punishments, forced labour and at least five hangings. It's estimated that hundreds died on the island. Today we know that at least 373 Aboriginal men and boys lie in unmarked graves in the Wadjemup Aboriginal Burial Ground, one of the largest deaths in custody burial sites in Australia.
And the injustice continued afterwards. Once the prison closed in 1931, the island was turned into a tourist destination, and for decades the Quod (the jail where so many Aboriginal men had died) was used as... tourist accommodation. The burial ground was left unmarked, forgotten beneath a field. For the Noongar and for the prisoners' families, the fact that holidaymakers slept on top of that suffering was an open wound for generations. Wadjemup, the sacred place of the spirits' journey, had become a place of death and forgetting.
The island's recent history is a slow and difficult path towards repair. For years, Noongar activists, descendants of the prisoners and historians fought to have what happened on Wadjemup recognised. In 2018, the Quod finally stopped being used as tourist accommodation. And in recent years, the Wadjemup Project (run together with the Whadjuk Noongar and in consultation with Aboriginal communities across Western Australia) has taken on the task of honouring the dead and deciding the future of the old prison and the burial ground.
The progress is concrete. The name Wadjemup is now used officially alongside 'Rottnest'. The state government issued a formal apology to Aboriginal people of Western Australia for the island's history. A ground-penetrating radar (GPR) survey was carried out to confirm the exact extent of the burial ground, its memorialisation was designed, and in 2024-2026 healing ceremonies such as the Wadjemup Wirin Bidi are taking place, along with the works on the Burial Ground memorial, which is expected to be finished by late 2026. The Noongar community leads cultural visits and tours that tell the truth about the island.
Today Rottnest is two things at once, and the best approach is to embrace them together. It's a holiday paradise (63 beaches, quokkas, cycling, snorkelling, turquoise water) and it's a place of mourning and memory, sacred to the Whadjuk Noongar people. The visitor's challenge is to enjoy the first without ignoring the second: take the photo with the quokka, and also walk to the Burial Ground, listen to a Noongar guide, and understand that this piece of beauty was also a place of enormous suffering. To truly get to know Wadjemup is to honour those who were here first, those who suffered, and those who are working today so that their story is finally told.
