‘I was sleeping on a gravesite’: Rottnest Island’s complex history brought to light

The story of Wadjemup, as Rottnest Island is known to the Noongar people, will be broadcast across the skies for an Indigenous-led work at the Fremantle Biennale in November.
Photograph: Tim Campbell/Rottnest Island Authority

With its wild, undulating coastline, freewheeling cyclists and lovable, pint-sized marsupials, the quokka, Rottnest Island – known to Perth locals as Rotto – has become synonymous with summer holidays.

Lesser known to outsiders is the island’s complex past: more than 30,000 years of Noongar history and, more recently, the largest Aboriginal deaths in custody site in Australia.