Dirk Hartog Island

The first Europeans known to have sighted the island were the crew of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) ship Eendracht, captained by Hartog, on 25 October 1616, during a voyage from Cape Town to Batavia. The date, and the names of the senior people on the vessel, were inscribed on a pewter plate and nailed to a post.

In 1697, Dutch captain Willem de Vlamingh landed on the island and found the Hartog Plate. He replaced it with one of his own, which included a copy of Hartog's inscription, and took the original plate home to Amsterdam, where it is still kept in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

On 28 March 1772, French navigator Louis Aleno de Saint-Aloüarn landed on the island and became the first European to formally take possession of Western Australia in the name of the French king Louis XV. That involved a ceremony on 30 March, during which one or more bottles were buried on the island. One bottle was recorded as containing an annexation document and a coin. In 1998 a bottle cap made of lead with an écu coin set in it was found at Turtle Bay by a team led by Philippe Godard and Max Cramer. That triggered a broader search by a team from the Western Australian Museum, led by Myra Stanbury, with Bob Sheppard, Bob Creasy and Dr Michael McCarthy. In April 1998, an intact bottle was unearthed, with a lead cap identical to the one recovered earlier, and also with a coin set in it. No trace of an annexation document has yet been found.

In 1801, the island was visited by the Naturaliste, under French Navy officer and explorer Emmanuel Hamelin, which was part of the Baudin expedition to Australia. They found de Vlamingh's plate almost buried in the sand, its post having rotted away. Hamelin ordered that it be re-erected in its original position. In 1818, the Uranie, captained by French explorer Louis de Freycinet, who had been an officer in Hamelin's 1801 crew, sent a boat ashore to recover de Vlamingh's plate. It eventually arrived in Paris, only to be lost for over a century. It was found in 1940 and returned to Australia in 1947, where it can now be seen at the WA Maritime Museum in Fremantle.

In 1869, Francis Louis von Bibra (son of Franz Ludwig von Bibra) was granted a lease to the island. Von Bibra grazed sheep there and traded guano from its bays.

In 1907, the leasehold on the island was acquired from Messrs Moore and Meade by the Withnell brothers. …

The northerly most point Cape Inscription is the location of the plates and the main lighthouse.

The bay facing north next to Cape Inscription 25°28′S 112°58′E / 25.467°S 112.967°E / -25.467; 112.967 is known as Turtle Bay.

The most south westerly point – Surf Point 26°07′26″S 113°10′46″E / 26.12389°S 113.17944°E / -26.12389; 113.17944 – is located at the channel known as South Passage 26°07′55″S 113°09′31″E / 26.13194°S 113.15861°E / -26.13194; 113.15861 across from Steep Point on its south west side.

The island is mostly scrub-covered sand dunes. At times it has been used as a sheep station and supported 20,000 head of sheep at one stage. The island is now Dirk Hartog Island National Park and sheep have been removed. To the east it is bounded by the Shark Bay Marine Park, and it is part of Shark Bay World Heritage Area. A small area is leased to the Wardle family who runs it as a tourism destination. The region is widely used for recreational fishing.

Dirk Hartog Island is an important nesting site for loggerhead sea turtle, with green turtles and loggerhead turtles both nesting on the beaches. It is also home for the endemic subspecies of the white-winged fairy-wren. Quoin Bluff, mid-way along the eastern side of the island, holds an important pied cormorant nesting colony which, along with Freycinet Island some 80 km (50 mi) to the south-east, forms the Quoin Bluff and Freycinet Island Important Bird Area, identified as such by BirdLife International.

In October 2018, at the end of a 20-year project, the island was declared free of feral cats, goats and sheep, paving the way for the reintroduction of 11 native animals, most of which had disappeared following a century and a half of pastoral activity and predation.

The "Return to 1616" environmental reconstruction project originally included the planned return of nine native species confirmed to have once been present on the island: the western barred bandicoot, burrowing bettong, Shark Bay mouse, greater stick-nest rat, western thick-billed grasswren, brush-trailed bettong, heath mouse, desert mouse, brush-tailed mulgara, dibbler and chuditch. Two additional mammal species that are thought likely to have once been present on the island, the rufous hare-wallaby and banded hare-wallaby, were included in the faunal reconstruction, and were the first to be returned following the eradication of feral cats in September 2017.

The western barred bandicoot and the dibbler were returned in October 2019.

The Shark Bay mouse and the greater stick-nest rat were reintroduced to the island in April and May 2021, respectively, with early monitoring suggesting ongoing survival. The island is modelled to have a potential carrying capacity of approximately 10,000 greater stick-nest rats, which if reached, would be by far the largest extant population of the species.

The western thick-billed grasswren was returned in October 2022, with 85 birds translocated to the island from two distinct mainland populations at Shark Bay.

Proof that dibblers were reproducing on the island was established in June 2021. …