Dirk Hartog Island

Hi there,

I have just visited Dirk Hartog Island, out at the western portion of Shark Bay. It has been more than 10 years since someone has put a thread up about the island on EO, so I thought I would show a few pictures and thoughts.



This has been my number one bucket list location for many, many years - probably ever since primary school, when I first was taught about the visit by Dirk Hartog in 1616. He of course left an inscribed plate attached to a post at the cape at the north end of the island detailing his visit - now called Cape Inscription. Second only to Janszoon, when he visited the western side of Cape York Peninsular in 1606, he was an early European to our shores. There is speculation that Janszoon never set foot on the soil, so Hartog may have been the first to do so.



The plate is located in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and is the oldest European artefact from Australia in existance.

Subsequent visits to the cape and the island by others are many, and well documented.

I heard that EO member JB was heading to the island so I asked him if I could come and take a mate with me. With his blessing the scene was set and we took our vehicles over on the barge. We spent 3 days and 3 nights on the island.

The island is mostly a National Park now, and progress is well underway to eradicate all the ferals with the plan to reintroduce native mammals in a couple of years. (I had to leave poor Massie at home on this trip, I was glad to see her when I got back home). I did see one goat though near the cape.

Apparently only 8 tourist vehicles are allowed on the island at one time, all of the tourists we saw were fishing. We chucked a line in a few times at various locations, didn't catch anything though. From one section of the coast up high on the eastern side we could see many sharks, turtles and Sting Rays. North of Louisa Bay at a point, there were thousands of fish huddling together near the rocks. There are many locations on the island were you can access deep water from the shore - you could see pretty big fish swimming around - all over the place really.

With Cyclone Olwyn recently going through the area the flies had great breeding opportunity and I can honestly say I have never seen so many flies before. My mate almost went insane.












JB and I split up and explored different areas. I hung mostly at the northern and eastern side.







The tracks are mostly the usual sandy type, though the corrugations are pretty bad in places. The island is Western Australia's largest apparently and it did take a while to get from one place to another.

I was most impressed with the island and have already booked my place for next years 400th anniversary of Hartogs Landing.

Cheers
Alan