Qualla: Dorre Island

Dorre Island: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

From the air, Dorre Island looks like a thin scratch of pale limestone drawn across the blue of Shark Bay, a long narrow strip with the red of the Western Australian mainland glowing faintly to the east. It is uninhabited now, which is the point. The animals that shelter here are some of the rarest in the world, and the silence is part of how they survive. But the silence carries something else as well. A little over a century ago, this island and its northern neighbour were a place of exile, and the people sent here were not allowed to leave.

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Dorre Island: Two Names on a Dutch Chart

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The island takes its name from Peter Dorre, pilot of the Dutch ship Eendracht, which sailed this coast in 1616 during the early European charting of what was then called New Holland. The Dutch left their names on capes and islands all along Shark Bay, more than two centuries befo...

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Dorre Island: The Islands They Were Told Not to Look At

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Between 1908 and 1919, the Western Australian government ran what it called lock hospitals on Bernier and Dorre. More than 800 Aboriginal people, suspected of carrying venereal or other disease, were taken from their families and country across the state, shipped to Carnarvon, an...

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Dorre Island: A Last Refuge for the Almost-Lost

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Foxes and feral cats never reached Dorre or Bernier, and that single accident of isolation has made them priceless. The islands shelter the last naturally surviving populations of several mammals that foxes and cats wiped out across the mainland: the banded hare-wallaby, the rufo...

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Dorre Island: What the Quiet Holds

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Dorre is a strict A-class nature reserve, closed to casual visitors, and that protection is why it works as a sanctuary. There are no resorts, no jetties, no tracks worn by tourists. The Malgana people are the traditional custodians of these islands and the Shark Bay region, thei...

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