Rottnest Island:
A 38-year-old man has died after a suspected shark attack near Rottnest Island recently, a popular tourist destination off the coast of Western Australia.
- Rottnest Island is an Australian island in the Indian Ocean.
- It lies 19 km northwest of Fremantle (at the mouth of the Swan River, near Perth), Western Australia.
- A coastal limestone fragment, the island measures about 11 by 5 km and has sand dunes and several salt lakes.
- It was sighted in 1658 by a Dutch party under Samuel Volkerson.
- In 1696 a Dutch sea captain, Willem de Vlamingh, gave the island its original name, Rottenest (meaning “rat’s nest”), because the place appeared to be infested with large rats.
- These, in reality, were quokkas (a kind of wallaby), rare marsupials whose existence is now protected by the island’s status as a wildlife sanctuary.
- First settled in the 1830s, Rottnest has served as a pilot station for Fremantle, an Aboriginal penal settlement (to 1850), a juvenile reformatory (1882–1906), and a World War II military base.
- It is now a resort for the Perth area and is accessible by sea and air.
