The Lives and Legacies of a Carceral Island: A Biographical History of Wadjemup/Rottnest Island

This book is a biographical history of Rottnest Island, a small carceral island offshore from Western Australia. Rottnest is also known as Wadjemup, or ＂the place across the water where the spirits are＂, by Noongar, the Indigenous people of south-western Australia.

Through a series of biographical case studies of the diverse individuals connected to the island, the book argues that their particular histories lend Rottnest Island a unique heritage in which ​Indigenous, maritime, imperial, colonial, penal, and military histories intersect with histories of leisure and recreation. Tracing the way in which Wadjemup/Rottnest Island has been continually re-imagined and re-purposed throughout its history, the text explores the island’s carceral history, which has left behind it a painful community memory.

Today it is best known as a beach holiday destination, a reputation bolstered by the ＂quokka selfie＂ trend, the online posting of photographs taken with the island’s cute native marsupial. This book will appeal to academic readers with an interest in Australian history, Aboriginal history, and the history of the British Empire, especially those interested in the burgeoning scholarship on the concept of ＂carceral archipelagos＂ and island prisons.

Ann Curthoysis an honorary professor at the University of Western Australia and the University of Sydney and is Professor Emerita at the Australian National University where she was the Manning Clark Chair of Australian History from 1995 to 2008. She has written on many aspects of Australian history and specialises in women’s history and Aboriginal history including key works on Aboriginal labour history and genocide studies. Her books include Freedom Ride: A Freedomrider Remembers (2002), winner of the AIATSIS Stanner Prize in 2003, and, with Jessie Mitchell, Taking Liberty: Indigenous Rights and Settler Self-Government in Colonial Australia, 1830 - 1890 (2018).

Shino Konishiis an Aboriginal historian and descends from the Yawuru people of Broome, Western Australia. She is an associate professor in the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences at the Australian Catholic University and is author of The Aboriginal Male in the Enlightenment World (2012). Konishi is the recipient of an Australian Research Council Discovery Indigenous Fellowship, funded by the Australian Government, and is leading a collaborative research project on Indigenous biography.

Alexandra Ludewigis Professor of German Studies and the Head of the School of Humanities at the University of Western Australia. She is the author of a German-language book about the Internment Camp on Rottnest Island during World War One: Zwischen Korallenriff und Stacheldraht. Interniert auf Rottnest 1914-1915 (2015) and Wartime on Wadjemup: A Social History of the Rottnest Island Internment Camp (2019). Moreover, as a Rottnest Volunteer Guide, she has a long association with the island both as a visitor and guide.