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Updated: May 22, 2025
Not being able to persuade Miago to accompany us, he being too much engaged with his new wife, we enlisted the services of a native youth who generally went by the name of Tom, and left Gage Roads on the afternoon of April 4th. Off the west end of Rottnest a sail was seen, which we afterwards found, to our mortification, was H.M.S. Britomart, from Port Essington.
After rounding the North-west Cape, we had the usual southerly winds, but a strong breeze from the north-west overtook us in latitude 30 degrees 40 minutes South and longitude 112 degrees 25 minutes East, and shortened the passage, bringing us on the 27th to an anchorage under the east end of Rottnest Island, where we found a current sweeping round to the southward, at the rate of nearly a knot an hour.
The native prisoners at Rottnest collect salt from the lagoons, cut wood, and at present almost grow sufficient grain to keep them, so that in a short time they will be a source of profit rather than of loss to the crown. Some of them pine away and die; others appear happy.
The most prominent object from the sea is a circular building of white limestone, placed on the summit of a black rock at the mouth of the Swan. This building is the gaol. On the other side of the roadstead, about ten or twelve miles distant from the main, is a chain of islands, of which Rottnest is the most northern.
Another object in crossing over to Rottnest was to avoid a north-west breeze which came on the next day; on the 15th we again returned to Gage Road. Whilst we were at Swan River this time, a wish I had long entertained of procuring a pup of the wild breed of dogs* of the country, was gratified. It was a bitch, and left in the hollow of a tree by her mother who had just escaped.
It goes without saying that they did not know of the term wallaby, and taking those pretty creatures for overgrown rats, they called the island Rat Island or Rat's Nest, and Rottnest is the Dutch form thereof, preserved to this day. Let us now turn to the eastern shores of Australia, for we need not trouble about the southern shores as they are connected with the Antarctic continent.
We moved the ship to Rottnest Island, to collect a little material for the chart, and select a hill for the site of a lighthouse. The Governor and Mr. Roe accompanied us to Rottnest, where we found that a penal establishment of Aboriginal prisoners had been formed during our absence.
Monger, also appeared very straightforward and truthful, that white men had been killed by the natives twenty years ago; that he had seen the spot, which was at a spring near a large lake, so large that it looked like the sea as seen from Rottnest, eleven days' journey from Ningham or Mount Singleton, in a fine country.
We also visited Rottnest to inspect the establishment. It had now been a penal settlement for four years; besides erecting the buildings, the aboriginal labourers had cleared thirty-four acres of land, chiefly in detached valleys. There are about two thousand acres of available land in the whole island.
The result of our soundings between Rottnest Island and the main, showed that a bank extended out to the north-east, from the foul ground off the Stragglers, sufficiently to check, in some measure, the vast body of water rolling in from the north-west; and thereby adding to the safety of Gage Roads, provided vessels anchor in the proper berth, which is in seven or eight fathoms, on sandy mud, about a mile from the gaol, bearing East by North.
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