Dolphin Island is an island situated in the

Dampier Archipelago The Dampier Archipelago is a group of 42 islands near the town of Dampier in the Pilbara, Western Australia. The archipelago is also made up of reefs, shoals, channels and straits and is the traditional home of five Aboriginal language group ...

in the

Pilbara The Pilbara () is a large, dry, thinly populated region in the north of Western Australia. It is known for its Aboriginal peoples; its ancient landscapes; the red earth; and its vast mineral deposits, in particular iron ore. It is also a glo ...

region of

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

. Visitors are able to camp within of the high water mark on all of the beaches on the island except for the south eastern side. The island is designated as a B Class Nature Reserve (34944) and has a total area of . It is the second largest island of the archipelago after Enderby Island but it is the highest in the archipelago rising to above sea level. The island is composed of

precambrian The Precambrian (or Pre-Cambrian, sometimes abbreviated pꞒ, or Cryptozoic) is the earliest part of Earth's history, set before the current Phanerozoic Eon. The Precambrian is so named because it preceded the Cambrian, the first period of the ...

volcanic and granitic rocks with some outcrops of archaen

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergro ...

and granite

gneiss Gneiss ( ) is a common and widely distributed type of metamorphic rock. It is formed by high-temperature and high-pressure metamorphic processes acting on formations composed of igneous or sedimentary rocks. Gneiss forms at higher temperatures an ...

which are over 2400 Ma in age. The island is separated from the

Burrup Peninsula Murujuga, formerly known as Dampier Island and today usually known as the Burrup Peninsula, is in the Dampier Archipelago, in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, containing the town of Dampier. The Dampier Rock Art Precinct, which covers ...

by a major valley system formed by a regional fracture.

Indigenous Australians Indigenous Australians or Australian First Nations are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in Australia before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples ...

inhabited the area or utilised the islands of the archipelago for over 18,000 years with the

Yapurarra The Yapurarra or Jaburara, also rendered Yaburara, are an Aboriginal Australian people whose traditional lands are in the Pilbara region of Western Australia and the Dampier Archipelago. Language The Jaburara language (Yaburarra) is thought to h ...

peoples being the

traditional owners Native title is the designation given to the common law doctrine of Aboriginal title in Australia, which is the recognition by Australian law that Indigenous Australians (both Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander people) have rights ...

. The island was named by

Francis Thomas Gregory Francis Thomas "Frank" Gregory (19 October 1821 – 23 October 1888) was an Australian explorer and politician. Born in England, he emigrated with his family to Australia as a boy. He was the younger brother of the explorer and politician Augu ...

during his 1861 expedition through the Pilbara, the island is named after the ship captained by Gregory. The

pearl A pearl is a hard, glistening object produced within the soft tissue (specifically the mantle) of a living shelled mollusk or another animal, such as fossil conulariids. Just like the shell of a mollusk, a pearl is composed of calcium carb ...

ing industry was established in the archipelago in 1870 and the rock pools on Dolphin Island were used to supply fresh water to the fleet. Six graves on the western side of the island are thought to belong to the pearlers.

References

{{coord, 20, 28, 28, S, 116, 51, 01, E, source:enwiki-plaintext-parser, display=title Dampier Archipelago