Rosemary Island is an island 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 ...

. With

Enderby Island Enderby Island is part of New Zealand's uninhabited Auckland Islands archipelago, south of mainland New Zealand. It is situated just off the northern tip of Auckland Island, the largest island in the archipelago. Geography and geology Enderby ...

it forms Class A Nature Reserve 36915, part of a proposed national park. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

airstrip An aerodrome (Commonwealth English) or airdrome (American English) is a location from which aircraft flight operations take place, regardless of whether they involve air cargo, passengers, or neither, and regardless of whether it is for publ ...

was established at the north end of the island, where there is also a vehicle track and a

well A well is an excavation or structure created in the ground by digging, driving, or drilling to access liquid resources, usually water. The oldest and most common kind of well is a water well, to access groundwater in underground aquifers. The ...

with a distinctive

date palm ''Phoenix dactylifera'', commonly known as date or date palm, is a flowering plant species in the palm family, Arecaceae, cultivated for its edible sweet fruit called dates. The species is widely cultivated across northern Africa, the Middle Eas ...

. The well was constructed of

concrete Concrete is a composite material composed of fine and coarse aggregate bonded together with a fluid cement (cement paste) that hardens (cures) over time. Concrete is the second-most-used substance in the world after water, and is the most wi ...

with a corrugated steel liner and is now filled with 20th century debris. In 1699 the English navigator

William Dampier William Dampier (baptised 5 September 1651; died March 1715) was an English explorer, pirate, privateer, navigator, and naturalist who became the first Englishman to explore parts of what is today Australia, and the first person to circumnav ...

, in command of the 26-gun warship ''

HMS Roebuck Fourteen ships of the Royal Navy have been named HMS ''Roebuck'' after a small deer native to the British Isles: * was a flyboat purchased in 1585. * was a 10-gun vessel launched in 1636 and sunk in 1641 as a result of a collision. * was a 14- ...

'' on a mission to explore the coast of New Holland, following the Dutch route to the Indies, passed between

Dirk Hartog Island A dirk is a long bladed thrusting dagger.Chisholm, Hugh (ed.), ''Dagger'', The Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed., Vol. VII, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press (1910), p. 729 Historically, it gained its name from the Highland Dirk (Scot ...

and the Western Australian mainland into what he called Shark's Bay. He then followed the coast northeast, on 21 August 1699 reaching the

, which he explored, naming Rosemary Island on 22 August. He continued to

Lagrange Bay Lagrange Bay is located south of Broome, Western Australia in the Kimberley region. It is the site of the Catholic Pallottine The Pallottines officially named the Society of the Catholic Apostolate ( la, Societas Apostolatus Catholici), abbr ...

, just south of what is now

Roebuck Bay Roebuck Bay is a bay on the coast of the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Its entrance is bounded in the north by the town of Broome, and in the south by Bush Point and Sandy Point. It is named after , the ship captained by William ...

, before sailing for

Timor Timor is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, in the north of the Timor Sea. The island is East Timor–Indonesia border, divided between the sovereign states of East Timor on the eastern part and Indonesia on the western p ...

. In 2016, archaeologists from the

University of Western Australia The University of Western Australia (UWA) is a public research university in the Australian state of Western Australia. The university's main campus is in Perth, the state capital, with a secondary campus in Albany, Western Australia, Albany an ...

excavated ancient rock shelters on Rosemary Island, between 8000 and 9000 years old. They may be the earliest known domestic structures in Australia. In 2017, UWA archaeologists identified engravings left by crews of American whaling ships in the 1850s on Rosemary Island and

West Lewis Island West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some R ...

. In some cases the engravings were made over the top of ancient

Aboriginal rock art Indigenous Australian art includes art made by Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander peoples, including collaborations with others. It includes works in a wide range of media including painting on leaves, bark painting, wood carvin ...

. Volunteers have been monitoring the

hawksbill sea turtle The hawksbill sea turtle (''Eretmochelys imbricata'') is a critically endangered sea turtle belonging to the family Cheloniidae. It is the only extant species in the genus ''Eretmochelys''. The species has a global distribution, that is largel ...

, a critically endangered species, on the island since 1986. In November 2020, a 60-year old turtle, first tagged in November 1990 and again in 2011, returned to the same location.

References

Dampier Archipelago {{WesternAustralia-geo-stub