Trigg Island is a small "island" off the coast of the suburb of Trigg in

Perth Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth is ...

, Western Australia. It is named after

Henry Stirling Trigg Henry Stirling Trigg (1860–4 November 1919), also known as Harry, was a prominent Western Australian architect. He was the grandson of Henry Trigg (Superintendent of Public Works in Western Australia from 1839 to 1851), and the first archi ...

, Superintendent of Public Works in the

Colony of Western Australia In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the '' metropolitan state'' ...

from 1838 to 1851. Trigg Island is a small rocky

aeolianite Eolianite or aeolianite is any rock formed by the lithification of sediment deposited by aeolian processes; that is, the wind. In common use, however, the term refers specifically to the most common form of eolianite: coastal limestone consisting ...

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...

remnant of

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...

dune A dune is a landform composed of wind- or water-driven sand. It typically takes the form of a mound, ridge, or hill. An area with dunes is called a dune system or a dune complex. A large dune complex is called a dune field, while broad, f ...

s, better characterised as an outcrop than an island, and as such is typical of the Perth coast. It is sometimes physically joined to the beach by movements of both the sand and the tide. Trigg Island is notorious for its

blue hole A blue hole is a large marine cavern or sinkhole, which is open to the surface and has developed in a bank or island composed of a carbonate bedrock (limestone or coral reef). Their existence was discovered in the late 20th century by fisherme ...

, located at the south end of the island. In September 1931, four men nearly died when their boat capsized near the blue hole. In May 1947, two brothers died in the blue hole, and later that year in July a nun named Sister Mary Chrysostom, and her would-be rescuer Frederick Charles Floyd, also drowned. A plaque commemorating the deaths of the latter two is stored in the Trigg Island Surf Life Saving Club facilities. Many others have been rescued or died in or near the blue hole since. These events were the main factor in the establishment of the Trigg Island Surf Life Saving Club. The beaches around Trigg Island are patrolled by the Trigg Island Surf Life Saving Club.

References

{{Reflist Islands of the Perth region (Western Australia)

See also

References