West Wallabi Island is an island in the Wallabi Group of the

Houtman Abrolhos The Houtman Abrolhos (often called the Abrolhos Islands) is a chain of 122 islands and associated coral reefs, in the Indian Ocean off the west coast of Australia, about west of Geraldton, Western Australia. It is the southernmost true cora ...

, in the

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by ...

off the west coast of mainland

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country b ...

History

West Wallabi Island was important in the story of the '' Batavia'' shipwreck and massacre. Following the shipwreck in 1629, a group of soldiers under the command of

Wiebbe Hayes Wiebbe Hayes () was a Dutch soldier known for his leading role in the suppression of Jeronimus Cornelisz's massacre of shipwreck survivors in 1629, after the merchant ship was wrecked in the Houtman Abrolhos, a chain of coral islands off the ...

were put ashore there to search for water. A group of mutineers who took control of the other survivors left them there in the hope that they would starve or die of thirst. However the soldiers discovered that they could wade to East Wallabi Island, where there was a fresh water spring. Furthermore, West and East Wallabi Islands are the only islands in the group upon which the

tammar wallaby The tammar wallaby (''Notamacropus eugenii''), also known as the dama wallaby or darma wallaby, is a small Macropodidae, macropod native to South Australia, South and Western Australia. Though its geographical range has been severely reduced sin ...

lives. Thus the soldiers had access to sources of both food and water that were unavailable to the mutineers. Later the mutineers mounted a series of attacks, which the soldiers beat off. The Wiebbe Hayes Stone Fort, remnants of improvised

defensive wall A defensive wall is a fortification usually used to protect a city, town or other settlement from potential aggressors. The walls can range from simple palisades or earthworks to extensive military fortifications with towers, bastions and gate ...

s and stone shelters built by Wiebbe Hayes and his men on West Wallabi Island, are Australia's oldest known European structures,Australian Broadcasting Company (2003)
''Shipwrecks: Batavia''
more than 150 years before expeditions to the Australian continent by

James Cook James Cook (7 November 1728 Old Style date: 27 October – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the British Royal Navy, famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean and ...

and

Arthur Phillip Admiral Arthur Phillip (11 October 1738 – 31 August 1814) was a British Royal Navy officer who served as the first governor of the Colony of New South Wales. Phillip was educated at Greenwich Hospital School from June 1751 until ...

.Elder, Bruce (2005)
''The Brutal Shore''
''The Sydney Morning Herald''. In the context of the ''Batavia'' mutiny and massacre, East Wallabi Island is often referred to as "Wiebbe Hayes' Island" . This was the name given it in contemporary sources, and was used by historians as long as it remained a lost toponym.

Geography

Nominally located at , Gazetteer of Australia (1996). Belconnen, ACT: Australian Surveying and Land Information Group. West Wallabi Island is the largest island in the Houtman Abrolhos, with an area of 6.21 km² (about 2.5 sq miles) which is more than a third of the total land area of the archipelago. It is located in the north-west of the Wallabi Group, the northernmost of three island groups in the Houtman Abrolhos. The island has three named points: Slaughter Point, Blowfish Point and Pelican Point. Between Blowfish Point and Pelican Point is a bay named Shag Bay, and south of Pelican Point is a bay named Horseyard Bay. The island is surrounded by submerged

coral reef A coral reef is an underwater ecosystem characterized by reef-building corals. Reefs are formed of colonies of coral polyps held together by calcium carbonate. Most coral reefs are built from stony corals, whose polyps cluster in groups. ...

. This is narrow at Shag Bay, but fairly extensive along the rest of the coast. To the north-east, the reef is high enough for a person to wade from island to island: islands connected to West Wallabi Island in this way include Barge Rock, Turnstone Island, Seagull Island, Oystercatcher Island and East Wallabi Island.

Geology and physiography

The base of West Wallabi Island is the Wallabi Limestone, a dense calcretised

coral Corals are marine invertebrates within the class Anthozoa of the phylum Cnidaria. They typically form compact colonies of many identical individual polyps. Coral species include the important reef builders that inhabit tropical oceans and ...

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 wh ...

platform that underlies the entire Wallabi Group. This platform, which rises abruptly from a flat shelf, is about thick, and is of

Quaternary The Quaternary ( ) is the current and most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). It follows the Neogene Period and spans from 2.58 million yea ...

origin. Reefs that formed during the Eemian interglacial (about 125,000 years ago) when sea levels were higher than at present, are now emergent in places, and constitute the basement of the group's central platform islands, which include West Wallabi Island. The basement is capped in some places by an aeolianite pavement, and this is in turn overlain in places by sand dunes.

Flora

As one of the few islands in the Houtman Abrolhos large enough to support dune systems, West Wallabi Island supports a relatively high diversity of plant life: according to a survey published in 2001, 97 plant species occur on the island. Both the dunes and the pavement limestone support species-rich vegetation complexes dominated by

chenopod Amaranthaceae is a family of flowering plants commonly known as the amaranth family, in reference to its type genus ''Amaranthus''. It includes the former goosefoot family Chenopodiaceae and contains about 165 genera and 2,040 species, making it ...

shrubs A shrub (often also called a bush) is a small-to-medium-sized perennial woody plant. Unlike herbaceous plants, shrubs have persistent woody stems above the ground. Shrubs can be either deciduous or evergreen. They are distinguished from trees ...

, and these communities have been identified as important for species conservation, because they are diverse, yet easily disturbed and slow to recover.

Birds

The island is part of the Houtman Abrolhos

Important Bird Area An Important Bird and Biodiversity Area (IBA) is an area identified using an internationally agreed set of criteria as being globally important for the conservation of bird populations. IBA was developed and sites are identified by BirdLife Inte ...

, identified as such by

BirdLife International BirdLife International is a global partnership of non-governmental organizations that strives to conserve birds and their habitats. BirdLife International's priorities include preventing extinction of bird species, identifying and safeguarding ...

because it supports large numbers of breeding seabirds.

References

{{reflist Wallabi Group Important Bird Areas of Western Australia Batavia (1628 ship) Islands of the Houtman Abrolhos