Rottnest Island, Australian island in the Indian Ocean, lying 12 miles (19 km) northwest of Fremantle (at the mouth of the Swan River, near Perth), Western Australia. A coastal limestone fragment, the island measures about 7 by 3 miles (11 by 5 km) and has sand dunes and several salt lakes. It was sighted in 1658 by a Dutch party under Samuel Volkerson, and in 1696 a Dutch sea captain, Willem de Vlamingh, gave the island its original name, Rottenest (meaning “rat’s nest”), because the place appeared to be infested with large rats. These, in reality, were quokkas (a kind of wallaby), rare marsupials whose existence is now protected by the island’s status as a wildlife sanctuary.

It is a damaged, corroded dinner plate that was probably once used to dish up salty, rotten meat, but at 315 years old, the de Vlamingh plate is priceless.

These ornate 300-year-old maps could be the oldest hand-drawn records of any part of Australia existing outside Europe — and they have been gathering dust in the National Library of Australia for nearly a century.

In 1697, Willem de Vlamingh, sailing on the Geelvinck (Yellow Finch) was given specific instructions to leave pewter plates as landmarks for his voyage of discovery to the west coast of the Southland. It appears that de Vlamingh erected a variety of signs and messages on islands and places he visited, some merely being posts with an inscribed 'board' or 'tablet'. None of these signs has been recovered, which makes the pewter plate that he left at Cape Inscription of special significance.

This site tracks Willem de Vlamingh route to the Southland 1696.

Dirck Hartog, also spelled Dirk Hartog or Dyrck Hartoochz, (flourished 1616), Dutch merchant captain who made the first recorded exploration of the western coast of Australia.

Hartog, a skipper for the Dutch East India Company (the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnieor or VOC) only encountered the WA coast because he was taking a shortcut. At the time the recently devised southerly route between South Africa and the VOC’s Asian headquarters in Batavia (now Jakarta) was quick, thanks to the winds known as the “roaring forties”, but navigationally tricky and led to shipwrecks.

Hartog’s vessel, Eendracht, was off-course when the crew spotted what appeared to be some uninhabited islands, which they stopped to explore. On the northern tip of what would later be named Dirk Hartog Island, Hartog ordered his cook to flatten a big pewter plate and had it inscribed with details of his vessel and their arrival on October 25, 1616.

On 26 October 1616 Captain Dirck Hartogh set foot on what is now known as Dirk Hartog Island, just North of Shark Bay in Western Australia. It was the second recorded landing of a European on Australian soil. The first was Willem Janszoon in the VOC ship Duyfken in 1606. Hartogh's ship was the Eendracht, a 200 tonne vessel with 32 guns and a crew of 200, and it was on the way to the East Indies (now called Indonesia) from the Netherlands.

A complete guide to the VOC including the a timeline, the spice trade, Brouwer's Route and shipwrecks in Western Australia.