Campers sleeping on unmarked graves: The dark history behind an island paradise
Yahoo • • world
Key Points:
- Rottnest Island, known as Wadjemup to the local Noongar people, is a popular tourist destination in Australia but holds a deep spiritual and traumatic history as the site of Australia’s largest number of Aboriginal deaths in custody.
- From 1838 to 1902, Wadjemup served as a prison for Aboriginal boys and men, many of whom were forcibly transported from distant regions and subjected to harsh labor, brutal treatment, and overcrowded, disease-ridden conditions.
- Nearly 4,000 Indigenous men and boys were incarcerated there, with 373 dying and being buried in unmarked graves, a burial ground later used as a tourist campsite known as Tentland until its closure in 2007.
- Since
