Island Guides & Maps

For those who like a little seclusion, Dirk Hartog Island National Park offers a peaceful retreat featuring beautiful scenery and white sandy beaches. The island was the site of the first recorded landing on Australian soil by Europeans in 1616. Now a national park, the island environment is being restored with the removal of all feral animals including cats and reintroduction of many rare and endangered animals in the Parks and Wildlife Service’s, Return to 1616 project.

If you are planning a visit, you can help protect the national park’s amazing inhabitants and support the restoration project:

• Check out the Shark Bay island protection brochure and island protection video before you leave home to help you plan your visit.
• Drive slowly, or don’t drive at all from dusk to dawn when native mammals are most active. These precious animals use the tracks as well and they don’t know the road rules!!
• Camp at Ransonnet or the Dirk Hartog Island Ecolodge the night before you leave the island. Being close to the barge landing point ensures precious threatened fauna are not put at risk by driving at dawn to meet the barge.
• Leave your pets at home.
• Don’t bring any firewood into the island national park. Pests can hide in firewood and hitch a ride.
• Make sure your footwear, clothes, packs and camping gear are free of soil, weed seeds, insects, spiders and other animals. Introduced pests can have a devastating effect on the flora and fauna of the island.
• Packing your food in clean, sealed plastic or metal containers rather than cardboard boxes. Cardboard can harbour pest species.
• Making sure your fresh food is free of soil, ants, snails or other small animals.
• Secure and store all your rubbish away from animals and remove it from the island when you leave.