Rottnest Island seen from satellite — a ragged postage stamp of an island that’s a welcome retreat from the hustle and bustle of Perth

There is a story to be told in the rocky points that jut out into the sea, dividing the beaches and providing homes to myriad small creatures; a story writ in the landscape itself, and in the ancestral memories of Aboriginal Australians.

We can uncover those stories, and others that stretch farther back in time, by looking more closely at easily visited sites around the coast and between the lakes.

They tell of a low-lying lump that was not always separate from the mainland, and of a climate that has waxed and waned over the multi-millennia.