People have gathered in Shark Bay for many generations. Indigenous Malgana, Dutch traders, French naturalists, English colonizers, local pearlers, pastoralists, fishers and conservationists have layered the place with cultural diversity.

When people inhibit an environment they create a cultural landscape. They leave traces, for days or millennia.

Shark Bay is strewn with such relics of shipwrecks, sheds, fences, abandoned camps and landings.

Aboriginal landscapes breathe with the spirits of ancestors. Their presence is celebrated in story and song to conserve place, community, culture and identity.

In contrast, the newcomers to Australia used maps to trace territory and claim possession.

You can read the history of Shark Bay in its maps, not only its shape but its stories.

Maps also trace journeys of exploration and adventure. Shark Bay has many unique historical sites of national cultural significance. These include the site of Dirk Hartog's celebrated landing in 1616, the first European collection and documentation of plant species in 1699, important seventeenth century Dutch shipwrecks and the site where the French claimed sovereignty of the west coast of Australia in 1772. Such sites remain sources of continuing knowledge and cultural identity.  

At the Shark Bay World Heritage Discovery Centre you can look at maps of the world from the 1600's, when early settlers considered Dirk Hartog Island part of the mainland. The interactive computers allow you to move through the interesting maps and facts at your own pace with a click of a mouse.