Salt House Prison

Prison labour continued after closure

The closure of Rottnest’s Aboriginal prison in the early 1900s did not immediately end the imprisonment of Aboriginal people on the island. Rottnest became a penal outstation of Fremantle Prison, with prisoners continuing to undertake agricultural work, construction and improvements associated with the island’s development for tourism.

In 1910, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal prisoners were housed in separate dormitories. The government’s Wadjemup timeline records that the Aboriginal prisoners’ accommodation was in poorer condition. As the Quod was being converted into tourist accommodation, prisoners were also moved to temporary accommodation elsewhere on the island.

Salt House Prison

A separate prison establishment developed beside the salt works, known as the Salt House Prison. The government timeline records arrangements in 1912 for a new prison, cookhouse, washhouse, woodshed and temporary accommodation for a warder.

This was a different establishment from the nineteenth-century Quod in the main settlement. However, accounts differ over the construction and occupation dates. Fremantle Prison’s historical education material dates the transfer of Aboriginal prisoners into the Salt House Prison buildings to 1919.

A new prison near Lake Baghdad

In 1916, surveyor Sydney Edwin Smith prepared a plan for another prison immediately south of Lake Baghdad. The proposal involved enclosing approximately 120 acres, or 48 hectares, with cyclone fencing. Prisoners cleared land and quarried building material. Nine huts were moved from the Salt House Prison to the proposed site by February 1917.

Further planning followed in 1919. The surviving accounts differ over how much of the proposed establishment was completed. The government timeline states that the intended reformatory was never built, while the heritage assessment for Thomson Bay records prisoners being transferred to the Reformatory Prison site in 1920.

Closure and removal

The heritage assessment records that the Reformatory Prison closed by 1922, with most prisoners returned to Fremantle and the site dismantled.

Prison labour nevertheless continued on Rottnest after this closure. Prisoners were brought back to undertake work associated with the island’s operation and development. The remaining system of Aboriginal imprisonment and forced labour on the island finally ended in 1931.