Rottnest Island - Popular Culture

Popular Culture

• The U.S. television show The Amazing Race 9 featured an episode with events on the island.
• The movie Under the Lighthouse Dancing was filmed on the island.
• An episode of the ABC TV program Surfing the Menu was filmed on the island.
• An eight-minute film, Amy Goes To Wadjemup Island, was shot on the island in 2006.
• An early film, Trip to Rottnest, made by the Australian Government to popularise Rottnest as a holiday destination, is thought to be one of the first of its kind.
• Rottnest features prominently in Robert Drewe's memoir The Shark Net.
• The West Australian poet and author Hal Gibson Pateshall Colebatch (whose father, Sir Hal Colebatch was the first Chairman of the Rottnest Island Board), has written many poems about Rottnest, especially in his collection The Light River (Connor Court publishers, 2007). Colebatch's 2011 novel "Countertstrike" (Acashic) also has scenes set on Rottnest, which is called Lighthouse Island in the book.
• West Australian author and Supreme Court Judge Nicholas Hasluck has also written poems and fictionalised accounts of Rottnest.