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The Shameful Isles: The true story of North-West Australia's fatal experiment with medical apartheid
Author(s): David Price (Author)
- Publisher: Fremantle Press
- Publication Date: September 2, 2025
- Language: English
- Print length: 290 pages
- ISBN-10: 1760994170
- ISBN-13: 9781760994174
Book Description
In 1907, the Western Australian government began a program of forcibly removing supposedly ill Aboriginal people to purpose-built lock hospitals on Bernier and Dorre Islands, off the coast of Carnarvon.
There, they were trapped against their will and exposed to experimental drugs and procedures. Many never returned and are buried in unmarked graves in the sandhills of Bernier and Dorre.
Comprised of meticulous research and contemporaneous accounts of patient-prisoners, politicians, stockmen, nurses, policemen and journalists, The Shameful Isles reveals one of Western Australia’s most tragic acts of state-sponsored oppression from which First Nations peoples are still recovering.
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
David Price is a Western Australian educator and writer who grew up in the small northwest town of Carnarvon. His first book, Dark Tales from the Long River, was published by Fremantle Press in 2020 and explored some lesser-known and sadder historical events of the Gascoyne and Murchison Regions. Now living in Perth, David continues to be intrigued by the unspoken history of his home state and committed to bringing sometimes uncomfortable truths into the light.
