Dirk Hartog Island is named after the skipper of the Dutch East India Company's trader Eendraght which sailed into picturesque Turtle Bay at the island's north end during October 1616.  Hartog stayed just long enough to discover there was no fresh water, no food and no-one with anything worthwhile to sell. After two days he set sail out of history and headed north for the Spice Islands and a load of pepper.  He didn't know it, but he'd actually landed not on the mainland but at the northern tip of a long, skinny island separated from the mainland by a narrow strait at the southern end, opposite what's now known as Steep Point, 850 km north of Perth. But, it would be churlish at this distance to deny him his posthumous right to claim his place in Australian exploratory history. 

Nearly 400 years later, it is possible to stand on the spot (later named Cape Inscription) chosen to mark the first recorded European landing on the Great South Land and know that it remains unchanged, except from the ravages of weather, since Dirk Hartog (or Dirck Hartog, or Dirck Hatichs, depending on which translation you're relying on) stepped ashore from his little, wooden sailing ship. Even with its late-20th-century comforts, Dirk Hartog Island, at the head of Shark Bay - Australia's largest world heritage area is still the same harsh, inhospitable and dangerous coastline that left so many generations of intrepid Dutch, English and French sea traders unimpressed. The lucky ones took one look and looked elsewhere. The unlucky ones didn't look carefully enough and found their frail ships battered to bits on sheer cliffs pounded by the same huge swells that roll in from the Indian Ocean today.  However, they all lacked in things such as petrol-powered generators, 4WD vehicles, carbon fibre fishing rods and beer. 

Today you reach the island Dirk rejected by turning left off the North West Coastal Highway at Overlander Roadhouse.From there it's only another 200 km before you pull up outside the homestead, but it takes more than five hours. From Overlander it's about 100 km of corrugated limestone before you get to dunes, then it's another 15 km to 20 km of hard yakka - steep dunes, sharp rocks and slow going - right to the beach at Steep Point, then you take a barge (one vehicle at a time) across South Passage.  For this trip, our third to the island, we borrowed an automatic turbo-diesel Musso straight off the showroom floor from Daewoo, in Perth. A strange choice, perhaps, but we wanted to see whether a bog standard , midrange 4WD that mums and dads buy to go shopping in would cut the mustard in the bush.  Just for contrast, our other vehicle was a battle-hardened, macho-man Nissan Patrol. 

We got to Steep Point just as Cyclone Elaine's rain turned the island's claypans into impassable slush behind us and Kieran Wardle, whose family has controlled the pastoral lease for thirty years, nosed the little one-vehicle barge into the beach. Our plan was to stay overnight at the century-old homestead, then take a three-hour drive to our camp at Urchin Point, near Cape Inscription, on the island's north-west coast.  Nature put a stop to that. Previous visits at this time of the year (March) had been marked by warm days and clear skies. But that night 93 km/h winds battered the bay and waves crashed to within 20 metres of the homestead walls.  The thing about an Aussie homestay holiday is that you tend to get treated like one of the family. So as dawn broke, we found ourselves on the end of shovels, digging one of the island's barges out of the beach sand where it had been unceremoniously dumped by the previous night's storm.  Elaine passed by only to be replaced with the ragged edge of Vance. We battened down again, securing everything around the homestead that might turn into missiles and huddled around a radio listening to the reports of terrible damage at Onslow and Exmouth.  But the storms had their upside. While it stopped us fishing, it also forced us to enjoy the island hospitality. We couldn't move without Tori Tammy or Dillon sweeping up after us or feeding us. 

Gradually, the old homestead is being converted from basic outback accommodation to a stop-over full of creature comforts. Ex-shearers' quarters are now comfortable guest rooms and visitors are served sumptuous meals in a big common room off the homestead's kitchen. The dining table, with seating for 12, once graced the boardroom of a Fremantle shipping company.  There was only so much inaction we could take which is how the guest bathrooms came to be built. Three or four of us commandeered construction from Kieran's father Geoff and the building advanced at a miraculous rate.  Sheep stations provide endless fascination for city dwellers. Dirk Hartog was first settled as a pastoral lease late-last century and the area around the homestead is littered with the debris of human endeavour in harsh country - old bulldozers, abandoned shearing sheds and ancient trucks.  In the machinery shed we found a dusty little outboard motor among decades of long-forgotten stuff. We fitted a spark plug from an old mower in it and were soon puttering around a bay off the island dropping crab nets from the dinghy.  It took four days for the weather to clear. 

Heading north from the homestead you track along the island's east coast which is a series of shallow bays protected from the prevailing south-westerlies. The first major obstacle is a range of huge sand dunes, monsters which shift in the wind, changing shape every day.  (They are deceptively fast moving. Fourteen years ago a LandCruiser broke down here on the way north to assist with a shipwreck. By the following morning it had been buried, partly reappearing years later only to be buried again. The Wardles are convinced it will turn up again one day.)  The track north from the dunes is mostly an easy drive. It's very flat and the scrub rarely rose above the vehicle's window sill. You can safely do 40-50 km/h in some sections, but lack of landmarks means it's easy to find yourself heading down the wrong track.  (As previously mentioned, this was our third trip, so we knew where we were going. First-time visitors should buy a map in Perth and ask Kieran to update it before setting out.) 

Finally, the top of the lighthouse at Cape Inscription appears over the last scrub-covered dune and you arrive at the lip of a cliff casting its shadow over Turtle Bay. A weathered timber post marks the spot where Hartog's men climbed the near-vertical cliff in 1616, leaving behind a pewter plate inscribed with details of their visit. A barely-visible track starts here and diagonally crosses the cliff face before leading down to the water's edge. It's likely those early Dutchmen walked this way Urchin Point is the first of several camping spots the Wardles hope. to set up around the island. Situated several kilometres south of the homestead on the west coast, it comprises a lean to arrangement of treated pine poles with walls and a roof made from Laserlight corrugated sheeting; helped out here and there with some green shadecloth. 

A summer of howling southerlies had eroded the sand since our last visit and the water tank had fallen over, but it was largely as we had left it - a basic, but essential shelter on one of the harshest coast-: lines on the continent and enough to remind us that only a microwave oven and a mobile phone separate us from the rugged self-reliance and outback resourcefulness of our convict forefathers (just kidding).  Apart from the shack, you have to bring everything with you. For a week of fishing we needed 90 litres of fresh water, three Engel fridges, two 500-watt generators, plus enough food and refreshments for six men.  Within walking distance of this spot lie some of Australia's most spectacular fishing destinations, and all virtually untouched. The cliffs drop straight into deep water and surf-washed reef. Around these areas prowl giant trevally, spangled emporer, hump-headed pink snapper, both shark mackerel and Spanish mackerel, as well as hordes of tuna and huge tailor. 

For tailor fishermen especially, this is the place to be. Almost exclusively using lures, we commonly catch tailor weighing up to eight kilograms, which is enormous by any standards.Such is the remoteness of this place that there are scores of little bays and rocky headlands which remain unnamed to this day, a situation we are beginning to rectify. A spot just 200 metres from the camp, where a member of our party discovered a feeding frenzy of monster tailor, will soon appear on station maps as Ron's Rock. Further along, a high spot where some of the more adventurous of us insisted on fishing, despite the threat of a strong wind at our backs, is Fergie's Folly. And, if you walk for 20 minutes north of the camp, you may find a 50 cent piece wedged in a rock crevice. It was left there a few years ago to see if it would withstand the test of wind and waves. It did. And the map now records this spot as 50-cent Reef. 

Even if fishing is only a passing interest, the west coast of Dirk Hartog Island is enough to take your breath away. Along the 80-kilometre stretch of cliffs, some sheer faces rise to 150 metres and are pounded by the same enorrnous swells which dashed many an explorer's wooden ship against the jagged reefs. Every few centuries great lumps of these cliffs break off and pitch forward onto the rocks below and you can stand on the cliff top and wonder whether it's your turn to be carried into history. At one particularly spectacular spot, we gingerly parked the Musso on the very edge for a long-lens photo with the coast in the back-ground and I silently rehearsed my phone call back to Daewoo: "Well, we got this really terrific picture, but, um, well, just as the shutter clicked, the cliff kind of... gaveway..." 

Through a metre-wide blowhole in the ledge at the foot of this cliff came the whine of a Boeing turbine and a super-charged jet of high-velocity air shot a .vertical column of seaspray 50 metres into the air with each surge of the swell.  We tossed rocks the size of grapefruit over the cliff. They disappeared into the blowbole which spat them out again with the speed and trajectory of a mortar, sometimes landing behind us. It was pretty silly really - we could have brained someone. But then, that's the beauty of Dirk Hartog Island. Generally, you're the only ones there. 

Bookings are taken between March and October. It costs $625 per vehicle and a night at the homestead, with all meals included, is $150 per person.