[4] In 1826 eight Englishmen who had been marooned on Middle Island by the captain of a sealing vessel Governor Brisbane were found by the French explorer Dumont d’Urville aboard Astrolabe.

Apocryphal accounts claim that the pirate Black Jack Anderson based himself on Middle Island – some time after 1826, when Anderson had arrived at the first British outpost in Western Australia, at King George Sound (later Albany).

After being accused of murder, Anderson and a group of men reputedly fled to the islands, where they hunted seals for their skins, and plotted raids on ships travelling to and from the Australian colonies.

[3][2] Rodondo was wrecked off the island in 1894 and Eclipse met a similar fate in 1898.

[10] Flinders Peak, at 174 m (571 ft) high, dominates the island, and has a cairn at the summit.

[2] The island supports a population of the tammar wallaby and the bush rat.

[2] A small population of the critically endangered Gilbert's potoroo is being established as an "insurance population" on the island as of 2022[update], funded by the state government and with Indigenous rangers of the Esperance Tjaltjraak Native Title Aboriginal Corporation helping to monitor numbers.

The island was chosen for its remote location, size, lack of predators, and the potoroos' food source, several species of underground fungi.