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North Stradbroke Island From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

North Stradbroke Island is an Australian island in the state of Queensland, 30 km southeast of the capital Brisbane. Before 1896 the island was part of the Stradbroke Island. In that year a storm separated it from South Stradbroke Island, forming the Jumpinpin Channel. The island is about 38 km long and 11 km wide.

The permanent population the island is quite small, but the number of people on the island swells significantly during the holiday season. There is no bridge to the island and the only access is by vehicular or passenger ferries leaving from Cleveland.

There are three main settlements on the island. Dunwich is the largest and has most of the services including the school. Point Lookout is on the surf side of the island and is the major tourist destination in the season. The third is Amity Point and is much smaller and a popular fishing spot on the island.

History

The native name for the island is Minjerribah but in 1827 Captain Henry John Rous, who had the title of Viscount Dunwich, commander of HMS Rainbow the first British ship of war to enter Moreton Bay, named the island after his father the Earl of Stradbroke, the town after his title, the entrance channel after himself and even gave his boat a guernsey with the naming of Rainbow Beach. However three shipwrecked sailors, Pamphlet, Finnigan and Parsons, spent time on Stradbroke Island after they were washed ashore in 1823. The local Aboriginal people supplied them with food and shelter and even gave them a canoe to help them on their way. Before these three, Mathew Flinders called in at Stradbroke Island for fresh water and also mapped a large section of Moreton Bay. Flinders was impressed by the Stradbroke Aborigines' health and hospitality. Well known local historian, Thomas Welsby, records an Aboriginal oral tradition that there was an even earlier contact with European shipwreck survivors who walked into one of the Aboriginal camps after their ship was wrecked on the ocean side of Stradbroke Island. This tradition states that one of the men's name was Juan and the other's was Woonunga. In 1890 a member of the Campbell family, one of Stradbroke's oldest mixed blood families, told Welsby that the remains of the ship were still visible in the 18 Mile Swamp and that the remains were of English oak.^[1] This story gives rise to a local legend that the remains of a Spanish or Portuguese shipwreck known as the Stradbroke Island Galleon exist somewhere in the 18 Mile Swamp.

Stradbroke Island's most famous local was Oodgeroo Noonuccal, formerly known as Kath Walker, the Aboriginal poet and native-rights campaigner. She was one of the prime-movers of the movement that lead to the 1997 agreement between the local government council and the aboriginal people of the area claiming rights over the island and parts of Moreton Bay.

Mining

During the 1960s sand mining operations began mining the islands frontal dunes. Mining moved into the interior of the island in the late 1960s and increased in scale and size. As an alternative, development of the island for seaside residential use was mooted and in 1970 a bridge from the mainland via Russell Island was under serious consideration by the Queensland government. The Queensland government also proposed a large scale redevelopment of the island in the mid 1980's which would have seen the population of the island increase 10 fold. This proposal was never followed through when the incumbent government lost office.From the 1960s to the 1980s sand miners mined the frontal dunes of the ocean beach from Jumpinpin to Point Lookout. This mining activity destroyed numerous ancient Aboriginal middens and campsites in the sheltered areas behind the frontal dunes. Unique ecosystems which lay between the 18 Mile Swamp and the ocean were also destroyed. Generally there was little more than a token effort to revegetate mined areas so that 30 years after the area was mined the dunal areas are still ecologically devastated. There is also strong anecdotal evidence that in the 1960s one of the early mining companies destroyed a shipwreck located in the sand dunes near Jumpinpin which may have been the reputed Stradbroke Galleon^[2]. There are several accounts from sand mining employees of unusual artifacts being found during dredging operations.

However, the understanding of the island's environmental and native heritage value was on the rise. In 1991 the Australian Government and sand mining companies ACI and Consolidated Rutile Pty Ltd attempted to reach an agreement on surrender of some or parts of mining lease tenements to form a national park. Half of North Stradbroke Island was to become a National Park in return for a guarantee that mining could continue for the life of several mines in high grade areas ¹. The agreement was never signed by either of the mining companies nor the government and has not been progressed to this day. Mineral sands and silica sands at Myora Mine, near Dunwich, are currently being mined from the surface while rutile, zircon and ilmenite are dredged from the Yarraman Mine on the north of the island and the Enterprise Mine on the south of the island by Consolidated Rutile Limited ^[3].

Settlement

The island has the region's oldest archaeological site at Wallen Wallen Creek near Dunwich. Research at the site has provided evidence of human activity beginning at least 21 000 years ago. More aboriginal shell middens can be found scattered behind the sand dunes along the main beach. Because Stradbroke Island (and Morteon Bay only came into existence in its current form when sea levels rose after the last Ice Age most Aboriginal settlement sites around the coastline date from around six to eight thousand years ago. White settlement of Stradbroke began in the 1820s at Amity Point and Dunwich. More recently, there were some incidents in late 2003-early 2005 in which groups of youths came to Stradbroke (in September and December) for the purposes of partying and for schoolies week. This led to minor conflict with local residents. An upgraded police presence in 2005 saw Stradbroke return to relative calm. Since January 2005, there have been no incidents.

Attractions

The only public hotel on the island was at Point Lookout. After it was closed in January 2006 for re-development, the new Hotel has re-opened. In the same month a young woman swimming at dusk off Amity Point, was mauled by three bronze whaler or bull sharks and later died in a nearby hospital.

North Stradbroke Island is known for its long clean white beaches in the east, its peacefulness due to a long isolation and its rich diversity of nature varying from whales passing Point Lookout to the many wild orchids in the interior of the island.

Blue Lake in Blue Lake National Park

The island has numerous freshwater lakes including; Ibis Lagoon, Black snake Lagoon, Welsby Lagoon, Lake Kounpee, Brown Lake and the beautiful Blue Lake situated in Blue Lake National Park. There are a number of man made (mining) waterbodies including the Key Hole Lakes, Yarraman Lake, Herring Lagoon and Palm Lagoon. In some areas there are extensive swamplands such as the long Eighteen Mile Swamp and another behind Flinders Beach. Other notable features of the island include Adder Rock between Amity and Point Lookout and on the southern tip of the island is Swan Bay and an area of very large sand dunes.

The island is managed and administered by the North Stradbroke Island Water Resource Coordination Group and the Department of Natural Resources and Water ^[4].

In the September holiday high school children flock to the island for a week of fun and games.

If you do not have a car, catch the air conditioned train from Central Station in Brisbane to the last station - Cleveland. Stradbroke Ferries operates a free shuttle bus to the ferry terminal.

Travel by high speed water taxi from the bayside village of Clevelend to Dunwich, and catch the North Stradbroke Island bus to Point Lookout where you can hire a quality mountain bike and binoculars (link below). From there you use the detailed map of Point Lookout, together with a whale idenitifcation chart, and visit the series of whale watching platforms situated high above the surf on Whale Rock, Frenchmans, Deadmans and Cylinder headlands. The bike riding is achievable for most fitness levels and is an ideal way to follow the whales as they pass by Australia's second most easterly point, the aptly named Whale Rock!

Straddie is located on the outer edge of Brisbane's Moreton Bay, and a variety of whales pass close by this Queensland island and shelter just off the many beaches and in Moreton Bay itself. After a brief rest the Humpbacks, Southern Wright and occasionally Blue Whales move on to their Hervey Bay and Whitsunday breeding grounds.