No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Sharing the waterways: Shark-proof swimming, penal detention and the early history of St Helena Island, Moreton Bay
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Abstract
This research examines the role that fear of sharks has played in the history of St Helena Island Moreton Bay, Queensland through analysis of historical records, newspapers, photographs and literature. The article begins with Aboriginal histories of St Helena Island, colonial settlement of the region and the building of a quarantine station. An exploration of the ways in which settlers’ fear of sharks supported the detention of prisoners in the St Helena Island Penal Establishment follows. The research finds that the warders’ shark-proof swimming enclosure on St Helena Island (1916) records a time when Queensland communities were first seeking to manage the recreational demands of swimmers in the context of a growing public fear of sharks.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- © The Author(s) 2020
References
Notes
1 Blake K. Chapman and Daryl McPhee, ‘Global shark attack hotspots: Identifying underlying factors behind increased unprovoked shark bite incidence’, Ocean and Coastal Management 133 (2016), 72–84; Daryl McPhee, ‘Unprovoked shark bites: Are they becoming more prevalent?’, Coastal Management 42(5) (2014), 478–92.
2 Daryl P. Mc Phee, Likely effectiveness of netting or other capture programs as a shark hazard mitigation strategy in Western Australia (Perth: Department of Fisheries, 2012). Available from http://www.fish.wa.gov.au/Documents/occasional_publications/fop108.pdf [25 September 2017]; Anon, ‘Queensland: Operation Apex Harmony’, Sea Shepard. Available from http://www.seasheppard.org.au/apex-harmony/overview/queensland [15 August 2017].
3 Carlota Marijuan Rodriguez, Kelly Greenop, and Roland Dowling, ‘St Helena Island: Chapters for the Cyark Submission’, in 3D scanning South East Queensland’s cultural heritage (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 2017), pp. 1–6.
4 Australian Associated Press, ‘Shark attacks kayaker in Moreton Bay’, The Australian, 4 April 2017. Available from http://www.theAustralian.com/au/news/national/shark-attacks-kayaker-in-moreton-bay-off-brisbane/news-story [8 January 2020].
5 C. L. Neff and J. Y. H. Yang, ‘Shark bites and public attitudes: Policy implications from the first before and after shark bite survey’, Marine Policy 38 (2012), 345–547; Anon, ‘Shark attack “a long time coming”’, The Age, 9 January 2006. Available from http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/shark-attack-a-long-time-coming/2006/01/09/1136655116788 [15 September 2017].
6 Gillian Alfredson, ‘An archaeological investigation into the Aboriginal use of St Helena Island, Moreton Bay’, unpublished Hons. thesis, University of Queensland (1984), p. 14.
7 Also spelt No-gun, Noogoo or Nugoon: see Jarvis Finger, St Helena Story: An Illustrated History of Colonial Queensland’s Island Prison (Brisbane: Fernfawn in association with Boolarong Press, 2010), p. 16.
8 Alfredson, ‘Archaeological investigation’; Gillian Alfredson, ‘St Helena Island: A changing pattern of exploitation’, Australian Archaeology 17 (1983), 79; Lauren Penny, St Helena Island Moreton Bay: An historical account, (Brisbane: Inspire Printing, 2012); Finger, St Helena Story; Penny and Finger have also published some booklets on the subject. See also Stanley Ba Pe, Charles Ham and Peter McDougall, ‘St Helena: Moreton Bay’, unpublished manuscript, Queensland Institute of Technology (1975). Access to manuscript available through National Parks, Queensland.
9 Penny, ‘St Helena Island’, 109.
10 Peter Whalley, ‘An Introduction to the Aboriginal social history of Moreton Bay South East Queensland from 1799 to 1830’, Honours thesis, University of Queensland (1987), 27–31; J. Hall, ‘Sitting on the crop of the Bay: An historical and archaeological sketch of Aboriginal settlement and subsistence in Moreton Bay, South-East Queensland’, in S. Bowder (ed.), Coastal archaeology in Eastern Australia: Proceedings of the of the 1980 Valla Conference on Australian Prehistory (Canberra: Australian National University, 1982), pp. 79–95.
11 W. H. Bryan, ‘The red earth residuals and their significance in south-eastern Queensland’, in Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland 50(4) (1939), pp. 21–3.
12 J. K. E. Fairholme, ‘Observations on the Peteropus of Australia’, in Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 323, 22 July 1856, 311–12; J. K. E. Fairholme, ‘On the Australian dugong’, in Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 323, 11 November 1856, 352–3; Constance Campbell Petrie, Tom Petrie’s Reminiscences of Early Queensland Dating from 1837 (Brisbane: Watson, Ferguson, 1904), p. 89.
13 Alfredson, ‘Archaeological investigation’, 85.
14 On dolphins, see W. R. F. Love, ‘G.K.E. Fairholme, gentleman, scholar and squatter’, paper presented at the meeting of the Society 28 June 1984, Journal of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland 12(1), 65, 66; J. Hall, ‘Fishing with dolphins: Affirming a traditional Aboriginal fishing story in Moreton Bay, SE Queensland’, eds. R. Coleman, J. Covacevich and P. Davies, Focus on Stradbroke: New information on North Stradbroke Island and surrounding areas (Brisbane: Boolarong Press, 1984), 16–22.
15 Alfredson, ‘Archaeological investigation’, 44-65. The current Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries lists a Weasel shark (Hemigaleidae) found in Moreton Bay that grows to between 30 and 110 centimetres. See Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, Shark identification guide. Available from http://www.daf.qld.gov.au/fisheries/species-identification-guide/photo-guide-to-sharks/sharks,-part2/weaselshark [accessed 15 September 2017].
16 Matthew Flinders, Report to Captain John Hunter, 1799. Mitchell Library C211. Entry 19 July 1799.
17 Michael A. Jones, Redcliffe: First settlement and seaside city (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1988), 12.
18 Ross Johnston and Helen Gregory, ‘Choosing Brisbane’, in Pamela Statham (ed.), The origins of Australia’s capital cities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 235–9.
19 J. G. Steele, Brisbane town in convict days 1824–1842 (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1975), 1.
20 Lyn Jessop and Gillian Alfredson, ‘An interpretation of Allan Cunningham’s botanical record from St Helena Island, 1824’, in R. Coleman, J. Covacevich and P. Davies (eds), Focus on Stradbroke: New information on North Stradbroke Island and surrounding areas (Brisbane: Boolarong Press, 1984), 224–5; Jones, Redcliffe, 13, 14; Steele, The Explorers, 15; E. Thorne, The Queen of the colonies: or Queensland as I knew it (London: Samson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, 1876), p. 13.
21 Anon, ‘History recalled’, The Brisbane Courier, 28 January 1909, 4; Anon, ‘The oldest white Native: Death of Mr James Hexton’, The Queenslander, 21 February 1914, 38; Anon, ‘Intestate estate’, The Moreton Bay Courier, 13 August 1853, 3; Mamie O’Keeffe, ‘A report on missing tools and other items – Moreton Bay settlement, 1829’, Queensland Heritage 3(2) (1975), 7–11; Steele, Brisbane Town, 48, 72, 155. Note that there is some discrepancy in names and dates in these reports of Mr James Hexton, who states that his father was the first pilot at Amity. Mr Hexton’s birth dates in the above reports vary from 1827 to 1830 and 1832. Pilot John Tosh was killed on 13 January 1830.
22 Steele, Brisbane Town, 92.
23 Anon, ‘Moreton Bay’, Sydney Morning Herald, 8 February 1847, 3; Fairholme, ‘Observations’, 353; Redspinner, ‘Notes on the dugong’, The Gentlemen’s Magazine 251(1812) (1881), 739; Veronika Folkmanova, ‘The oil of the dugong: Towards a history of an Indigenous medicine’, History Australia 12(3) (2015), 97–112.
24 Catherine Keys and Ray Kerkhove, ‘“Lighthouse communities” and Indigenous-settler cultural entanglements: The early architectural history of Southern Queensland’s lighthouses and pilot stations’, Queensland History Journal, 24 (2019), 218–19.
25 Libby Connors, ‘The “birth of the prison” and the death of convictism: The operation of the law in pre-separation Queensland 1839–1859’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Queensland (1990), iii, 19–24.
26 JW, ‘Romance of real life in Australia’, Colonial Times (Hobart), 24 May 1850, 4. Archibald Meston, Geographic history of Queensland (Brisbane: Government Printer, 1895), 126.
27 Aboriginal people in Moreton Bay made one-piece bark canoes from swamp mahogany trees, Petrie, Early Reminiscences, 97.
28 Finger, St Helena story, 16; Ray Kerkhove, ‘Reconstructing the Battle of ‘Narawai (Moongalba)’, Queensland Review 26(1) (2019), 11.
29 Connors, ‘Birth of the prison’, 46.
30 Connors, ‘Birth of the prison’, 50-52; Petrie, Early reminiscences, 230.
31 Connors, ‘Birth of the prison’, 22.
32 John MacGillivray, Narrative of the voyage of HMS Rattlesnake. Vol. 1 (London, 1852), p. 49.
33 Timothy Bottoms, Conspiracy of silence: Queensland’s frontier killing times (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2013); Ray Kerkhove, ‘A different mode of war? Aboriginal “guerrilla tactics” in defining the “Black war” of South-Eastern Queensland 1843–1855’. Available from http://nationalunitygovernment.org/content/different-mode-war-aboriginal-guerilla-tactics-defining-black-war-south-eastern-queensland [25 September 2017].
34 Jennifer Harrison, ‘Protecting Brisbane: Health officers and maritime quarantine in pre-separation Queensland’, in Alana Piper (ed.), Brisbane disease: Contagions, cures and controversy (Brisbane: Brisbane History Group and Boolarong Press, 2016), 25.
35 Connors, ‘Birth of the prison’, 52, 55, 65–67, 72, 97.
36 Helen Gregory, The Brisbane River story: Meanders through time (Brisbane: Australian Marine Conservation Society, 1996), 123–45; C. G. Austin, ‘One hundred years of sport and recreation in Queensland’, Journal of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland 6(1) (1959), 283–6; Reet A. Howell and Maxwell L. Howell, The genesis of sport in Queensland (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1992), 56–7, 158–61, 269–70; Janina Gosseye and Alice Hampson, ‘Queensland making a splash: Memorial pools and the body politics of reconstruction’, Queensland Review 23(2) (2016), 178–95; John Pearn, ‘The origins of women’s swimming in Queensland’, Queensland History Journal 23(9) (2018), 609, 613.
37 Norman, S. Pixley, ‘Presidential address: History on a hill: A notable pilgrimage through the annals of memory and time’, Journal of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland 9(2) (1971), 16; Finger, St Helena story, p. 29.
38 Ben Daley, Peter Griggs and Helene Marsh, ‘Exploiting marine wildlife in Queensland: The commercial dugong and marine turtle fisheries, 1847–1969’, Australian Economic History Review 48(3) (2008), 231; Anon, ‘Moreton Bay’, Sydney Morning Herald, 8 February 1847, 3; Folkmanova, ‘The oil of the dugong’, 97–112; Veronika Folkmanova, ‘The oil of the dugong: Towards a cross-cultural history of an Indigenous medicine’, unpublished PhD thesis, Griffith University (2017).
39 Anon, ‘Submarine squatting in the new colony of Queensland: A new source of health and wealth’, The Australian Home Companion and Band of Hope Journal, 4 (1860), 10; Moreton Bay Courier, 13 October 1858, 2.
40 Anon, ‘Local intelligence: A melancholy occurrence – caution to bathers’, Courier, 20 December 1862, 2.
41 Anon, ‘An interesting relic: A reminiscence of the “Queen of the Colonies”’, Brisbane Courier, 12 June 1889, 9.
42 Peter Ludlow, ‘Peel Island: Quarantine as incarceration’, in John Pearn and Peggy Carter (eds), Islands of incarceration: Convict and quarantine islands of the Australian coast (Brisbane: Amphion Press, 1995), 93.
43 Harrison, ‘Protecting Brisbane’, 27–28.
44 Letter from Surveyor H. C. Rawnsley to Surveyor-General on the Island of St Helena as a Quarantine Station, Queensland State Archives SUR/A 26 65/3649 as cited in Alfredson, ‘Archaeological investigation’, 115; Penny, St Helena Island, p. 15.
45 Penny, St Helena Island, pp. 16, 18. Finger, St Helena story, p. 27.
46 Marcus Rediker, ‘History from below the water line: Sharks and the Atlantic slave trade’, Atlantic Studies 5(2) (2008), 285–97.
47 Anon, ‘Deaths’, Brisbane Courier, 29 November 1880, 2.
48 Brisbane Courier, 21 June 1886, 4.
49 The Argus, 2 January 1891, 5.
50 Otago Witness, 6 February 1901, 54.
51 Brisbane Courier, 13 March 1903, 5; ‘Attacked by a shark’, Sydney Morning Herald, 16 March 1903, 8.
52 The Advertiser, 8 February 1904, 6.
53 Jones, Redcliffe, pp. 64, 69–77.
54 Jones, Redcliffe, pp. 69–85.
55 Trisha Fielding, ‘CWA shark-proof swimming enclosure’, North Queensland History, 18 December 2013. Available from http://www.northqueenslandhistory.blogspot.com.au/2013/12/cwa-shark-proof-simming-enclosure [15 September 2017].
56 Judith Kerr, ‘Shark-net review’, Redland City Bulletin, 17 March 2015. Available from https://www.redlandcitybulletin.com.au/story/2947645/shark-net-review [15 September 2017]. Anon, ‘Onlookers thought “shark” cries were joke’, Sydney Morning Herald, 8 January 2006. Available from http://www.smh.com.au/news/general/beaches-closed-after-shark-attack/2006/01/08/1136655075548.html [25 September 2017]; Anon, ‘Shark attack “a long time coming”, The Age, 9 January 2006. Available from http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/shark-attack-a-long-time-coming/2006/01/09/1136655116788 [15 September 2017].
57 Penny, St Helena Island, pp. 98, 145.
58 Finger, St Helena Story, p. 202.
59 Cited in Finger, St Helena Story, p. 203.
60 Prof. Paul Memmott, Aboriginal Environments Research Centre, University of Queensland, 14 May 2018.
61 Anon, ‘Escape from St Helena, Aboriginal long sentence prisoner,’ Brisbane Courier, 18 January 1921, 7; Anon, ‘Still at Large’, Brisbane Courier, 19 January 1921, 6.
62 Clem Lack, ‘Pirates, blackbirders, and other shady characters’, read at a meeting of the Society on 25 February 1960, Journal of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland 6(2) (1960), 364; Anon, ‘Escapee’s tragic death: Drowned in Moreton Bay’, Brisbane Courier, 20 January 1921, 6; Thomas Hall, A short history of the Downs Blacks known as ‘the Blucher Tribe’ (Toowoomba: Vintage Books, 1987), 137, 138.
63 Finger, St Helena Story, p. 205; Peter Ludlow (ed.), Moreton Bay people: The complete collection (Brisbane: Boolarong Press, 2000), p. 96.
64 Finger, St Helena Story, p. 198.
65 Penny, St Helena Island, pp. 91, 179.
66 Ba Pe et al., St Helena, section 2.4.
67 Penny, St Helena Island, p. 91; Finger, St Helena Story, pp. 177, 178.
68 Ba Pe et al. St Helena, section 4.3.
69 P.c. Rowland Dowling, Queensland National Parks, 21 June 2010.