USC22

Document 1 removed due to copyright restrictions.

USC22

1905 QUEENSLAND

Legislative Assembly

REPORT ON FRASER ISLANDS. (BY MR. ARCHIBALD MESTON.)

Laid upon the Table of the Legislative Assembly, by Command, 5th September, 1905, and Ordered to be Printed, 8th of November, 1905.

MR. A. MESTON to THE UNDER SECRETARY FOR PUBLIC LANDS. Brisbane, 13th February, 1905. DEAR SIR, - Attached is my report on Fraser Island, the past history, a brief description, and present economic resources. The report is written with a threefold purpose. The account of the past and the aboriginal place names are intended as permanent historc records, the history being new to the public, and the place names given for the first time to save them before they would be lost for ever. The economic resources will direct attention to what could be made a source of profitable employment to many people as well as revenue to the State. The report deal with the most remarkable island on the coast of Australia, the fauna and flora, the scenery, and bathing facilities in lakes, streams, and open ocean, and the unlimited fishing, which make it, in all-round attractiveness for every class of tourists, a resort probably unsurpassed in the world. The report will be at least one useful part of the much-needed information required by Queenslanders on their own coutnry, and also extend a knowledge of the country beyond the State.

Yours sincerely, A. MESTON.

REPORT ON FRASER ISLAND: EARLY HISTORY AND ECONOMIC RESOURCES. TO THE HON. J. T. BELL, MINISTER FOR LANDS.

SIR, - A report on the economic resources of Fraser Island may be appropriately introduced by a brief physical outline and history of what will be shown herein to be one of the most interesting and remarkable islands in the world. In size it is the second largest on the coast of Australia, the largest being Melville Island, which lies 15 miles off the North-west coast, and has an extreme length of 75 miles, with an axtreme breadth of 37 miles. Seperated from Melville Island by Apsley Strait is Bathurst Island, of triangular shape, each of the three sides being about 40 miles. A. 12-1905

"Fraser" Island, or "Great Sandy Island," begins at the south end opposite Inskip Point, and extends north in a straight line for 70 miles, the outer beach line being 74 miles, the west coast about 82, and the total area about 656 square miles. Two miles from the south end it is 4 miles across, and thence northwards averages about 8 or 9 miles to "Mooan Point," where it broadens to 15 miles, contracting thence northward to 8 miles at Indian Head, 3 miles in the bight of Platypus Bay, and widening at "Rooney Point" at 8; thence tapering to Sandy Cape. From Sandy Cape to Indian Head is a distance of 23 miles. Fraser Island forms Hervey Bay (named by Cook on 21st May, 1770, after Captain Hervey) and "Great Sandy Strait," which is 28 miles in length from Inskip Point to the mouth of the Mary River. The tides meet midway between "Stewart Island" and the south "White Cliffs." Probably the first white men who ever passed through this strait were Andrew Petrie's whaleboat party in search of "Duramboi," in 1842; and the first navigator was Lieutenant Dayman, of the "Asp" a small vessel attached to the "Rattlesnake," in 1848. Fraser Island is named from Captain Fraser of the ship "Stirling Castle," wrecked on Elizabeth Reef, 300 miles to the south-east on 21st May, 1836. Fraser Island , Mrs. Fraser, the mate Brown, and some of the crew finaly landed on Fraser Island, were received in a friendly manner by the blacks, and passed on in canoes t the mainland at Inskip Point, to be forwarded to the white people at the Brisbane Convict Settlement, which no one reached except Mrs. Fraser, the others, according to her three different and very contradictory stories, beign killed by the blacks at or near the present Noosa River. The first mention of any part of Fraser Island in history appears in Captain Cook's log-book for 20th May, 1770. On that day the immortal navigator's ship "Endevour" was passing northward at a distance of 5 miles off a cliff-faced precipice forming the sea front of a beautiful green headland backed to the westward by sand dunes and sandhills. On that headland a large number of aboriginals gathered to gaze at the huge mysterious whitewinged object passing along the surface of the ocean like a gigantic pelican. Cook saw them through the telescope, and forthwith named the locality "Indian Head," as all savages were in that age described as "Indians." It is somewhat remarkable that the other men who kept journals on board the "Endevour" Lieutenant Hicks, Gunner Forwood, Lieutenant Clerke, Francis Wilkinson (master's mate), Midshipman Bootie, and the writer of an anonymous log, have no reference to Indian Head, though all mention Sandy Cape and Breaksea Spit, only 23 miles away. Hawkesworth's edition, Vol. III., page 516, gives Cook's account of where he "saw several people upon the shore." Cook also names "Sandy Cape" from "two very large patches of white sand which lay upon it." They are still on the same spot, unchanged. For 20th May he says:-"Made all sail, saw ye land ending in a point bearing west-south-west; hauled up for it; saw a ledge of creakers running out from the land to north-west." That was the first mention of the notorious "Breaksea Spit" on which the "Aramac" and all hands recently had a narrow escape from annihilation. One astonishing fact concerning "Breaksea Spit" should be recorded here for historic puposes. When the eastern edge of the spit was charted by Lieutenants Bedwell, Brad, and Connor, in 1869, they found on Cook's track the same soundings as those taken by Cook in 1770, and Flinders in 1802, not more than 7 to 12 and 13 fathoms close to the spit itself. When Captian Sharp, of the steamer "Iris," was sent there to discover and repair a break in the Noumea cable in 1904, he was amazed on finding the Admiralty chart hopelessly wrong, that the locality indicating 7 to 12 fathoms was one in which the broken cable hung over a tremendous submarine precipice, from 600 to 1,800 feet in depth, showing that the floor of the ocean over some considerable area had mysteriously subsided to that extent some time in the last thirty-four years, without apparently any record whatever of some tremendous tidal wave disturbance, such as would naturally be expected as the result of so vast a submarine catastrophe. A parallel case comes recently from Japan, where the ocean floor suddenly sank in one locality to a depth of several thousand feet. Facts such as these certainly throw a new light on the disappearance of Plato's Atlantis. Captain Mackay, the Brisbane Harbour Master, tells me that the subsidence at "Breaksea Spit" covers probably 100 square miles. Why should not a whole continent be engulfed? On Fraser Island there is a large and very deep lack, once occupied by a level plateau, on which the blacks had their fights and corrobbories. that plateau sank suddenly into an immense cicular chasm, which filled with fresh water, and became a lake within the last 100 years. How many of the twenty-two lakes on Fraser Island have been formed by the same subterranean agency? And this was the floor of the island, not of the ocean, which subsided to the basin of the lake! The first navigator and white man to land on Fraser Island was probably Mathew Flinders, who ran a ship's boat ashore near Sandy Cape, on the 31st of July, 1802, and had a friendly interview with a party of aboriginals, whom he described as "fine men," and to whom he made a present of a porpoise one of this men had harpooned.

3 The following is an extract from his journal:-"In order to give the botanist an opportunity of examining the production of Sandy Cape, I detemined to remain here for a day, and some natives being seen upon the beach a boat was sent to make friends with them, but they retired, and allowed Mr. Brown to botanise without hinderance. Next morning we separated into three parties, those with the naturalist, including six person, going along the shore to the upper part of the bay. Mr. Murray's party went to cut firewood, and my lot of six people, including "Bongaree," the Sydney black, going towards the end of the cape. Several Indians, with branches of trees, retreated, waving them for us to go back. Bongaree stripped, and put aside his spear, but they did not understand him, and he spoke to the in broken English. They allowed hime and our party to come up, and, after giving them some presents, about twenty came with us to the boats, where we have them the blubber of two porpoises. At 12 o'clock the naturalist party returned, bringing some of the scoop nets used for fishing by the natives, and we gave hatchets and other presents in return. The natives were fatter than those of Port Jackson. They are quite naked, and I noticed in most of them a hard tumour on the outer knuckle of the wrist, said to be caused by the stretcher of the scoop net. They did not know a word of Bongaree's language, nor he of theirs; and in trying to use his womerah they threw both spear and womerah away. There was no sign of any canoe." There is no proof that there were not other white men on that coast before Flinders, from some vessel taking that route from Sydney homeward, or to Batavia or India, in the years from 1788 to 1802; but Flinders is the first known record. The naturalist Brown, afterwards a world-famous botanist, collected a considerable number of plants Sandy Cape, probably the only botanist on Fraser Island from then to the present time. Geologically, Fraser Island is eccentric. The surface down through the successice stages of compression to the substrata of solid sandstone, underlying which is probably a hard Plutonic rock. In his Queensland geological map of 1892, R. L. Jack unfortunately placed the whole of Fraser Island in the lower Trias-Jura System of the Mesozoic, the same as he assigned to the Burrum coal beds, and yet there is no the slightest resemblance between the two localities. Geologically and botanically, Fraser's Island, incredible as it may appear, stands apart from the whole of the Australian continent! Two of the largest species of trees on that island-two fo the largest trees in the world-are unknown elsewhere on the face of the earth. When the flora of the island is collected, we shall doubtless find it to be exclusive, as that of the Bellenden-Ker Range. [Description] The geologist is astonished by and island of sand and sandstone mysteriously throwing out, as a buttress to defy the waves of the Pacific Ocean, a solid cliff of horizontally stratified and columnar based black basalt. The general observer is mystified by an island containing 6565 square miles covered entirely by loose sand, with not an acre of soil on any part of the whole area, and yet bearing a dense and luxuriant vegetation not rivalled in size and beauty by the richest flora of the tropics. In the centre of the island, extending for a distance of 40 miles, with a width of 2 to 3 miles, is a dense scrub containing the largest and tallest trees of all Australian scrubs, with hardood trees up to 9 or 10 feet in diameter, and 200 feet in height, mingled with tall beautiful palms, majestic tree ferns, graceful orchids, spledid mosses and lichens, and a general wealth of luxuriant undergrowth, all growing apparently out of pure sand, the secret lying in the underneath impervious strata of sandstone which intercepts all moisture and decomposing vegetaion, and forms a perpetual bed of manure to which the roots of the trees descend for rich supplies of nourishment. Outside of this belt of extraordinary ascrub the country is covered by heavy forest, the size of the trees decreasing as they near the east and west coasts. There is very little space on any part of the land, if we except the flats near the sea on the east side, perfectly level speaces up to 2 miles in width, covered by short shrubs, soft grasses, and a great profusion of brightly-tinted and sweetly-scented flowers. There are at least twenty-two lakes of pure fresh water, most of them encircled by white sand beaches, like that of the sea, and fringed by thick vegetation. As few resemble swamps, having thick clumps of reeds here and there in the centre or the edge, but all are clear and deep. The whole island consists of sandhills and valleys, all densely timbered, except a few bare hills along the east coast, north from the centre. About sixty of these sandhills had their altitude taken by triangulation from the decks of vessels by marine surveyors, and vary from 220 to 800 feet, the latter being a big hill between the "White Cliffs" and the east coast. The loftiest hills are on the south end of the island. There is everywhere an abundant supply of fresh water of superior quality. Scores of small creeks run east and west. Attached hereto is a list of forty-three one the west side, and forty on the east, the aboriginal names being given so as to record them before the opportunity has departed for ever. During rains, and for weeks afterwards, there is fresh water running on to the beach about every 200 yards along the east coast.

There is a vast quantity of valuable timber in the big scrub, apart from the extensive supplies of hardwoods in the forest country - bloodwood scribbly gum, Moreton Bay ash, tupentine, and many others. The biggest tree outside the scrub was names Syncarpia Hilli, by Mr. Bailey, in honour of the later Walter Hill. This tree grows to a great size, and gives a strong, hard, durable, valuable timber. The big tree of the scrub has been confused with this Syncarpia which the timber-getters called "Fraser Island turpentine." In my opinion the giant scrub tree is still botanically unknown. The black called it "Beemeer," whereas the Syncarpia bears an edible fruit. There must be many million of feet of "Beemeer," which grows to a maximum of 9 and 10 feet in diameter, with bare trunks up to 100 feet without a branch. Many are so large as to need bursting before they could be drawn out. A majority of the scrub timbers are hard and tough. There is a considerable supply of a very tough, hard tree the blacks called "Caroor," from which they made their spears and bommerangs, and tough a small tree seldom over a foot in diameter, it deserves earnest attention as a specially suitable wood in all purposes for which American hickory is used, being very tough, close-grained, and durable under any weather conditions. "Cypress pine," Callitris robusta, is abundant, giving a handsome and durable timber, beautifully grained roots, suitable for the finest veneers and a valuable gum for which there is an unlimited market. Roots of this tree were taken to London from Moreton Island by convict ships in the penal period, and brought £5 each in the open market. This fact was officially recorded in 1828. There is a considerable variety of trees yielding valuable gums and resins, specimen parcels of which should be sent by the Government to the Agent-General, who could ascertain the market value and the extent of the demand. It is not a work that should be left to private individuals any more than that of finding a world market for our timbers, and private enterprise could afterwards control the supply. Five years ago, acting on my instructions, the superintendent of the Fraser Island Aboriginal Station (Harold Meston) employed the aboriginals [illegible] gums for the "Dyball Tanning Company" and sent up 3 tons, for which the company paid a reasonable price. This gum gave splendid results, including first prizes for leather in four of the Australian States, besides London and elsewhere. These gums were not only powerfully astringent, with a large percentage of tannic acid, but they were also strong antiseptic; the leather prepared by them had a pleasant odour, and would be distictly healthy for use in any purpose, an important differenve from leathers too frequently tanned with articles offensive to the smell and poisonous in contact with the skin. No barks, such as those of wattle or mangrove, will bear any comparison with these gums for tanning purposes. The 3 tons readily collected on Fraser Island are conclusive proof that valuable gums for tanning and varnishes exist there is vast quantities, and the neglect of these so far shows that a very importat State asset has been entirely overlooked. When protector of aboriginals two of my reports to the Minister called special attention to these Fraser Island gums. There were also at least two resins which gave a beautiful dye, and were regarded by teh expert who tested them as specially valuable. The trees on Fraser Island give off their gums more freely than trees on the mainland. The island has an exceptional rainfall, greater by far than that of the adjoining mainland; and in the big scrub there is a prevalence of moisture and a wealth of mosses and lichens such as we find in the tropical rain-belt from the Herbert River to Cooktown. So this remarkable island, with its peculiar and magnificent flora, heavy rainfall, eccentric geology, beautiful lakes strange physical conformation, and unknown wealth of woods, gums, resins, within 120 miles by sea from the metropolis, has so far remained unknown as the obscure parts of the Cape York Peninsula. No white man has ever known more than a fraction of Fraser Island. It is doubtful if any aboriginal ever was personally acquainted with the whole of it. There were three dialects spoken, as proved by the three negatives. There were scrub tribes and coast tribes-south, north, east, and west-each tribe having its own assigned territory, and they only mingled in times of fights and corrobborees. On these occassions they would travel to and fro on familiar tracks. A man might traverse the island and walk every day for twelve months without actually seeing the half of the total area. The dense vegetation prevents a view of more than a few yards. Such an island in America would be one of the most profusely advertised and favourite resorts in the country. There is unlimited fishing, fair shooting on parts of the west coast, varied and beautiful scenery, and as east coast beach of 73 miles not surpassed in the world for bathing and fishing. There is something to interest all classes of tourists, and Queenslanders whose sole idea of a holiday is to go away to southern cities could spend a week or two on Fraser Island with far more economy, much more benefit to their health, and a very necessary increase in knowledge of one of the most attractive and interestign portions of their own country.