North Stradbroke Island - History

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, Thomas Pamphlett, John Finnegan and Richard 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, Matthew 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. 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.

North 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 landmark agreement between the local government council and the aboriginal people of the area claiming rights over the island and parts of Moreton Bay.