Great Palm Island, usually known as Palm Island, is the largest island in the Palm Islands group off Northern Queensland, Australia. It is known for its Aboriginal community, the legacy of an Aboriginal reserve, the Palm Island Aboriginal Settlement (also known as "the Mission"). The original inhabitants of the island (and others in the group) were the Manbarra people, also known as the Wulgurukaba, who were removed to the mainland by the Queensland Government in the 1890s. The island is also sometimes referred to as Bwgcolman, which is the name given to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from disparate groups who were deported from many areas of Queensland to the reserve in 1918, and their descendants.
The island has an area of . The official area figure of refers to Aboriginal Shire of Palm Island, which includes nine smaller islands. It is off the east coast of Northern Queensland, situated northwest of Townsville, and north of the Tropic of Capricorn. It consists of small bays, sandy beaches and steep forested mountains rising to a peak of . The ocean surrounding the island is part of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, where extraction and fishing are regulated.
Along with nine of the other smaller islands within the Palm Islands group, it falls under the local government area of the Aboriginal Shire of Palm Island. It is the only inhabited island within the Shire.
Naming It is not known what the Manbarra people called the island before colonisation. The island group was named the "Palm Isles" by explorer James Cook in 1770 as he sailed up the eastern coast of Australia on his first voyage. The name "Great Palm Island" for this island goes back at least as far as 1866.
Other names include or have included the Mission, Palm Island settlement, Palm Island Aborigines settlement, Palm Island Community, and Bwgcolman.
History Great Palm Island is often termed a classic "tropical paradise" given its natural endowments, but it has had a troubled history since the European settlement of Australia.
Pre-contact In Manbarra beliefs the Palm Island group were formed in the Dreamtime from the broken up fragments of an ancestral spirit, Rainbow Serpent.
Manbarra (also known as Wulgurukaba) is a language of the Palm Island region, which lies within the local government boundaries of the Palm Island Aboriginal Shire Council.
18th century The islands in the area were named the "Palm Isles" by explorer James Cook in 1770 as he sailed up the eastern coast of Australia on his first voyage. It is estimated that the population of the island at the time of Cook's visit was about 200 Manbarra people. Cook sent some of his men to Palm Island and "they returned on board having met with nothing worth observing".
19th century
In 1819, Captain Phillip Parker King landed on one of the islands and recorded seeing recently occupied circular huts, and canoes nearby their landing place.
From the 1850s, locals were recruitment targets to leave the island to be involved with bêche-de-mer and pearling enterprises with Europeans and Japanese.
Calls for Palm Island to be proclaimed as a reserve were made in 1889 when the Secretary of the Townsville Aboriginal Protection AssociationNote: This organisation preceded the Queensland Aboriginal Protection Association wrote to the Colonial Secretary asking for a reserve to be established on the Island, but no action was taken.
By the end of the 19th century the population had been reduced to about 50.
Kukamunburra
A burial site and headstone is located in the "Mission" area of Palm Island. It tells the story of a young Palm Island man of the 19th century called who was renamed "Tambo" by a circus agent for the "Barnum, Bailey and Hutchinson's Greatest show on earth". After being kidnapped by United States circus agent Robert A. Cunningham in 1883, he was toured along with eight other Murris, three of whom were from Hinchinbrook Island and five from Palm.
In 1884, Kukamunburra died at 21 years old of pneumonia in Cleveland, United States. The rest of the circus group carried on to the European leg of the tour; by the end of 1885 only three of the Murris were still alive. Kukamunburra's partner, died 1885 in Wuppertal, Germany, aged about 17 years."Ein Gedenkstein für Sussy Dakaro" by Jana Turek, Deutschlandfunk, 3 July 2017 (in German)
Kukamunburra's body was embalmed; 109 years later, in 1993, the body was discovered in a local funeral parlour. Anthropologist Roslyn Poignant was able to identify the body and his remains were returned to his homeland and buried on Palm Island in February 1994.
20th century
For much of the twentieth century it was used by the Queensland Government as a settlement for Aboriginal people considered guilty of such infractions as being "disruptive", being pregnant to a white man or being born with mixed blood ("half-caste"), a type of Aboriginal reserve that was also a penal settlement. Beginning in 1918, the island was used by the Queensland Government as a settlement for Aboriginal people from many different areas of Queensland.
1918–1975: Palm Island Aboriginal Settlement
In 1909 the Chief Protector of Aborigines visited the island, apparently to check on the activities of Japanese pearling crews in the area, and reported the existence of a small camp of Aboriginal people. In 1916 he found that Palm "suitable for use as a penitentiary" for "individuals we desire to punish".
On 10 March 1918, the Hull River Aboriginal Settlement on the Hull River near Mission Beach on the Australian mainland was destroyed by a cyclone. Palm Island had been gazetted as an Aboriginal reserve on 20 June 1914, although at the time there were few Aboriginal people living on Great Palm. After the cyclone, the residents of Hull River were relocated to Palm Island, with the new population from various Aboriginal peoples – from at least 57 different language groups throughout Queensland and the Torres Strait Islands – later referred to as the Bwgcolman people.
In the first two decades of its establishment the population of Indigenous "inmates" increased from 200 to 1,630. By the early 1920s, Palm Island had become the largest Aboriginal reserve in Queensland and quickly gained a reputation among Aboriginal people as a penal settlement. Indigenous people were removed from across Queensland as punishment for a variety of infringements, including being "half-caste", and sent to Palm Island. New arrivals came after being sentenced by a court or released from prison, or they were sent by administrators of other missions and reserves.
On 3 February 1930, in an incident known as the 1930 Palm Island Tragedy, the first Superintendent of the Settlement, Robert Henry Curry, who had been a strict disciplinarian, shot and wounded two people, and set fire to several buildings, killing his two children. Later in the day, the Superintendent was shot dead. An official inquiry by the Queensland Attorney General followed. Those involved in the shooting of the Superintendent, including the Deputy Superintendent and the Palm Island Medical Officer, were charged with murder, but the Crown Prosecutor was directed by the trial judge to drop the charges, stating that the shooting was justified.
A bell tower was built to dictate the running of the mission. The bell would ring each morning at eight, a signal for everyone to line up for parade in the mission square. Those who failed to line up had their food allocation cut. At nine each evening the bell would ring again, signalling the shutting down of the island's electricity. The bell tower still stands in the local square to this day, a relic of Palm Island's history.
After 12 Oct 1939, when the Aboriginals Preservation and Protection Act 1939 and Torres Strait Islander Act 1939 were passed, the name changed from Palm Island Aboriginal Settlement to Director of Native Affairs Office, Palm Island. These Acts effected a change in policy: instead of protection and segregation of Indigenous people, it instead focussed on assimilation into the "white community". They gave freedom and full citizenship rights to Aboriginal people who qualified for these, but also streamlined the administration and development of Aboriginal reserves. The Director of Native Affairs Office was superseded by the Aboriginal and Island Affairs Department on 28 April 1966. The functions were transferred to the Aboriginal and Island Affairs Department, District Office, Palm Island.
Palm Island Aboriginal Settlement was mentioned in the Bringing Them Home Report (1997) as an institution that housed children removed from their families, part of the Stolen Generation.
1943–44: WW2 use as US airbase In July 1943 the US Navy built a naval air station at Palm Island, with facilities to operate and overhaul Catalina flying boats and patrol boats. The air station was built at Wallaby Point, an isolated area of Palm Island, overlooking a large stretch of sheltered water in Challenger Bay, which was ideal for flying boat operations. The station was built by two officers and 122 enlisted men of Company C of the 55th Naval Construction Battalion (Seabee) that arrived 6 July 1943, and a similar detachment that left Brisbane later with 1,500 tons of construction material.
A 1,000-man camp was constructed at the point. Concrete flying boat ramps to the ocean were built with a tarmac parking area for up to 12 flying boats. Moorings for 18 flying boats were provided in Challenger Bay, and three nose hangars were also built. Coral aggregate from coral reefs at low tide was used to manufacture concrete. A series of fuel tanks were constructed to hold 60,000 barrels of aviation fuel. Steel rail lines were installed to launch the PBY Catalinas back into the water.
By September 1943 the majority of the facilities were finished, and large numbers of operational and maintenance personnel began to arrive to commission the station. The Palm Island US Naval Air Station was fully operational from 25 October 1943, and could repair an average of four aircraft per day. The last personnel of the 55th Seabees left Palm Island on 8 November 1943. US Navy Patrol Squadron 101, Patrol Wing 10, with eight PBY Catalinas was briefly stationed at Palm Island in December 1943, before relocating to Perth. US Navy Patrol Squadron VP-11 arrived at the station in late December 1943, where they were taken off combat duties. The squadron comprised 13 PBY-5 Catalinas, 46 officers and 99 enlisted men. They carried out training and routine flights between Port Moresby, Samarai and Brisbane. They were assigned to Fleet Air Wing 17 while at Palm Island, and left in February 1944.
The Naval Air Station closed in May 1944. On 18 June 1944, 177 men and 4 officers of Company B, 91st Naval Construction Battalion, arrived from Milne Bay to dismantle the station's buildings and facilities, removing and crating over 5,000 tons of materials and equipment and loading it aboard ship before departing on 31 August 1944.
The remains of the steel rails and submerged wrecks of a number of Catalinas can still be seen today.
1957: Strike
One of the harshest Superintendents was Roy Bartlam, who arrested workers for being a minute behind the roll call in the reserve.
All Islanders were required to work 30 hours each week, and up until the 1960s no wages were paid for this work. The catalyst for the strike was the attempted deportation of Indigenous inmate Albie Geia who committed the offence of disobeying the European overseer. The strike was also against the harsh conditions imposed by Bartlam, low or no wages, as well as poor housing and rations. Bartlam was forced to flee to his office and call for reinforcements. Armed Police arrived by RAAF launch from Townsville, and the "ringleaders" and their families were deported in chains to other Aboriginal settlements.