Fingal Head

Fingal Head is a village on the Tasman Sea coast in the far northeast of New South Wales, Australia, about 5 km south of the New South Wales and Queensland border.

Fingal Head is a village on the Tasman Sea coast in the far northeast of New South Wales, Australia, about 5 km south of the New South Wales and Queensland border. The village is often just called Fingal. The headland and the small off-shore Island (Cook Island) were first sighted by James Cook about 17:00 on 16 May 1770 (log date and time). At the time of the2016 census, Fingal Head had a population of 592 people.

There has been controversy over the naming of Fingal Head by James Cook in May 1770 for many years. Strong evidence suggests that Fingal Head was, in fact, the point James Cook named Point Danger.

In 1823, John Oxley took shelter from Southerly winds, while sailing North from Port Macquarie. "At 3 made sail intending to anchor to the South of Point Danger. At 5 passed close to a Bold Headland [Present-day Point Danger]about 3 Miles North of Pt.D. (Point Danger)On the South Side of this headland we had the satisfaction to discover a considerable river with an apparent clear entrance." (Tweed River)

John Uniack and later Oxley went onto the island, where they found some sea turtles and called the island "Turtle Island". In 1828 Henry John Rous (Captain of HMS Rainbow) surveyed Oxley's Tweed River, the name used today.A chart published in 1831 by the Master of the "Rainbow" showing the island as "Cook's Isle" and the river named the "Clarance River" - the unnamed headland, North of the river was also named Point Danger. However the off-shore reefs East of the Island were not marked. Fingal Head would be named as such by Surveyor Robert Dixon who mapped the coastal districts between Brisbane Town and the Brunswick River in the winter months of 1840.It first appears on a map published By Dixon in Sydney in 1842.Dixon's party was also assisted at that time by the master and crew of the schooner Letitia, which they found had entered the Tweed.Hence the naming of Letitia Point.There is also every suggestion that Dixon made reference to the Giant's Causeway. It is highly probable that "Fingal Head" was named after Fingal's Cave on the island of Staffa in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland because of the similarity in appearance due to naturally formed Columnar Basalt outcrops which extend above the ocean surface.The local aboriginal people were the Minjungbal, but white settlement significantly impacted the population in the late 19th to early 20th century. In 1933, the last female full-blood Aborigine on the Tweed was laid to rest in Fingal's Aboriginal cemetery following a service conducted at the mission church.Fingal Head Post Office opened on 15 March 1912, uprated from a telegraph office opened in October 1911.