North Stradbroke Island

North Stradbroke Island (Jandai: Minjerribah), colloquially Straddie or North Straddie, is an island that lies within Moreton Bay in the Australian state of Queensland, 30 kilometres (19 mi) southeast of the centre of Brisbane.

North Stradbroke Island (Jandai: Minjerribah), colloquially Straddie or North Straddie, is an island that lies within Moreton Bay in the Australian state of Queensland, 30 kilometres (19 mi) southeast of the centre of Brisbane. Originally there was only one Stradbroke Island but in 1896 it split into North Stradbroke Island and South Stradbroke Island separated by the Jumpinpin Channel. The Quandamooka people are the traditional owners of North Stradbroke island.The island is divided into four localities: Dunwich, Amity and Point Lookout are small localities centred on the towns of the same name, while the remainder of the island is in the locality of North Stradbroke Island. All the localities are within the City of Redland.

At 275.2 square kilometres (106.3 sq mi; 68,000 acres), it is the second largest sand island in the world. On the island there are three small towns, a number of lakes and beaches along most of the seaward coastline with rocky outcrops at Point Lookout.An Aboriginal presence on the island has been long and ongoing, resulting in a successful native title determination. Tourism is a major and growing industry on the island. The island has been the site for sand mining for more than sixty years.Tourism and currently mining are the island's main industries.

North Stradbroke Island has the earliest evidence of human occupation in south-east Queensland. The Aboriginal (Jandai) name of the island is Minjerribah ("island in the sun"). The first recorded visit by a European was by Matthew Flinders in 1802, who was seeking a source of fresh water.He was impressed by the Aboriginal people's health and hospitality.Local historian, Thomas Welsby, records an Aboriginal oral tradition that there was earlier contact with non-indigenous people. This concerns two survivors who walked into one of the Aboriginal camps after their ship was wrecked on the ocean side of the island. The tradition states that one of the men was named Juan and the other 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.In 1823 three shipwrecked sailors from Sydney, Thomas Pamphlett, John Finnegan and Richard Parsons, spent time on the island after they were washed ashore on Moreton Island. The local Aboriginal people supplied them with food and shelter and even gave them a canoe to help them on their way. Their experiences prompted interest in the Moreton Bay area and in 1827 Governor Ralph Darling came from Sydney aboard HMS Rainbow, giving the names Stradbroke Island and Dunwich in honour of the commander of the ship, Captain Henry John Rous, whose family held the titles Earl of Stradbroke and Viscount Dunwich.A mission was established at Moongalba by Passionist priests in 1843, but their attempts failed and they left the island not long afterwards.Myora Mission was established as a mission station in 1892 at Moongalba. It became an Aboriginal reserve and "industrial and reform school" in 1896, was used as a source of cheap labour, and eventually closed in 1943. These locals worked the Dunwich Benevolent Asylum and were the first Aboriginal people in Australia to receive equal wages. In 1944, after a 25 year campaign, the Aboriginal workers gained equal wages almost 20 years before anywhere else in Australia. The Asylum closed shortly after with the Aboriginal Gang only getting equal wages for one and a half years.In September 1894, heavy seas drove aground the barque Cambus Wallace at a narrow isthmus roughly halfway down the island's length. Salvage activity (including the detonation of a cargo of explosives) weakened the sand dunes along the spit such that by the spring of 1896, storms and tides had created a permanent opening from Moreton Bay to the Coral Sea, creating North and South Stradbroke Islands, separated by the Jumpinpin Channel.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 led to the 1997 landmark agreement between the local government council and the Aboriginal people of the area that claimed rights over the island and parts of Moreton Bay.