Flinders Island is the name given to an island that forms part of the

Great Barrier Reef Marine Park The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park protects a large part of Australia's Great Barrier Reef from damaging activities. It is a vast multiple-use Marine Park which supports a wide range of uses, including commercial marine tourism, fishing, ports an ...

at the tip of

Cape Melville Cape Melville is a headland on the eastern coast of the Cape York Peninsula in Australia. To its west lies Princess Charlotte Bay. It is part of the Cape Melville National Park. Cape Melville was named Stoney Cape in 1815 by Lieutenant Charles ...

, Queensland in

Bathurst Bay Bathurst Bay is a bay in the localities of Lakefield and Starcke in the Shire of Cook, Queensland, Australia. In the 19th century it was the base for the pearling fleet. It is now a tourist attraction on Cape York Peninsula in northern Que ...

. The original indigenous name was ''Wurriima.'' It is north of Denham Island in the

Flinders Group National Park Flinders Group National Park (Cape York Peninsula Aboriginal Land) is a national park in Queensland (Australia), 1,745 km northwest of Brisbane. The national park was previously named Flinders Group National Park until it was renamed on 28 ...

. It is separated from Stanley Island by Owen Channel and Maclear Island by Fly Channel. The

traditional owners Native title is the designation given to the common law doctrine of Aboriginal title in Australia, which is the recognition by Australian law that Indigenous Australians (both Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander people) have rights ...

formed part of a multi-lingual cultural complex extending from Bathurst Head to

, which once, prior to the destructive advent of settlers, lugger crews in the late 19th century colonial period, numbered an estimated 200 people. Peter Sutton
'Science and sensibility on a foul frontier: At Flinders Island, 1935,'
in

Bruce Rigsby Bruce Rigsby (1937 – March 19, 2022) was an American-Australian anthropologist specializing in the languages and ethnography of native peoples on both continents. He was professor emeritus at Queensland University, and a member of both the Au ...

and Nicholas Peterson, (eds.), ''Donald Thomson, Man and Scholar,'' 2005 pp.143–58,p.156 notes 9,10. It became one of the earliest centres for recruiting local hands for the pearling trade. These people were still shot or raped at gunpoint as late as the early 1900s.Sutton, ibid.p.148 There is a major residential site on the sandspit. The island is a popular tourist destination with an anchorage point for yachts. Flinders Island is an integral part of the mythological complex of the Flinders Group.

References

Islands on the Great Barrier Reef Islands of Far North Queensland Protected areas of Far North Queensland {{Queensland-national-park-stub

See also

References