The South Wellesley Islands is an island group and

locality Locality may refer to: * Locality (association), an association of community regeneration organizations in England * Locality (linguistics) * Locality (settlement) * Suburbs and localities (Australia), in which a locality is a geographic subdivis ...

in the

Gulf of Carpentaria The Gulf of Carpentaria (, ) is a large, shallow sea enclosed on three sides by northern Australia and bounded on the north by the eastern Arafura Sea (the body of water that lies between Australia and New Guinea). The northern boundary is ...

within the Shire of Mornington,

Queensland ) , nickname = Sunshine State , image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , established_ ...

, Australia. The group is separate from the

Wellesley Islands The Wellesley Islands, also known as the North Wellesley Islands, is a group of islands off the coast of Far North Queensland, Australia, in the Gulf of Carpentaria. It is a locality within the Shire of Mornington local government area. The t ...

. Bentinck Island is the only one known to have been inhabited in the past; in the , the South Wellesley Islands were uninhabited

Geography

The islands, which lie in the Shire of Mornington, are (west to east): * Allen Island * Horseshoe Island * Albinia Island *

Bentinck Island Bentinck Island is a small island in the Strait of Juan de Fuca just off the southern tip of Vancouver Island in Metchosin, British Columbia, Canada near Race Rocks. It served as a leper colony beginning in 1924, when the federal government shut d ...

* Fowler Island * Sweers Island In the , the South Wellesley Islands had a population of 0 people.

History

Kayardild language Kayardild is a moribund Tangkic language spoken by the Kaiadilt on the South Wellesley Islands, north west Queensland, Australia, with fewer than ten fluent speakers remaining. Other members of the family include Yangkaal (spoken by the Yang ...

(also known as

Kaiadilt The Kaiadilt are an Aboriginal Australian people of the South Wellesley group in the Gulf of Carpentaria, Queensland, Australia. They are native to Bentinck Island, but also made nomadic fishing and hunting forays to both Sweers and Allen Is ...

, the name of the people of

, also spelt Gayadilta) is a language of the

. The Kayardild language region includes the landscape within the local government boundaries of the

Mornington Shire Council The Shire of Mornington is a local government area in northwestern Queensland, Australia. The shire covers the Wellesley Islands, which includes Mornington Island; the South Wellesley Islands; Bountiful Islands; and West Wellesley / Forsyth I ...

. Explorer

Matthew Flinders Captain Matthew Flinders (16 March 1774 – 19 July 1814) was a British navigator and cartographer who led the first inshore circumnavigation of mainland Australia, then called New Holland. He is also credited as being the first person to u ...

charted the islands in 1802 and assigned European names to Bentinck Island, the island group (Wellesley) and the largest island (

Mornington Island Mornington Island, also known as Kunhanhaa, is an island in the Gulf of Carpentaria in the Shire of Mornington (Queensland), Shire of Mornington, Queensland, Australia. It is the northernmost and largest of 22 islands that form the Wellesley I ...

) in honour of

Lord William Bentinck Lieutenant General Lord William Henry Cavendish-Bentinck (14 September 177417 June 1839), known as Lord William Bentinck, was a British soldier and statesman who served as the Governor of Fort William (Bengal) from 1828 to 1834 and the First G ...

, who was then

Governor of Madras This is a list of the governors, agents, and presidents of colonial Madras, initially of the English East India Company, up to the end of British colonial rule in 1947. English Agents In 1639, the grant of Madras to the English was finalized be ...

, India, and

Richard Wellesley, 2nd Earl of Mornington Richard Colley Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley, (20 June 1760 – 26 September 1842) was an Anglo-Irish politician and colonial administrator. He was styled as Viscount Wellesley until 1781, when he succeeded his father as 2nd Earl of M ...

and

Governor-General of Bengal The Governor-General of India (1773–1950, from 1858 to 1947 the Viceroy and Governor-General of India, commonly shortened to Viceroy of India) was the representative of the monarch of the United Kingdom and after Indian independence in 1 ...

. In 1803, the two men had acted as interceded on Flinders' behalf to persuade the French to release Flinders after he had been imprisoned by them on

Mauritius Mauritius ( ; french: Maurice, link=no ; mfe, label=Mauritian Creole, Moris ), officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean about off the southeast coast of the African continent, east of Madagascar. It incl ...

. Sometime around 1916, a man remembered only as McKenzie came to Bentinck Island and set up a sheep run, basing himself on a site at the mouth of the Kurumnbali estuary. He would ride over the island, accompanied by a pack of dogs, and shoot any Kaiadilt man who came within sight; in local memory, he murdered at least 11 people. He also kidnapped and raped native girls. He then moved to Sweers Island, and set up a lime kiln there. The Kaiadilt managed to return to Sweers only on McKenzie's departure. The massacre was only recorded by researchers in the 1980s. Sweers Island was declared an

Aboriginal reserve An Aboriginal reserve, also called simply reserve, was a government-sanctioned settlement for Aboriginal Australians, created under various state and federal legislation. Along with missions and other institutions, they were used from the 19th c ...

in 1934. After a cyclonic tidal surge swept the area in 1948, which followed fast on the severe drought that struck in 1946, the Kaiadilt were transferred by missionaries and the

Queensland Government The Queensland Government is the democratic administrative authority of the Australian state of Queensland. The Government of Queensland, a parliamentary constitutional monarchy was formed in 1859 as prescribed in its Constitution, as amended fr ...

, the largest island in the group. The uprooting effectively set in place the process of the destruction of both Kaiadilt culture and language since all children were restricted to dormitories, away from their parents and kin, and the transmission of the language and lore was lost. On Mornington Island they lived in a separate zone, in beach humpies facing Bentinck Island. They were looked down on by the Indigenous

Lardil people The Lardil people, who prefer to be known as Kunhanaamendaa (meaning people of Kunhanhaa, the traditional name for Mornington Island), are an Aboriginal Australian people and the traditional custodians of Mornington Island in the Wellesley Islan ...

of Mornington Island, who denied them access to the fishing grounds. Conditions were so severe that for several years all children were stillborn, creating a gap in the generations. File:Bentinck_Island_04.jpg, Southern part of Bentinck Island and Albinia Island File:Bentinck_Island_01.jpg, Bentinck Island with the Australian continent in the background File:Sweers_Island_01.jpg, the small Fowler Island is located between Seers Island and Bentinck Island File:Locator_map_of_Bentinck_Island.jpg, Location of Bentinck Island File:Sweers Island 02.jpg, Southern part of Sweers Island

References

{{Shire of Mornington Islands of Queensland North West Queensland Gulf of Carpentaria Shire of Mornington (Queensland) Massacres of ethnic groups Localities in Queensland