The Wellesley Islands, also known as the North Wellesley Islands, is a group of islands off the coast of

Far North Queensland Far North Queensland (FNQ) is the northernmost part of the States and territories of Australia, Australian state of Queensland. Its largest city is Cairns, Queensland, Cairns and it is dominated geographically by Cape York Peninsula, which stret ...

, Australia, in the

Gulf of Carpentaria The Gulf of Carpentaria is a sea off the northern coast of Australia. It is enclosed on three sides by northern Australia and bounded on the north by the eastern Arafura Sea, which separates Australia and New Guinea. The northern boundary ...

. It is a

locality Locality may refer to: * Locality, a historical named location or place in Canada * Locality (association), an association of community regeneration organizations in England * Locality (linguistics) * Locality (settlement) * Suburbs and localitie ...

within the Shire of Mornington local government area. The

traditional owners Native title is the set of rights, recognised by Australian law, held by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander groups or individuals to land that derive from their maintenance of their traditional laws and customs. These Aboriginal title rig ...

of the islands are the

Lardil people The Lardil people, who prefer to be known as (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 Islands chain in t ...

. In the , Wellesley Islands had a population of 1,022 people.

Geography

The Wellesley Islands, also known as the North Wellesley Islands, is located in the Gulf of Carpentaria, on the eastern (Queensland) side of the gulf. The largest island in the group is

Mornington Island Mornington Island, also known as Kunhanhaa, is an island in the Gulf of Carpentaria in the Shire of Mornington, Queensland, Australia. It is the northernmost and, at , the largest of 22 islands that form the Wellesley Islands group. The larg ...

, with most people living in the town of Gununa. Two small islands in the group, north of Mornington Island, are designated as the Manowar and Rocky Islands Important Bird Area, because of their importance for breeding

seabird Seabirds (also known as marine birds) are birds that are adaptation, adapted to life within the marine ecosystem, marine environment. While seabirds vary greatly in lifestyle, behaviour and physiology, they often exhibit striking convergent ...

s, in particular the

brown booby The brown booby (''Sula leucogaster'') is a large seabird of the booby family Sulidae, of which it is perhaps the most common and widespread species. It has a pantropical range, which overlaps with that of other booby species. The gregarious bro ...

and

lesser frigatebird The lesser frigatebird (''Fregata ariel'') is a seabird of the frigatebird family Fregatidae. At around 75 cm (30 in) in length, it is the smallest species of frigatebird. It occurs over tropical and subtropical waters across the Indian ...

. Other islands in the group include (from north to south): * Moondalbee Island * Lingnoonganee Island * Pisonia Island * Lingeleah Island * Beahgoo Island * Jinke Island * Sydney Island * Tulburrerr Island * Denham Island * Andrew Island Immediately to the south is a group known as the

West Wellesley Islands The West Wellesley Islands, also referred to as the Forsyth Islands, is an island group and suburbs and localities (Australia), locality in the Gulf of Carpentaria within the Shire of Mornington (Queensland), Shire of Mornington, Queensland, Aus ...

or Forsyth Islands, and to the south-east of them are the

South Wellesley Islands The South Wellesley Islands is an island group and locality in the Gulf of Carpentaria within the Shire of Mornington, Queensland, Australia. The group is separate from the Wellesley Islands. Bentinck Island is the only one known to have b ...

, while the Bountiful Islands lie to the east of Mornington Island. Politically, all 26 islands in these groups are within the

local government area A local government area (LGA) is an administrative division of a country that a local government is responsible for. The size of an LGA varies by country but it is generally a subdivision of a federated state, state, province, division (politica ...

of the Shire of Mornington. Ecologically, they constitute subregion GUP10 of the

IBRA The Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia (IBRA) is a biogeography, biogeographic regionalisation of Australia developed by the Australian government's Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities ( ...

-defined

Gulf Plains The Gulf Plains, an interim Australian bioregion (IBRA), is located in the Northern Territory and Queensland, comprising . It is one of 89 such bioregions defined in Australia, with 419 subregions as of IBRA version 7, compared with the 85 bior ...

bioregion of Australia.

History

According to Indigenous lore, possibly mixed with fact, the islands were once part of mainland Australia: The

, who prefer to be known as Kunhanaamendaa (meaning people of Kunhanhaa, their name for Mornington Island), are an

Aboriginal Australian Aboriginal Australians are the various indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, excluding the ethnically distinct people of the Torres Strait Islands. Humans first migrated to Australia 50,000 to 65,000 year ...

people and the

of Mornington Island. The

Lardil language Lardil, also spelled Leerdil or Leertil, is a moribund language spoken by the Lardil people on Mornington Island (Kunhanha), in the Wellesley Islands of Queensland in northern Australia. Lardil is unusual among Aboriginal Australian languag ...

(also known as Gununa, Ladil), is spoken on Mornington Island and on the northern Wellesley Islands. The islands were charted by

Matthew Flinders Captain (Royal Navy), Captain Matthew Flinders (16 March 1774 – 19 July 1814) was a British Royal Navy officer, navigator and cartographer who led the first littoral zone, inshore circumnavigate, circumnavigation of mainland Australia, then ...

on 6 December 1802, and named by him some years later. He probably did not name them until sometime between 1803 and 1810, when he was in French captivity on

Mauritius Island Mauritius, officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island country in the Indian Ocean, about off the southeastern coast of East Africa, east of Madagascar. It includes the main island (also called Mauritius), as well as Rodrigues, Agalé ...

; he devoted that time to working on his charts and journals. Flinders probably named the island group in honour of

Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley 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 ...

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 ...

and

Governor-General of Bengal The governor-general of India (1833 to 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 in their capacity as the emperor o ...

from 1797 to 1805. Wellesley, along with

Lord William Bentinck Lieutenant-general (United Kingdom), Lieutenant General Lord William Henry Cavendish-Bentinck (14 September 177417 June 1839), known as Lord William Bentinck, was a British military commander and politician who served as the governor of the Be ...

, tried to secure Flinders' release. He definitely named the largest island in the group, Mornington Island, after Wellesley, who was also the second

Earl of Mornington Earl of Mornington is a title in the Peerage of Ireland. It was created in 1760 for the Anglo-Irish politician and composer Garret Wellesley, 2nd Baron Mornington. On the death of the fifth earl in 1863, it passed to the Duke of Wellington; s ...

. The main town on Mornington Island, Gununa (a Lardil word) was founded in 1914 as Mornington Island Community, and renamed by the

Queensland Place Names Board Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, ...

on 16 January 1982. Mornington Island State School opened on 28 January 1975.

Demographics

In the , Wellesley Islands had a population of 1,136 people, all living on the largest island,

. In the , Wellesley Islands had a population of 1,022 people.

Education

Mornington Island State School is a government-run primary and secondary school at Lardil Street for boys and girls from early childhood through Year 10. (). In 2018, the school had an enrolment of 263 students, with 25 teachers and 14 full- and part-time non-teaching staff (the equivalent of 11 full-time m positions). It includes a

special education Special education (also known as special-needs education, aided education, alternative provision, exceptional student education, special ed., SDC, and SPED) is the practice of educating students in a way that accommodates their individual di ...

program. There are no schools on the island or any nearby areas that offer education to Year 12 on the island. The only options for those years are enrolling in online

distance education Distance education, also known as distance learning, is the education of students who may not always be physically present at school, or where the learner and the teacher are separated in both time and distance; today, it usually involves online ...

courses or going away to

boarding school A boarding school is a school where pupils live within premises while being given formal instruction. The word "boarding" is used in the sense of "room and board", i.e. lodging and meals. They have existed for many centuries, and now extend acr ...

References

{{Shire of Mornington IBRA subregions Islands of Queensland North West Queensland Gulf of Carpentaria Shire of Mornington (Queensland) Localities in Queensland Carpentaria tropical savanna

Geography

History

Demographics

Education

See also

References