Whale on the flensing deck at Tangalooma (Photo Stan Kenwrick)
“I worked for six months at Tangalooma Whaling Station on the flensing deck where the whale carcasses were cut up into chunks of blubber ready for boiling. As you can imagine, the smell was horrendous. After the whales had been killed, their carcasses were towed into the Bay to the whaling station at Tangalooma. Large sharks would follow them in. When the carcasses were winched up onto the flensing deck ready to be cut up by me and my mate, there would sometimes still be a huge shark still attached to the flesh on which it had been feeding. When it did finally let go, it would thrash around on the flensing deck with its teeth snapping. We made sure we kept well clear of it!”
‘Snow’ Port with jaws taken from a shark at Tangalooma
Bob Emmett adds: ‘Whales were everywhere round Moreton. Once in the “Heath” we had to heave to between Comboyuro Point and Tangalooma because the water was so thick with them. Also, the chasers sometimes didn’t have to go even as far as North Point before catching their full complement of whales. They wouldn’t even get outside the bay. I’ve seen the whaling station break down, and 16 whales left rotting. They were absolutely putrid, and they had to tow them out to sea and blow them up. When the station was operational, the smell was pretty bad anyway, and if you walked along the beach near Tangalooma, the water’s edge was always oily.’
Liverpool born Jessie Hill first went to Moreton Island in 1903 at the age of four. As daughter of the assistant lighthouse keeper at Cape Moreton, she recalls the school lessons with a dozen other lighthouse children from four families at Cape Moreton and one at Yellowpatch. On Sundays, the children were taken for a picnic down to the beach. After eating, everyone would collect the week’s firewood in the horse and cart.
Jessie’s father later transferred to the Department of Harbours and Marine for whom he kept the Cowan Cowan light from 1911 until it became automatic in 1927. He then took charge of the Cowan Cowan signal station.
In 1931 Jessie met a young Lancashireman, Harry Wadsworth, who was then holidaying on Moreton Island. The child of a mill weaver, Harry had been raised in the poorer area of the industrial town of Oldham. During World War I he had been a signaller, and later in civilian life became an instrument maker. In 1927, fed up with the tough conditions that existed in England, he migrated to Australia.
With the Great Depression affecting Australia too, jobs were almost impossible to find, and Harry moved north from Melbourne to Sydney, and then to Brisbane. It was then that he discovered Moreton Island and Jessie, and fell in love with both.
Harry’s World War I experience as a signaller was to prove useful at Cowan Cowan, and he would often help out Jessie’s father at the Signal Station. After numerous temporary jobs, Harry landed a full-time job with the Harbours and Marine Department in 1934. As relief lighthouse keeper for the Howard Range and Bulwer lights on Moreton, Harry recalls that he had to walk four miles to work, which included a 400 yard wade through a neck deep swamp while carrying a can of kerosene on his back.
Jessie and Harry were married in 1938 and in the following year Harry was put in charge of the Cowan Cowan Signal Station. The couple’s love affair with Moreton Island was to continue for the rest of their lives. It was an idyllic existence – the stuff of story books. A casual, shoeless lifestyle with seemingly endless beaches stretching away in either direction from the door of their comfortable bungalow.
Harry and Jessie Wadsworth in 1978
Although they had Moreton Island almost to themselves, theirs was not a lonely existence, for quite apart from the constant contact with shipping through Harry’s work as a signalman, Moreton Island played host to a large number and variety of people over the ensuing years.
A military fort was built at Cowan Cowan between the wars and strengthened during WWII. A naval station and jetty were also established at Tangalooma then, as well as a road across the island at that point.
After WWII a huge demand for whale oil triggered a world-wide interest in whale hunting. To help satisfy this demand, a whaling station was opened at Tangalooma in 1952. Over the next decade Harry and Jessie Wadsworth would often play host to the families of the whalers, notably for christmas dinner.
The Tangalooma whaling station had an annual quota of 600 Humpback whales. However, when vegetable oils were introduced to replace whale oil in margarine production, the price of the whale oil fell dramatically. Quotas were increased to 660 to offset the price drop but the increased cull served only to deplete the whale numbers to such an extent that in the 1962 season, only 68 whales were taken, and in August of that year Tangalooma closed down due to a lack of whales.
Tangalooma Wrecks, Moreton Island (photo courtesy Ishara Udawela, Wikipedia Creative Commons)
I had a fair bit to do with the scuttling of the vessels at Tangalooma to form the artificial reef there. I was master of the Echeneis at the time and I was given the job of taking many of the old dredges and barges to Tangalooma and scuttling them. They were more or less scuttled at the same time except the Echeneis and the Groper, which were the last of them. All the dredges had reached the end of their working days and had been replaced by the Sir Thomas Hiley. When the Sir Thomas Hiley arrived on the scene, it was like a big jump forward out of the 1930s or even earlier for us, right up into the sophisticated world of dredging as it was overseas. She was built at Walkers (Maryborough) and was one of the most modern in the world. It made a lot of the other dredges redundant. I was dredging Superintendent then. We did keep the Groper on because there was always work for bucket dredges and because some work can only be done by bucket dredges. Of course, they are much more sophisticated now as far as their controls are concerned. They are still being used all over the world but not in Brisbane. They have a clam dredge that does a lot of the wharves and they have a small cutter suction dredge, but the Brisbane is the main dredge now, which took over from the Sir Thomas Hiley.
As far as the scuttling at Tangalooma went, our powder monkey was a fellow called Digger Poole. He had been in charge of the rock blasting at the Kangaroo Point quarry. He was an interesting character and had a habit of using twice the amount of charge required for a job. He was on a couple of jobs with me – at Tangalooma, at the Fisherman Islands development, and at Arcadia on Magnetic Island. His job was to make up and detonate the charges. We’d give him the OK and away he’d go. He had been in the army and came back into Harbours and Marine right after the war. When we started the development at Fisherman Islands there were a lot of old pipes left there from the old dredges and Digger blew them up too.
At Arcadia on Magnetic Island we gave him the job of blasting out the coral outcrops (bomby) to clear a boat passage. When we went down to inspect the area where the coral bomby had been, the bomby was gone and there was a crater almost as deep as the bomby had been high. How we didn’t disturb some of the large boulders that seem precariously balanced on the waterfront in that area I don’t know.
Until the last ice age, indigenous peoples roamed the lands now occupied by Moreton Bay. After the ice age some 15,000 years ago, the sea levels began to rise and the coastline contracted. Sand was washed northwards from what is now New South Wales and formed the islands now known as Moreton and Stradbroke, thus enclosing the area of Moreton Bay.
The indigenous people of Moreton Island (Moorgumpin) were known as the Nugui people. With the arrival of Europeans, a massacre by British soldiers in 1833 significantly reduced the Nugui’s numbers, and in 1847 their remaining people were transferred to Stradbroke Island.
Shipping
When the Moreton Bay settlement was established on the Brisbane River in 1824, sailing ships began using the South Passage between Stradbroke and Moreton Islands. This was to continue until the wreck of the Sovereign there in 1847. The wreck, with the loss of forty-five lives, was a disaster that shook the foundations of the young pastoral and business community. More than any other single event, it led to vessels using the northern entrance to Moreton Bay rather than the South Passage.
Although both entrances were then being used, the pilot station remained at Amity Point on Stradbroke Island, but pilots were made available for ships using either entrance. However, as the condition of the South Passage continued to deteriorate and more vessels used the North Passage, the Pilot Station at Amity was closed and officially moved to Moreton Island on August 1, 1848, first at Cowan Cowan and then at Bulwer. Tom Welsby notes, however, that working conditions for the pilots at Moreton were still laborious:
“A crow’s nest of ti-tree saplings was erected at Comboyuro Point to enable the lookout man to see vessels when they rounded North Point. He then had to walk about a mile to inform the pilot, and by the time he left the beach with his boat about an hour had been consumed. If it was fine weather and ebb tide, after two or three hours’ pulling (on the oars) he would reach the ship, and the boat would then return to the station.”
During 1856, with vessels now entering Moreton Bay via the north entrance between Bribie and Moreton Islands, the New South Wales Government erected the Cape Moreton lighthouse, a stone tower twenty-three metres high and 120 metres above sea level. This lighthouse, with its original lens, is still in use. The stone for the lighthouse and the light keepers’ cottages was quarried at first from the immediate neighbourhood of the works, but it was found to be of bad quality underneath the hard top and the remainder was obtained from a nearby hill. The lantern was of iron with 16 sides. The Government schooner Spitfire carried the lantern and many of the other items for the lighthouse from Brisbane to Moreton Island, landing them at the pilot station from whence they were transported overland to the site. Such an important and interesting event did the commencement of the operations of the new light prove to be that pleasure cruises to view the lighthouse were run on the steamer Breadalbane, taking about 100 passengers from Ipswich and Brisbane, music and dancing were enjoyed on board while in the river.
An early navigation family closely associated with Moreton Island was the Clohertys. Bruce Hazel provides the following details: ‘The Clohertys migrated to Australia from Galway in 1875 in the ship Corlic. Thomas Alfred Cloherty was born in 1857 and was the pilot Master for Moreton Bay in the late 1800’s. He was stationed at the Bulwer Lighthouse on Moreton Island. He married Mary Ann Evans about 1886 and they had 13 children while living at Bulwer on Moreton Island. His brother, William, also migrated on the ship Corlic in 1875. He was a signalman and light keeper from 1884 to 1910 at South Passage Moreton Island.
The South Passage Light house location was eroded away and the settlement was relocated to Kooringal, which today is a very popular tourist resort. The stretch of water between Moreton Island and the Moreton banks at the south end of the island was originally named Cloherty’s Gutter after William Cloherty. It was later changed to Day’s Gutter after a prominent identity Frank Day. The south Passage lighthouse location was originally named Oolong, which is a Chinese tea.’
Tangalooma
In 1952 Whale Products P/L opened a whaling station at Tangalooma. Quotas averaging 600 per year were met until 1959 when world whale oil prices began to fall due to competition from vegetable oils. The whaling station closed in 1962, and in 1963 the Tangalooma site was purchased by Greg Cavill and converted to a tourist resort. Today it continues as such with few reminders, save for the massive concrete flensing deck, of its former purpose.
While the whaling station was in operation, sharks were attracted into Moreton Bay by the dead whale carcasses towed by the catchers to Tangalooma for processing. With the sharks came the big game fishermen, most notably quiz personality Bob Dyer and his wife Dolly. At the start of the whaling season they would bring their game fishing boat, Tennessee II, up from Sydney. After much burleying the waters with whale meat and blood, Bob would try to catch the biggest shark that came in for a feed. In this way he was to claim many game fishing records at that time.
BOB DYER with a 2,162 lb (980 kg) white pointer shark
But it wasn’t just the sharks that brought fishermen to Moreton Island. It had always been legendary for its fishing catches both from the ocean and bay sides of the island. Moreton was always a good place to get away from it all, and have a break from city life – for the poor and wealthy alike. Some who came for a break liked Moreton’s relaxed lifestyle so much that they decided to stay on. Pick of the squatters’ choices was North Point, where the Hospital Fishing Club set up residence. By the 1960s there had been sufficient public interest in Moreton Island for the Government to make allotments available for sale, and in 1963 the first land sales took place at Kooringal, near the island’s southern end.
(Extract from Peter Ludlow’s book ‘Moreton Bay People 2012’ (now out of print)
Moreton Bay History 