Working at Dunwich (Noel Brown)

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Dunwich, Mineral sand mining, Stradbroke Island

My father, Mark Brown

My grandfather, George Brown, was a descendant of Fernandez Gonzales, a ‘Manila man’ who Tom Welsby once described as ‘the Patriarch of Moreton Bay’. George married Granny Mubue, an Aborigine from the mainland, and their children included my father, Markwell “Mark” George Brown, and my five aunts Daisy Campbell, Tilly Martin, Ethel Close, Vera Perry, and Mabel Brown (she remained unmarried). Our family lived at the Two Mile, which as the name implies was a community situated two miles north of Dunwich. Mark Brown, my father, worked at the old people’s institution at Dunwich as an engineer. He looked after the gas and steam engines there.

Apart from fishing and oystering, the old people’s Institution was the only source of employment for the people of Stradbroke Island. So, when it closed down in about 1947, my father worked at the Lazaret (leprosarium) on Peel Island just across the water from Dunwich. He remained working there until the sand mining started up on Stradbroke Island. At this stage our family moved from the Two Mile to Dunwich. My father worked for the mining in the carpenters’ shop until he retired and went to live at Southport.

Noel Brown

I went to school in Dunwich and when I left, I worked with Bonty Dickson, one of the personalities of Stradbroke and who later became its first Councillor. I worked with him on his oyster leases, then started boat building with him. One of the things I remember about Bonty was that he rode a three-wheeled bike.

Bonty Dickson’s store at Dunwich (photo courtesy Ray Cowie)

When the sand mines started up, I worked on the dredge on Main Beach. The dredge was used to pump the sand mix into the separating towers where the heavy mineral sands were separated from ordinary sand by centrifugal force. Then I helped put through the ropeway from Main Beach to Dunwich, via the Blue Lake and the 18 Mile Swamp. This ropeway (wire) was to transport the mineral sand in buckets across Stradbroke Island to Dunwich from where it was taken by barge to Brisbane and thence overseas.

The company mining the mineral sands then was called Tazi, which was located at Tazitown on the 18-mile swamp. This is now called Con Rutile. Now (1996) there are two sand companies, one at Dunwich (Con [Consolidated] Rutile) and the other at Amity Point.

 (Editor: Consolidated Rutile was a fixed mining operation on North Stradbroke Island with a workforce of up to 150 men housed in accommodation centered at Dunwich. The mineral concentrates were barged to Meeandah near Brisbane airport for separation into heavy mineral components.)

D9 Bulldozers hitched up to move a section of the plant on N.Stradbroke c.1976 (Photo courtesy Felix Fries)

Noel Brown, Southport, 1996

(Extract from Peter Ludlow’s book ‘Moreton Bay People 2012’ (now out of print)

(Editor: Sand mining ceased on Stradbroke Island in 2019).

Moreton Bay’s Frontier Islands – Stradbroke Island (Allan Gilmour)

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Amity Point, Moreton Bay, Stradbroke Island

My first association with Amity was as a Boy Scout when I was very young.  We used to visit Stradbroke for camps. There were only a couple of houses at Amity then – notably that of John Campbell and Bill Bacchus. Although they were no longer living there, a story persisted about Bill going for walks with his Foxie dog and a white goat called Snowie. They made an unusual sight.

Bill Bacchus outside his hut at Amity Point

I was at Straddie before there was a road built from Amity to Point Lookout, and the only access was by Campbell’s truck via the beach at low tide. About halfway to Point Lookout a survival hut had been built. It contained some tinned food and water for shipwreck survivors. However, some louts wrecked it. It was about 11 miles from Amity to Point Lookout and we had to carry with us all our gear and enough food to last us for the week of our stay.

There was no one living at Point Lookout then, but there was a story that cattle had once been grazed there. Once, when I was about 16 years old, I saw the gorge in a storm and our group was nearly washed off the rocks at its entrance by a freak wave. The water came right up to our chests and we only survived by holding on to each other. At New Year, there would always be a big bonfire at Point Lookout, and on one of these occasions 2 or 3 people were drowned. Their fate was less fortunate than mine.

Point Lookout’s North Gorge Looking East (photo courtesy of David Liu)

Near the lighthouse, there was a natural spring of fresh water and a hut had been constructed close by. A ship’s tank had been positioned there to collect the water for anyone’s use. Inside the hut, some unknown artist had painted directly onto the wooden wall a magnificent panorama looking from the Point. It was so good that I decided to bring a saw with me on my next visit and cut out the section of wall containing the painting. But someone else must have had the same idea because on my next visit, the painting had already been cut out and removed.

During the Great Depression in the 1920s, everyone used to have an enforced one-week off in every six so that more people could be employed. It was during my week off that I used to visit Amity. A couple of old crabbers used to take us to Amity. They were on the dole but this didn’t stop them collecting orders for up to 50 sand crabs at a time!

Allen Gilmour


October 2007.

(Extract from Peter Ludlow’s book ‘Moreton Bay People 2012’ (now out of print)

Moreton Bay Mysteries – 3 – Stradbroke Island’s Spanish galleon

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Spanish Galleon, Stradbroke Island

M

Spanish Galleon

In 2010, I interviewed Jennie Phillips of Southport about her discovering the remains of Moreton Bay’s legendary Spanish galleon. I recorded our conversation in my book ‘Moreton Bay People 2012’ (which is now out of print):

‘In about 1968/69, my husband, Bill, and I had been fishing in our boat at Jumpinpin with our two small children. On an impulse, we landed on North Stradbroke Island on the north bank of the bar, and decided to take a walk along the ocean beach. We also had a fishing mate, Peter, with us. The children being very young, Bill and I had to carry them, and so we had probably gone only about half a kilometre along the beach and were walking in the sand hills amongst the light undergrowth such as Pigweed, when Peter received what he thought was a bite on the foot. We all gathered round for a look at the wound (and a rest – the kids were getting heavy by that time), but found that Peter’s ‘bite’ was actually a puncture from a sharp object.

‘Naturally we searched amongst the dunes for the sharp object, and found an old square nail sticking up from a piece of weathered wood about 2 inches by 4 inches in width. The nail was green with verdigris, indicating that it may have been copper or brass. More surprising was that there were a lot of other pieces of wood protruding through the sand. It then became obvious from their distribution that that they were tips of the ribs of a wooden ship. They had all been burnt off from bushfires over time. 

‘We scratched further amongst the sand and then found a couple of metal coins, which from their appearance were either of Spanish or Portuguese origin. We could even make out part of a date 15??

‘Could this have been the legendary Spanish Galleon whose remains we had just stumbled upon?  If only we had a camera! 

‘We kept the coins and resolved to return in a few weeks time, armed with a camera to record our find for posterity. Unfortunately a cyclone hit the coast just after our visit, and when we were able to return to the spot, the elements had rearranged the dunes, and the sands had once more reclaimed their treasure. We still had the coins, though, which we placed in an old tin box with a lot of other coins and curios that we had collected over the years. Unfortunately, a ‘friend’ of ours took the collection along to a collector for a valuation, and returned to us empty handed with the news that the box and its contents were worthless. We suspect that he had gambled whatever he was paid for them.

‘And the Spanish coins? Their fate is unknown – swallowed up, like the Spanish galleon in the sands of time.’

***

Recently at our local Probus Club, one of our members, Graham, happened to mention that he, too, had seen the Spanish galleon. In about 1934, as a young lad, he had been fishing with his father in Swan Bay on the southern tip of North Stradbroke Island. They had then waded through swampland to the sand dunes on the eastern side of the island. There they came across a timber skeleton of a ship some 60 to 90 feet long. Only the wooden ribs remained. Its position seemed to corroborate that described by Jennie Phillips.

Swan Bay area of South Stradbroke Island (Google maps)

What a pity they didn’t have mobile phones with cameras back then.

Island of a Million Tears

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Dunwich Benevolent Asylum, Moreton Bay, Stradbroke Island

 

‘Island of a Million Tears’ – Artie Rentoul’s new book chronicling the history of the Dunwich Benevolent Asylum

Last night, I attended the launch of Artie Rentoul’s book ‘Island of a Million Tears’, a history of the Dunwich Benevolent Asylum 1866 – 1946. Redlands is fortunate to have a citizen such as Artie, for not only has he served them well as a builder and restorer of its historic buildings, but also as a preserver of its history. It was during his work on the former Benevolent Asylum’s Men’s Dining Room at Dunwich that Artie became intrigued with the Asylum’s 80-year history. After 5 years of painstaking work collecting material notably from the Queensland State Archives (all with a pencil and paper), Artie met up with another regular Archives researcher, Dr Jonathan Richards, a History Lecturer from the School of Humanities at Griffith University. Jonathan was instrumental in setting Artie on the path to producing this magnificent book ‘The Island of a Thousand Tear’. It was fitting that Dr Richards launched the book at last night’s event at the Redland Museum.

Australia lead the world in catering for its aged people when it introduced the Aged Pension, and the Dunwich Benevolent Asylum was the largest institution in Australia to cater for people who could not longer fend for themselves, be they aged, infirm, epileptics, or alcoholics.

‘Island of a Million Tears’ is a ‘must have’ for anyone interested in Queensland family history and in the plight of those needing State care. Currently it is available from the Redland Museum and the North Stradbroke Island History Museum. Price is just $28.