The Confessions of a BeachcomberBanfield, E. J. (Edmund James)
History
The Confessions of a Beachcomber
Banfield, E. J. (Edmund James)
Dunk Island (Qld.); Natural history -- Australia -- Queensland
From this remote and unheard of spot may, accordingly, be traced
association with a contemporary of Robert Walpole, of Pitt and Fox, of
Edmund Burke, of John Wilkes (of the NORTH BRITON), of the author of THE
LETTERS OF JUNIUS and of JOHN GILPIN, and many others of credit and
renown. The First Earl Sandwich of Hinchinbrook was the "my lord" of the
gossiping Pepys. Through him Dunk Island possesses another strand in the
bond with the immortals, and is ensured connection with remote posterity.
He gambled so passionately that he invented as a means of hasty
refreshment the immemorial "sandwich," that the fascination of basset,
ombre or quadrille should not be dispelled by the intrusion of a meal.
He, too, was the owner of Montagu House, behind which "every morning saw
steel glitter and blood flow," for the age was that of the duellist as
well as the gambler.
Rockingham Bay was so named in honour of the marquis of that title, the
wise Whig premier who held that while the British Parliament had an
undoubted right to tax the American colonies, the notorious Stamp Act was
unjust and impolitic, "sterile of revenue, and fertile of discontent!"
Cook and his day and generation passed, and then for many years history
is silent respecting Dunk Island. The original inhabitants remained in
undisturbed possession; nor do they seem to have had more than one
passing visitor until Lieutenant Jeffereys, of the armed transport
Kangaroo, on his passage from Sydney to Ceylon in 1815, communicated with
the natives on then unnamed Goold Island. Captain Philip P. King,
afterwards Rear-Admiral, who made in the cutter MERMAID a running survey
of these coasts between the year 1818 and 1822, and who was the first to
indicate that "Mount" Hinchinbrook was probably separated from the
mainland, arrived in Rockingham Bay on the 19th June 1818. He named and
landed on Goold Island, and sailing north on the 21st, anchored off
Timana, where he went ashore. "Dunk Island," he writes, "a little to the
northward, is larger and higher, and remarkable for its double-peaked
summit."
Those natives who are versed in the ancient history of the island, tell
of the time when all were amazed by the appearance of bags of flour,
boxes of tobacco, and cases of goods drifting ashore. None at the time
knew what flour was; only one boy had previously smoked, and the goods
were too mysterious to be tested. Many tried to eat flour direct from the
bag. The individual who had acquired the reputation of a smoker made
himself so sick that none other had the courage to imitate him, and the
tobacco and goods were thrown about playfully. In after years the
inhabitants were fond of relating how they had humbugged themselves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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