History Bites: Ganyarra & Damarri

CairnsBlog brings you our weekly column, History Bites, a series of historical vignettes, pertinent to our unique and special region.

Produced by Dr Timothy Bottoms, a published and widely respected historian based in Cairns, North Queensland. He has spent ten years researching and writing City of the South Pacific, A History of Cairns.

History Bites is a series of unique and easily readable pieces for CairnsBlog readers.
Dr Bottoms is a specialist in Aboriginal and North Queensland history and has wide experience in writing, producing and presenting radio documentaries and music biographies.
The Bama (Rainforest Aboriginal people) of the future Cairns Harbour area, recall Bulurru (Religion/Law) Storywaters (or Dreamings) of the time of creation when the heroic being Damarri, strode from the mouth of Bana Bidagarra (‘waterway where bark canoes are used’, i.e., for freshwater fishing; now the coastal Barron River), across the Inlet to Bessie Point. Looking across the bay you can see ranges, and the point where it comes down to the water is Bessie Point.

This tip is the snout of Ganyarra (‘crocodile). Shortly after coming ashore, Damarri trod on a lawyer-vine thorn and began to bleed. This then became known as Bulmba Giyin.garra (‘home of the Lawyer vine’). Damarri decided to retrace his steps and return to the mouth of the Barron River. Ganyarra smelt the blood, followed him and attempted to bite Damarri’s leg off, but couldn’t because he didn’t have any teeth.

Damarri, being a daredevil, happy-go-lucky sort of fellow, laughed at Ganyarra and went and whittled some teeth from White Mangrove wood. When Ganyarra received this gift, he promptly turned around and bit off Damarri’s left leg, and from this Damarri instructed Ganyarra to go forth and hunt people, which explains why given the opportunity, crocodiles eat people.

This is an extract from: A History of Cairns – City of the South Pacific 1770-1995, by Dr Timothy Bottoms, PhD, Central Queensland University, 2002, Photo 2.1, p.72.You can contact Dr Bottoms via email. There is more information on his website.

History Bites: The Green Island Tragedies of 1873

CairnsBlog brings you our weekly column, History Bites, a series of historical vignettes, pertinent to our unique and special region.

Produced by Dr Timothy Bottoms, a published and widely respected historian based in Cairns, North Queensland. He has spent ten years researching and writing City of the South Pacific, A History of Cairns. History Bites is a series of unique and easily readable pieces for CairnsBlog readers.

Dr Bottoms is a specialist in Aboriginal and North Queensland history and has wide experience in writing, producing and presenting radio documentaries and music biographies.

Digirr Dabuuldji [‘Place of Nose Piercing], Gadja (White) name: Green Island.
This was one of the first places to be inhabited by Gadja in this district. The beche-de-mer fishermen used it as a preparation station. It was here that the so-called ‘Green island massacres’ occurred in 1873.
[Source: Historical Society of Cairns] The Green Island Tragedies of 1873

The cutter Good-Will set out from Townsville in March 1873 with three Manbarra men and two women who were ‘induced’ to join the cutter at the Palm Islands. Sub-Inspector Robert Arthur Johnstone’s noted that “the manner of ‘inducing’ the [A]boriginals to join the service is very like the old ‘press-gang’ business -‘You need not unless you like, but you must!’ I will not say it was in this case, but it was so in many others.”

The attack and slaying of William Rose and William White was probably premeditated and robbery may have been a motivating factor. It is thought that resentment had arisen because the Manbarra men were made to sleep on the cutter, while their women stayed ashore with the white men. This arrangement would have been more than sufficient cause for the attack on the fishermen.

Sub-Inspector Johnstone and his Native Mounted Police were instructed to investigate these murders and visited Green Island. They subsequently landed near Bessie Point in east Trinity Inlet, and an attempt to repel their landing by the Gungganydji created a response from the landing party which was described as a “proper warm reception”.

The troopers then took over the camp. Here they found the remains of the Palm Island Manbarra, and their acquisitions from the crew of the Good-Will. Three miles on, east from their first overnight camp they met a large number of people, but “we did not wait for them to attack us, as directly I saw they meant to fight we commenced at 200 yards [182m] range and when they saw the result of our first volley they cleared”. Within two days of landing, the Sub-Inspector and his troopers had managed to have two violent clashes with the Gungganydji, and yet no attempt was made to understand why they might have been hostile (trespassing?).

Within two months Dan Kelly, the sole survivor from the first killings on Green Island, was back with another group of fishermen. His party on the ketch, Eliza, was made up of another four white men and five Cleveland Bay Aboriginal men, three women and two boys. Another vessel the Florence Agnes, had three whites, a Melanesian and two Aboriginal men, one boy and one woman. It was this last group of Bama, who in the early hours of the 11 July 1873, killed the three whites and Melanesian. The reason for the killings was supposed to be that they “had refused to give them bread that night”.

It appears likely that the murderers perished in the turbulent seas that same night while trying to outswim their pursuers. Whatever the actual cause, the incident became the second ‘Green Island Massacre’ and bolstered the colonial mentality for ‘black treachery’

This is an extract from: A History of Cairns – City of the South Pacific 1770-1995, by Dr Timothy Bottoms, PhD, Central Queensland University, 2002, Photo 2.1, p.72.You can contact Dr Bottoms via email. There is more information on his website.

History Bites: Wangal Djungay or Double Island

CairnsBlog brings you our weekly column, History Bites, a series of historical vignettes, pertinent to our unique and special region.

Produced by Dr Timothy Bottoms, a published and widely respected historian based in Cairns, North Queensland. He has spent ten years researching and writing City of the South Pacific, A History of Cairns.
History Bites is a series of unique and easily readable pieces for CairnsBlog readers. Dr Bottoms is a specialist in Aboriginal and North Queensland history and has wide experience in writing, producing and presenting radio documentaries and music biographies.

Double Island or Wangal Djungay from the foreshore of Palm Cove, with ‘Scout Hat’ Island to the right. Haycock Island looks like a scout hat during low-tide when the base is exposed, as it then resembles the brim of a hat.

Captain Owen Stanley in H.M.S.Rattlesnake who “brought up finally under a small unnamed islet in Trinity Bay. This island, viewed from our anchorage on its north-west side, presents the appearance of a ridge connecting two rounded eminences….On the windward side there is a long gradual slope, covered with tall coarse grass…and an extensive mangrove bed runs out upon the reef in one place…stretching out to windward upwards of a mile, as far as a small rocky isle like a hay-cock.” 3 July 1848 [MacGillivray, 1852] HMS Rattlesnake, Bramble, Midget and Asp came together on the other side of Double Island for three quarters of an hour on Thursday morning 6 July 1848, some 159 years ago.

In 1848 Edmund Kennedy and his expedition landed near Hull Heads, in Djirru rainforest territory, slightly north of the future Cardwell, on their ill-fated journey. Captain Owen Stanley’s survey ships had assisted in getting Kennedy’s party ashore from the transport Tam-O’Shanter at Rockingham Bay. They sailed on in convoy, and began their survey of the inner Barrier Reef route north to the Torres Strait.

Early on Thursday morning of 22 June 1848, members of Stanley’s survey team landed at Fitzroy Island [Gububarra] and made their way to the highest peak. Three days later while still at Fitzroy they were observed by the Gungganydji of Mirra Warrigala [King Beach].

Eight days later the Rattlesnake anchored in the lee of Wangal Djungay [Double Island], sheltering from the south-east Trade-winds. Here the mother-ship was re-joined by the two smaller survey vessels, Asp and Midge. The next morning (Thursday, 6 July 1848), the large survey ship, H.M.S. Bramble, also ‘came-up’ to complete the convoy. Such a flotilla of European vessels could hardly have gone unnoticed by the coastal Djabugay (Yirrganydji), although no contact was recorded by either MacGillivray or Brierly while off Double Island.

Wangal Djungay, meaning place (home) where the fast-moving Storytime boomerang landed. It is also associated with Gudju-Gudju [the Rainbow Serpent] and and Budaadji [carpet snake] and is linked to the Mirra Warrigala Gungganydji of King Beach, Cape Grafton. There are also Storywaters relating to links with Tableland Yidinydji.

This is an extract from: A History of Cairns – City of the South Pacific 1770-1995, by Dr Timothy Bottoms, PhD, Central Queensland University, 2002, Photo 2.1, p.72.You can contact Dr Bottoms via email. There is more information on his website.

History Bites: Early Coastal Explorations Before Cook

CairnsBlog brings you our weekly column, History Bites, a series of historical vignettes, pertinent to our unique and special region.

Produced by Dr Timothy Bottoms, a published and widely respected historian based in Cairns, North Queensland. He has spent ten years researching and writing City of the South Pacific, A History of Cairns. History Bites is a series of unique and easily readable pieces for CairnsBlog readers.

Dr Bottoms is a specialist in Aboriginal and North Queensland history and has wide experience in writing, producing and presenting radio documentaries and music biographies.


After the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 brokered by Pope Alexander VI between Portugal and Spain, the world was divided into two spheres of influence; with the eastern coast of the Australian continent falling within the Spanish realm.

This possibly explains why so much secrecy surrounds early European exploration of the Australian coastline. Unfortunately the earthquake that destroyed the Portuguese archive of Casa da India in Lisbon, in 1755, also saw the destruction of many of the early Portuguese exploration maps of Cape York Peninsula and the Australian coastline.

It is thought that some maps were smuggled out of this archive and one became known as the Dauphin Map of 1536 which was used by Dutch navigators. K.G. McIntyre argues that the Dieppe map showed the harbour where Cooktown was later to be established, and that via the Englishman, Alexander Dalrymple’s composite map of explorations in the South Pacific, that Cook had access to this information by way of Joseph Banks to whom Dalrymple had given a copy. There are other claims that Spannish ships sailed the Australian eastern coastline (using the Portuguese maps), including Lope de Vega in 1595.

In 1605 Captain Pedro Fernandez de Quiros led a Spanish fleet from Callao, Peru to discover the great south land. On 14 May 1606 he landed on what he thought was a mainland continent (in the New Hebrides) and ‘took possession’ of all lands to the South Pole. Rather like Christopher Columbus, Quiros realized that he had not landed on the mainland, but an island.

Nevertheless he named the land: Austrialia del Espiritu Santo in honour of King Phillip III of Spain who came from the House of Austria. It appears that Matthew Flinders resurrected the term ‘Australia’ from Quiros’ original designation, which was then adopted by Governor Macquarie.

The Dutch East India Company sent Willem Jansz,in the Duyfken on a voyage down the west coast of Cape York Peninsula in 1606. They landed on the western most point of Cape York ‘Kunderatunna’, in the traditional lands of the Wik Nathan, and renamed the point ‘Cape Keerweer’ or ‘turn again’. Seventeen years later in 1623, Carstenz in the Pera and the Arnhem, sailed along the coast and captured two Thaayorre people, north of the main Mitchell River, then sailed around the coastline of the Gulf.

Japanese legend suggests that the Queensland coast was visited by Magamasa Yamada in 1626 and by Znaiza Gohei in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, however there is no specific record of this having occurred.

This is an extract from: A History of Cairns – City of the South Pacific 1770-1995, by Dr Timothy Bottoms, PhD, Central Queensland University, 2002, Photo 2.1, p.72.You can contact Dr Bottoms via email. There is more information on his website.

History Bites: Cape Grafton and Philip Parker King’s sketch of 1821

CairnsBlog brings you our weekly column, History Bites, a series of historical vignettes, pertinent to our unique and special region.

Produced by Dr Timothy Bottoms, a published and widely respected historian based in Cairns, North Queensland. He has spent ten years researching and writing City of the South Pacific, A History of Cairns.

History Bites is a series of unique and easily readable pieces for CairnsBlog readers. Dr Bottoms is a specialist in Aboriginal and North Queensland history and has wide experience in writing, producing and presenting radio documentaries and music biographies.

Same view as drawn by King in 1821 [John Oxley Library, Neg.No.185931] in 2001 of the eastern side of Cape Grafton, looking S.S-E (taken from latitude 16° 51.12 South, longitude 145° 54.51 East). Cunningham (botanist with King’s expedition) landed in south Mission Bay to the far right of Djilibirri [Cape Grafton].

Philip Parker King in 1821 drew a Sketch of Cape Grafton [the eastern side of its North Point, when looking South South-East]. His eldest son added the erroneous ‘Saddle Hill’, ‘Cairns’ and ‘1817’ date on the 1890s publication.

Phillip Parker King first visited Fitzroy Island in 1819, then two years later on another voyage, Cape Grafton itself. The son obviously misidentified his father’s sketch as the South Point of Cape Grafton Range, ironically now known as ‘King’s Point’ with its adjacent Wide Bay as ‘King Beach’ [1].

Consequently the son’s misidentification had him looking N-W, which required the left background to be today’s Kuranda Range with its Saddle Hill – when, if viewed correctly S.S-E from the North Point, the same background is actually Fitzroy Island. Allan Cunningham, Monday 18th June 1821, [2] recorded that:-

• The morning was fine, and calm, and moderately warm, our Thermer. Standing at 74 [23.5º C] at 9 [a.m.]…I landed with our Surgeon upon a small Sandy beach in the Bay, with an Intention of returning again on-board at noon, agreeable to Mr.King’s wish, who intended to weigh towards … the Aftn. Or even Earlier, as the wind might be favourable. Some Narrow shaded thickets, the boundary of the beach, which (from the darkness of the recesses) appearing at once interesting, invited me to Explore…
  
  We saw none of the Aborigines altho’ very recent traces were observed of them, both temporary, as well as more substantial Huts were seen by us, near the beach, the latter being well thatch’d, with leaves of the Calamus of which likewise some of their baskets were constructed.
  
  Quantities of burnt Shells were strew’d around their fires, the remains of their mussle or cocklefeasts, and a Canoe form’d from the stem of a Tree 12 feet long, with an outrigger and paddles, was found, hauled up among the Mangroves, - a Fishing line and hook made by grinding a shell down, was taken from beneath a Hut.
  

This is an extract from: A History of Cairns – City of the South Pacific 1770-1995, by Dr Timothy Bottoms, PhD, Central Queensland University, 2002, Photo 2.1, p.72.You can contact Dr Bottoms via email. There is more information on his website.

FOOTNOTES: [1] King, Philip Gidley (1817-1904), Comments on Cook’s Log (H.M.S. Endeavour, 1770) with extracts, charts, and Sketches, G.S. Chapman, Govt . Printer, Sydney, 1891.[2] Information in Cunningham’s diary has been sequentially re-arranged, unlike the original. See Allan Cunningham’s Journal, The John Oxley Library, Microfilm A4-2.

History Bites: The 1872 Wreck of the Maria

CairnsBlog brings you our weekly column, History Bites, a series of historical vignettes, pertinent to our unique and special region.

Produced by Dr Timothy Bottoms, a published and widely respected historian based in Cairns, North Queensland. He has spent ten years researching and writing City of the South Pacific, A History of Cairns.

Dr Bottoms is a specialist in Aboriginal and North Queensland history and has wide experience in writing, producing and presenting radio documentaries and music biographies.


In 1870 the telegraph was extended to Cardwell, 50 kilometres east of the newly found Etheridge goldfield. This enabled more effective communication with the south and helped in relaying the news of the wreck of the Maria on Bramble Reef, east of Hinchinbrook Island on 26 February 1872 to Brisbane and Sydney. The subsequent search party was sent from Sydney on the Governor Blackhall.

There were 75 men on board the brig Maria, bound for New Guinea. From the wreck, thirteen men were on a large raft, twelve on a small raft and an unknown number on two of the ship's boats, one of which carried the Captain. Loos lists fourteen of the survivors as having been killed by the Bama. Two survivors from the ship's boats made their way to Cardwell and raised the alarm. They had been attacked near Tam O'Shanter Point and had seen the Captain and one other killed. These were probably the Dyirbal speaking Djiru.

To the north, the larger raft grounded between the Johnstone River and Cooper Point. Five drowned and the remaining eight were aided by presumably members of the Wanjuru. The second, smaller raft, with twelve originally on board, came ashore to the south of the Johnstone River, in Dyirbal speaking, Mamu territory. It is not known how many drowned, but six bodies were found, and it was dramatically claimed that "all but one have been most barbarously murdered by the blacks".

One unfortunate ramification of this tragedy was that the indigenous inhabitants were cast in a negative light, despite reports to the contrary by one group of survivors that “the little fellows were very good to us, generally bringing us half of what they had.” Thus, while some of the survivors were helped by a local clan near Cooper Point, others appear to have breached etiquette with a people of a different clan further south and were killed.

A retribution party set off from Cardwell and massacred many Djirru people, on the coast opposite Dunk Island. Captain Morseby of HMS Basilisk found his involvement in this affair, even as carrier of the mercenaries, particularly distasteful when he wrote that “several unfortunate blacks were shot down by the native troopers, who showed an unrestrained ferocity that disgusted our [Royal Navy] officers”.

Charles Heydon who was on the Governor Blackhall “had opportunities of becoming acquainted with the state of public opinion in North Queensland with regard to blacks. I heard white men talk openly of the share they had taken in slaughtering whole camps, not only of men, but women and children.”

• This is an extract from: A History of Cairns – City of the South Pacific 1770-1995, by Dr Timothy Bottoms, PhD. You can contact Dr Bottoms via email. There is more information on his website.

History Bites: The Jardines at the Mitchell River 1864

CairnsBlog brings you our weekly column, History Bites, a series of historical vignettes, pertinent to our unique and special region.

Produced by Dr Timothy Bottoms, a published and widely respected historian based in Cairns, North Queensland. He has spent ten years researching and writing City of the South Pacific, A History of Cairns.

History Bites is a series of unique and easily readable pieces for CairnsBlog readers.
Dr Bottoms is a specialist in Aboriginal and North Queensland history and has wide experience in writing, producing and presenting radio documentaries and music biographies.




From May 1864 the Jardine brothers and their party of eight drove a herd of cattle from Rockhampton up the west coast of Cape York to join their father in the newly established Somerset at the tip of the peninsula.

Over the ten months that the expedition took they were responsible for killing at least forty-two Aboriginal men.

Their violent aggression resulted in what Aboriginal people of Kowanyama recall as the ‘Massacre of the Mitchell River’, which the brothers grandly portrayed as a ‘battle’ [Byerley, 1867]. Nine ‘natives’ were killed north of the Nassau River on December 16, 1864.

Over 31 were killed when the Jardines came across a gathering of some 70 to 80 men, probably on the Alice River, and quite likely participating in ceremony:

• “The natives at first stood up courageously, but…they got huddled in a heap, in, and at the margin of the water, when ten carbines poured volley after volley into them from all directions, killing and wounding with every shot with very little return…”
  
  Fifty-nine rounds were expended, so that it is not inconceivable that more men were killed or died from their wounds [18 December 1864].

On December 28, 1864, on the Kendall Creek ‘some’ may conservatively equate with two men being killed.

The irony is that they are described as having “paid for their gratuitious [sic] attack” when the Jardines acknowledge that it was the whites who advanced on the Aboriginal men “who waited for the whites, close to a mangrove scrub, till they [the whites] got within sixty yards of them, when they began throwing spears.

They were answered with Terry’s breech-loaders…” David Day has even suggested that: “The party shot perhaps as many as 72 Aborigines in 11 separate incidents without incurring a single casualty themselves.” [Day, 1997:169]

Today there are big gaps in the genealogies of the clans of the top end groups - Okunjen, Uwkangand and Olkol as well as visiting neighbouring clans (including amongst others, the Awbakhn & Oyaan, Kokomenjena [Yir Yiront] and Kokobera), whose territory it was that the Jardines trespassed upon.

• This is an extract from: A History of Cairns – City of the South Pacific 1770-1995, by Dr Timothy Bottoms, PhD, Central Queensland University, 2002, Photo 2.1, p.72.You can contact Dr Bottoms via email. There is more information on his website.

History Bites: Why Cook Drew his Map of Cape Grafton this way

History Bites is a series of unique and easily readable pieces for CairnsBlog readers, of historical vignettes, pertinent to our unique and special region.

It is bought to you by Dr Bottoms, a specialist in Aboriginal and North Queensland history who has wide experience in writing, producing and presenting radio documentaries and music biographies.

Dr Timothy Bottoms is a published and widely respected historian, based in Cairns, North Queensland. He has spent ten years researching and writing City of the South Pacific, A History of Cairns.


Extract from the map Terra Australis by Matthew Flinders, Commander of H.M. Sloop Investigator (1802-1803, East Coast – Sheet V) showing Captain Cook’s route.

Flinders noted on the map: “The Coast, Reefs &c. in this sheet are mostly copied from Capt. Cook’s charts and journals, the longitudes being made conformable to my timekeepers in the Investigator & Cumberland.” [North & compass added]

• Cook drew a ‘working-chart’ on the evening of Sunday 10th June 1770 when the Endeavour sailed north at midnight from the peninsula that he called ‘Cape Grafton’ (unplotted course 315° Magnetic).
  
  Actually, Cook as a mariner, recorded that it was Saturday 9th June, but a landsman would say it was Sunday 10th June 1770. Later it seems he mistook ‘True-North’, drawn from the anchorage on his working chart as the ship’s track, which was not surprising, considering the travails that were to follow. Thus Cook mis-fitted ‘True-North’ as his ‘315° Magnetic track’, and unwittingly pivoted his working chart 39° anti-clockwise: his Cape Grafton (and Fitzroy Island) now ‘stood upright’!
  
  Re-checking observed angles, Cook correctly aligned latitudinally Mission Bay’s outermost capes, and also, inadvertently included some distortions. Cook’s finished chart, therefore, was able to create a ‘phantom headland’ facing Green Island, which placed (today’s) Cape Grafton ‘inside’ Mission Bay.
  
  Within 24 hours of leaving Cape Grafton, the Endeavour had sailed past the northern tip of Trinity Bay, the headland which Cook called Cape Tribulation “because here began all our troubles”.
  
  They were grounded for 23 hours on a reef that was later named after the ship. Ingeniously they managed to re-float the Endeavour and five days later, sailed into a river estuary (which was also named after their ship) where they beached the ship (on 22 June 1770) for repairs. By 6 July 1770, the Endeavour was re-floated and re-corked by 28 July, but it took until Friday 3 August for them to get over the bar at the river mouth and be on their way. It was here that the first contact and interaction with indigenous Australians took place with the Guugu Yimithirr.
  
  It was from this interaction that the word ‘kangaroo’ (from ‘Gangurru’) came into use in the English language. Nineteen days (22 August 1770) later Cook landed on what became Possession Island and claimed Australia for the British Crown. 103 years later, where Cook and his crew had repaired the Endeavour, the township of Cooktown (1873) was established to service the Palmer River Goldfield.

You can contact Dr Bottoms via email. There is more information on his website.

History Bites: Earliest Known Drawing of Djarrugan or Walsh’s Pyramid

CairnsBlog is delighted to bring you a new weekly column, we're calling History Bites, a series of historical vignettes, pertinent to our unique and special region.

Dr Timothy Bottoms is a published and widely respected historian, based in Cairns, North Queensland. He has spent ten years researching and writing City of the South Pacific, A History of Cairns.

History Bites will be a series of unique and easily readable pieces for CairnsBlog readers.

Dr Bottoms is a specialist in Aboriginal and North Queensland history and has wide experience in writing, producing and presenting radio documentaries and music biographies.

[From: The Illustrated Australian News, 29 November 1876]

This is Trinity Bay, North Queensland, depicted in 1876.

On 29 November 1876, The Illustrated Australian News reported....

• “The view is taken from the deck of the of the A.S.N. Company’s steamer Porpoise, on the occasion of the exploring expedition to Trinity Bay, for the purpose of discovering a road to the Hodgkinson from the harbor [sic].
  
  The sketch represents Mount Walsh and the Bellenden Kerr [sic], as seen from the steamer’s anchorage, about ten miles [16 kms] from the entrance to the river, and tow or three miles [3-5 kms] from the head of navigation.
  
  The course of the river up to this point, is nearly parallel with a range of mountains dividing Trinity Inlet from the Mulgrave River on the eastern side, and a shorter and more broken range immediately on the western bank.
  
  The conical mountain is named after the hon. The late speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Queensland, and is almost due south from the entrance to the river, forming a striking land mark with the Bellenden-Kerr [sic] ranges, the highest mountains in northern Queensland, in the background.
  
  The river, completely sheltered by the eastern ranges already described, and of which Cape Grafton forms the extreme point, is for the first seven miles [11 kms] a noble sheet of water fully 600 yards [540m] in width, with an average depth of six or seven fathoms, and being almost straight in its course, the eye is delighted with the above picturesque view immediately on entering the harbor [sic] from seaward.
  
  The landing places are easily approachable from the uniform depth of water from bank to bank. The rise and fall of the tide is here about 12 ft [3.6m].”

This appears to be one of the earliest drawings that has survived of Djarrugan or Walsh’s Pyramid.

The artist has taken some liberties in his version of this prominent feature. He has given the impression that there is an expanse of water running to the base of the conical-shaped hill.

Similarly, the writer fails to mention that there are some 14 miles or 22.5 kms of land between Trinity Inlet and the Mulgrave River to the south, which skirts the base of Djarrugan.

• This is an extract from: A History of Cairns – City of the South Pacific 1770-1995, by Dr Timothy Bottoms, PhD, Central Queensland University, 2002, Photo 2.1, p.72.
  
  You can contact Dr Bottoms via email. There is more information on his website.

New regular column: History Bites

Over the next couple of months, I will be presenting a series of historical vignettes, pertinent to our region.

Local historian Dr Timothy Bottoms, who spent ten years researching and writing City of the South Pacific, a History of Cairns, has prepared a series of unique and easily readable pieces for readers of CairnsBlog.

Bottoms is a specialist in Aboriginal and North Queensland history and has wide experience in writing, producing and presenting radio documentaries and music biographies.

"I'm particularly interested in popularising history," Tim Bottoms says. "I'm delighted to share my stories with CairnsBlog and the large audience it serves."

"I thought that it was going to be a typically boring history book. However, as I read it, I quickly changed my mind," former Federal member for Leichhardt Warren Entsch, says of Bottoms' History of Cairns work.

"It is certainly a magnificent effort and I was most impressed with the book, finding it very well researched and entertaining…I was particularly impressed with the way Timothy married up all the people involved in our history and brought them to life."

There could be very few readers who could not find some area of compelling interest in the [History of Cairns]," Dr Helen Gregory, Adjunct Professor of History at the University of Queensland says. "Most will be fascinated by it all. It is likely to become a ‘classic' in Queensland history writing, and has the ability to find a wide readership."

Dr Bottoms recently presented a keynote speech to the Q150 conference in Brisbane.

CairnsBlog "History Bites" will be published weekly, commencing this Friday.