The Hampshire Family Historian | Vol.49 No.1 | June 2022

Member’s article

– Stories of travel and adventure leading into the unknown

immigration agents also publicised the arrival of ships in the local press, and processed ships’ passenger lists and other records as well as statistical information for the government. Newspaper reports say that the family went to Maryborough where their daughter Mary opened a private school and after that she took an engagement to teach the children of Mr C. BOUEL in Cooktown. The next sighting of a member of the family in Cooktown in Queensland was when Mary Beatrice Phillips OXNAM , at the age of 21, married Robert WATSON on May 30th 1880. Robert was the son of Robert WATSON and Elizabeth nee FERRIER , and research shows that this family may have come from Aberdeen, Scotland. If the dates given are correct then Robert was born in 1836 and therefore a great deal older than Mary. Robert jnr. was in partnership with a man named Captain FULLER and they had set up as beche de mer fisherman in about 1879 on Lizard Island at the northern end of the Great Barrier Reef, some 58 miles north of Cooktown and 12 miles from the mainland. Beche de mer is another name for the sea cucumber which were prolific on the reef and much esteemed by the Chinese when they were boiled and smoked. In the 1880’s they contributed between £20,000 and £25,000 to the economy of Queensland. Lizard Island is a high, rocky island about 2½ miles long north to south and 2 miles wide. In 1770 James COOK climbed to the top of the island to see whether there was a channel in the reef that would take him to the mainland in order to repair Endeavour . It is still of considerable value for ships picking up the Great

Mary Watson portrait © Queensland Museum

Map – Cairns to Lizard

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