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

Member’s article

Barrier Reef opening here and it gets its name from H.M.S. Lizard and was for some time the rendezvous for ships surveying the Coral Sea. There are reports relating to this story to be found on Trove, the digitised Australian Newspaper site, from which extracts will be taken before Mary’s diary tells of the later events. Mary gave birth to their son Thomas Ferrier on June 3rd 1881 and by September Robert had left his wife and son on Lizard Island in the company of two Chinese, Ah Leong and Ah Sam, while he and his partner headed for Knights Island, a further 200 miles north to set up another processing station for beche de mer. It was reported that Mary had the company of a younger sister for a while but she left the island and went back to her parents in Rockhampton. The situation at the time between the native Aborigines and the colonisers was tense and it was reported that either Lizard Island was sacred ground or that they went to collect the sea cucumber and oil from the glands of lizards that lived on the island as medicinal cures for some ailment but do not seem to have ever lived there, but whatever the reason, they saw the non-native people on their island as trespassers. It also needs circumspection when reading the reports especially those that happened just after the event where news was being contradicted and by those that were taken up in the 1930’s and 1940’s when there were none left with first-hand knowledge of what happened to those on the island. The first indication that something may have happened on Lizard Island was when Captain

FRIER sailed into Cooktown on October 19th 1881 and reported as having seen bush fires when he passed the island on October 17th and on nearing the land had made signals but received no answer and observing that the door of the hut was open, with two natives about the place, he concluded the station had been broken up, and sailed on his course for Cooktown. THE FIRST SEARCH . The Cooktown Courier reported that on Thursday, 20 October 1881, the “Neptune” cutter in charge of some Chinamen, who returned from searching for their vessel in that locality, saw eight or ten canoes hauled up on the beach, about forty natives on the Lizard Island where a bush fire was raging. They reported the case to Mr. FAHEY, Sub-Collecter of Customs, Cooktown, who, with his usual promptitude, communicated at once with Inspector Fitzgerald, who consented to allow a police officer with five troopers to accompany him to the island. Arrangements were made to leave, but Lieut. IZATT , of H.M.S. Conflict , hearing of the affair, offered to convey the party, which left on the 21 October 1881, in the “Conflict”. Mr. FAHEY took with him one of the Customs boatmen, as well as the police, and expected to return on Sunday, the 23 October, 1881. In the meantime further intelligence is awaited in Cooktown with much anxiety. Apparently the search revealed nothing, as no word is to hand among the files of the tragedy regarding any report made by the party. THE VEIL IS LIFTED. The Cooktown Courier followed the story and report that on Sunday morning January 22nd 1882 a beche de mer schooner Kate Kearney arrived from the Northern fisheries, whom Captain BREMNER

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