While the earlier fortunes and location of the Aboriginal settlement shifted, another settlement was being consolidated on Fraser Island. One white family, the Dickens (in partnership with a long term Maryborough resident, Harry Aldridge), took arab and draught horses and cattle to commence a run on the island in 1878. The run comprising some 25 square miles on the eastern side of the island, was named Grouyeah on the Lands Department maps but it was better known as the Fraser Island Run.

taken from the chapter"Fraser Island Run"

George and Mary Dicken. photo compliments Mrs Alice Bertram

Circa 1868, showing european onlooker.
Courtesy of John Oxley Library

steam loco 'Doris' stops to take water. Photo courtesy of the late Gordon Ponting

'Bully the brumby helps round up his mates.
Bert Roots rides Bill Geissler's horse.
Photo compliments W & L Geissler.
Logging affected up to .3% of landmass per annum,
tourism affects up 100% of the land mass.

Obviously, Andrew Petrie was not aware of Captain William Lawrence Edwardson's trip to the Fraser Island area in 1822 and was therefore not able to refer to the map that had been produced noting in particular 'Good land with good timber' on the southern end. This means that those who thought that Andrew Petrie first discovered the timber on Fraser Island might have to marginally reset their thinking.

When Andrew Petrie returned from his expedition in 1842 he made enthusiastic accounts of Fraser Island timber. Such accounts inspired many men who saw great opportunities for exploitation of this great natural resource. But Fraser Island and the area around what is now Maryborough and Hervey Bay was remote. To set up a viable timber industry would require pioneering a whole new system of transportation and the introduction of machinery and technology.

taken from the chapter "Mighty Renewable Timber Resource-Mighty Sad End"

Breaksea Spit, named by Captain James Cook in May 1770, had, by the end of the nineteenth century, become notorious as the greatest single hazard to seafarers on the eastern coast of Australia. This hard sand and dead coral spit runs some 45 kilometers, above and below water, to within 30 kilometers of Lady Elliott Island, the southernmost island in the Great Barrier Reef.

The Colonial government of Queensland in 1862 made its first moves to provide better management of ports and harbours and marine traffic movement along the coast of Queensland.

However two valuable years crept by before the Legislative Assembly moved on the 25th May 1864 that a select committee of six persons be appointed to inquire into the state of the harbours and rivers of the colony. During a dozen meetings the committee took evidence and submissions from a wide variety of mariners, and in its final report recommended the establishment of lighthouses at four sites: Cape Capricorn on Curtis Island, Bustard Head, Sandy Cape and Point Danger or Cape Byron.

taken from the chaper "The Moha-Moha Monster and Titillating Tall Tales"

Sandy Cape Lighthouse c.1914. Photo courtesy Mrs M.M.Pilling in the collection of the author

According to the Earl of Liverpool, The Maheno, one of two hospital ships provided by New Zealand during the First World War, carried some 16,000 wounded men from the battlefields to the safety of England, including 1,141 on her first crossing.

T.S.Maheno in 1984,
photo courtesy of Dulcie Cook

'Banjo' Henry Owen 1936 at Happy Valley Resort. Photo courtesy of Dulcie Cook.

'Warry's Huts,' the beginnings of Happy Valley township, c.1934. Photo courtesy Chas and Ruby Mathison from a collection held by Glenda Wilkin.

Islands attract and breed independent souls and Fraser has had its share of recluses, eccenttircs, men of rare physical prowess, idealists and tellers of tales. Some tellers of tales have survived long enough to tell us about themselves and their companions.

Many of the old timbergetters remember Nuggett (the aboriginal who worked for Aldridge and Dicken); he was especially loved by the children who lived on the island, for he was a born comedian. Nugget danced and sang his way through life, imbued with an inextinguishable happiness and optimism.

The only time Nugget is known to have lost his good humour was when he became involved in an argument with another Aboriginal over a lubra. It culminated in a fight with nulla nullas. Nugget lost the fight and the lubra, but gained an unenviable crop of bumps on the head.

taken from the chapter "As Time Goes By in the Sweet By and Bye"