Recent Sightings
Historical
The Early Explorers and Settlers
First reference to this area was by James Cook (at this time he was only a Leiutenant - not a Captain) who sailed up the eastern side of Bribie Island on 17 May 1770, at the time making reference to the bay and naming the mountains Glass Mountain Peaks (Glass House Mountains).
Matthew Flinders sailed into Glass House Bay [ as named on Cook's charts ] on 14 July 1799 aboard the 29 ft sloop Norfolk. Aboard the ship with Flinders was an Aboriginal named Bongaree, born in the Broken Bay area of New South Wales. He accompanied Flinders on many voyages (including his circumnavigation of Australia from 1801 to 1803).
On 16 July 1799, Flinders took a boat ashore from the anchorage to the sandy point on the east side of the opening of what he named the Pumicestone River (from the alluvial pumicestone found along the shoreline).
As the small dory approached the shoreline some of the local Aboriginals were on the beach with their dogs so Flinders put Bongaree ashore first, and he went about exchanging his belt for kangaroo hide. Flinders then stepped ashore and offered a woollen cap as a gesture of good will but the locals wanted his big white skipper's hat made of filaments of the cabbage tree. When this was not offered they became restless and tried to remove his hat with a hooked stick. As this also did not work they became quite agitated and Flinders decided it was time to return to the Norfolk.
As they moved away from the shore the Aboriginals threw some driftwood and then one of them threw a spear. In retaliation for the throwing of the spear Flinders (after several attempts because his flint was wet) fired his musket and through more misunderstanding then anything else he shot one of them. This was the first Aboriginal blood spilt on what was later to be known as Queensland.
Flinders spent several days exploring the Moreton Bay area before returning to the Pumicestone River where he beached the Norfolk for repairs at an area known as White Patch. In his log Flinders also made reference to an encounter with a large creature with no dorsal fin which he first thought was a seal. So intrigued was Flinders he shot at it twice to try and catch it and then instructed Bongaree to spear it, to no avail. Of course today we know that creature would have been a Dugong. The Pumicestone Passage Marine Park is considered to be the smallest estuary in the world with a permanent Dugong population.
Following Mathew Flinders, two explorers entered the Pumicestone Passage in 1822. John Bingle was the first in the cutter Sally followed by William Edwardson in the cutter Snapper. From the records provided it was considered that Bingle went virtually all the way through the passage but did not discover the opening at the northern end.
The next Europeans to set foot on Bribie Island were three ticket-of-leave convicts from Sydney. They were Thomas Pamphlet, John Finnegan and Richard Parsons.
These convicts were shipwrecked in 1823 on Moreton Island and eventually found their way to Bribie Island where they spent quite some time with the local Aboriginals. Two of them were picked up by John Oxley later that year, with the third picked up the following year by Oxley. Following the explorers came the European settlers attracted to the waterway by the presence of oysters. The famous artist Ian Fairweather also lived as a recluse on Bribie Island for many years until he passed away in 1974.