Mission Beach
Located in Djiru country on the Cassowary Coast, one hundred and ten kilometres south-east of Cairns and forty kilometres south of Innisfail, Mission Beach takes its name from the former Hull River Mission, established in the area now known as South Mission in 1914 to regulate Aboriginal employment and isolate the local Aborigines from opium. After a cyclone and tidal surge destroyed the mission in 1918, the inhabitants relocated to Palm Island.
The area's Djiru-speaking people were closely related to the Dyirbal, Girramay and Gulngay groups of the Tully and Murray River districts and built canoes and rafts to fish and travel across to the islands that dotted the coastline.
Contact with early navigators and surveyors, as well as beche-de-mer fishermen, goes back long before the first Europeans settled the area.
James Cook named nearby Dunk Island as he passed along the northern coast in June 1770. Captain Owen Stanley's HMS Rattlesnake spent ten days anchored off Dunk after disembarking Edmund Kennedy's ill-fated expedition in Rockingham Bay in 1848.
Timber-getters camped on the beaches and occasionally utilised Aboriginal labour in return for tobacco or tools. The local people were generally friendly, although, in 1872, the captain and some of the crew of the Maria, which was wrecked at Tam O'Shanter, were killed at what became known as Murdering Point.
Shortly afterwards, George Elphinstone Dalrymple's 1873 North Coast Expedition delivered an enthusiastic report about the area's agricultural possibilities. However, extensive coverage of the Maria story and subsequent reprisals was a significant deterrent to would-be settlers.
The first permanent settlers in the area were the Cutten brothers, who settled at Bingil Bay in 1882, growing mangoes, bananas, pineapples, coffee, citrus fruit and coconuts and manufacturing coffee. A timber mill took advantage of the area's silky oak and red cedar.
The Aboriginal settlement that gave Mission Beach its name had been located there because it was relatively inaccessible. Until the 1920s, there were no roads, with a track to Tully and bridle tracks between the beaches used when the tides prevented travel along the sand.
Although the Cardwell Shire Council and Tully Chamber of Commerce suggested a township should be surveyed in 1929, the lack of access roads meant the survey was not carried out until 1939. The first lots went on sale at Tully Court House at the end of the year.
Tully district cane cutters often camped at Mission Beach during the slack, supplementing their diets by hunting and fishing, and many of the camps they set up became permanent. Bingil Bay was, initially, the focus of activity but was gradually supplanted by Mission Beach thanks in part to the longest stretch of sandy beach in north Queensland, an active progress association, resort accommodation, and proximity to the resort on Dunk Island.
Severe tropical cyclones Larry (20 March 2006) and Yasi (3 February 2011), which crossed the coast north and south of Mission Beach, caused significant damage to properties and the surrounding rainforest, which took several years to recover.
Links to add:
Bingil Bay
Captain Owen Stanley
Cardwell Shire Council
Cassowary Coast
Cutten brothers
Dunk Island
Dyirbal
Djiru
Edmund Kennedy
Girramay
Gulngay
HMS Rattlesnake
Hull River Mission
Innisfail
Maria shipwreck
Murdering Point
Rockingham Bay
Severe Tropical Cyclone Larry
Tam O'Shanter
Tully
1873 Northeast Coast Expedition
