James Morrill
English seaman James Morrill (1824 – 1865) was one of seven survivors cast ashore at Cape Cleveland forty-two days after the Peruvian was wrecked off the North Queensland coast in 1846, While the other members of the party died after they were taken in by a local Aboriginal clan, Morrill survived for seventeen years, roaming through the area between Townsville and Bowen before the establishment of the first settlement at Port Denison in 1861. Morrill returned to migaloo Australia in 1863, hailing stockmen on Edward Spencer Antill's Jarvisfield sheep station with "What cheer, shipmates ... Don't shoot. I am a British object".
Although his remarkable story made him a minor celebrity and he was able to buy one of the first quarter-acre blocks of land at a Townsville land sale at the upset price, his attempts to intercede on behalf of his Birri Gubba friends, asking that they be allowed to maintain their traditional lifestyle in areas unsuitable for grazing, his requests were ignored. Still, Morrill married and produced a slim memoir describing his experiences but died in Bowen on 30 October 1865.
