Curtis Island
Offshore from Gladstone in Bayali country, Curtis Island takes its name from Port Curtis, which Matthew Flinders named after Vice Admiral Sir Roger Curtis — the commander of the British facilities at Cape Town — on 1 August 1802. Curtis had assisted with repairs to HMS Investigator on Flinders' outward voyage in October 1801. Earlier, on 25 May 1770, James Cook named the island's northern point — Cape Capricorn — due to its location on the Tropic of Capricorn.
Although most of the island, which is separated from the mainland by a 27-kilometre strait known as The Narrows, lies within protected areas — Curtis Island National Park or the Curtis Island Conservation Park on the seaward side and the Curtis Island State Forest on the landward side — Curtis Island has two settlements: Beachton in the island's northwestern corner and Southend at its southeastern extremity. An industrial area on the southwestern coast houses three plants processing liquefied natural gas and wharf facilities to export their output.
After gold was discovered at Canoona in 1858, Cape Capricorn became the initial location for a pilot station for inbound shipping seeking to negotiate the sand bars in the Fitzroy River estuary. The pilot station was relocated to Grassy Hill in 1864.
A site at Sea Hill, identified as a location for a quarantine station in 1865, became a temporary hospital for 15 cases of typhoid who arrived aboard the Countess Russell in July 1873 and five hundred Chinese during a smallpox outbreak in 1877. The quarantine station was relocated to Mackenzie Island in 1878 due to problems with mosquitoes and sandflies.
Calls for a lighthouse to guide ships into the Fitzroy River date back to 1864. Lighthouses were constructed at Sea Hill and Cape Capricorn in the early 1870s.
Overnight coastal steamers operating between Rockhampton and Gladstone passed through The Narrows at high tide until the two centres were linked by rail in December 1903.
Monte Cristo pastoral station — established in the 1860s by John Bonar Peter Hamilton 'Alphabetical' Ramsay and two partners — raised cattle and bred horses until the property was sold to be developed as a gas plant in 2014.
In an intriguing development at the start of the 1960s, Curtis Island was touted as a site to relocate the population of Nauru, which was expected to become uninhabitable after the island's phosphate reserves were exhausted. When the Australian government rejected their preferred option—independence rather than absorption into Australia's population—the islanders opted for independence on their depleted homeland.
Sources:
Mary Bevis, Keeping island's history alive, Courier Mail, 24 March 2012: https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/gladstone/keeping-islands-history-alive/news-story/c0e08ec402d378709275c72f54d4edfb
Glen Lewis, A History of the Ports of Queensland, p. 94.
Queensland Government: Curtis Island National Park and Conservation Park: https://parks.desi.qld.gov.au/parks/curtis-island/about
Wikipedia: Curtis Island, Queensland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Island,_Queensland
