Dunk Island
Located in Biyaygiri and Djiru Country 6 kilometres off Queensland's east coast, across the water from South Mission Beach, 122 kilometres south of Cairns and 160 kilometres north-northwest of Townsville, Dunk Island (Warrgamay/Dyirbal: Coonanglebah) lies in the Family Islands National Park and the larger Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area.
James Cook named the tolerable high island the Endeavour sailed past on 8 June 1770 after George Montague-Dunk, a former First Lord of the Admiralty and 2nd Earl of Halifax.
John MacGillivray studied the island's fauna and flora while HMS Rattlesnake was anchored off the island for ten days in 1848 and described its natural features in the Narrative of the Voyage of HMS Rattlesnake (1852).
The island received a more detailed coverage after former journalist and senior editor of the Townsville Bulletin Edmund James Banfield and his wife retired to the island in 1897. Advised by his doctors that he had six months to live, Banfield survived another twenty-six years. Banfield followed a series of articles about life on the island under the pseudonym Rob Krusoe; he produced a series of books, including Confessions of a Beachcomber (1908), My Tropic Isle (1911) and Tropic Days (1918) that laid the foundations for the island's reputation as an exotic paradise.
Dunk's tourist era began after Captain Hugo Brassey bought the island in 1934. Banfield's bungalow was the centre of the resort that developed after 1936. An airstrip built to service a radar station on the island's highest point during World War II facilitated access to the resort, as it passed through a succession of owners who redeveloped and upgraded the resort's facilities through the second half of the 20th century.
An artists' colony on the island's southern side, established in 1974 by former Olympic wrestler Bruce Arthur, lasted until Cyclone Yasi (February 2011) destroyed everything Cyclone Larry had not wrecked in March 2006. The island and its resort facilities have remained largely unrepaired ever since.
