The South Wellesley Islands is an island group and

locality Locality may refer to: * Locality, a historical named location or place in Canada * Locality (association), an association of community regeneration organizations in England * Locality (linguistics) * Locality (settlement) * Suburbs and localitie ...

in the

Gulf of Carpentaria The Gulf of Carpentaria is a sea off the northern coast of Australia. It is enclosed on three sides by northern Australia and bounded on the north by the eastern Arafura Sea, which separates Australia and New Guinea. The northern boundary ...

within the Shire of Mornington,

Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...

, Australia. The group is separate from the

Wellesley Islands The Wellesley Islands, also known as the North Wellesley Islands, is a group of islands off the coast of Far North Queensland, Australia, in the Gulf of Carpentaria. It is a locality within the Shire of Mornington local government area. The t ...

. Bentinck Island is the only one known to have been inhabited in the past. In the , South Wellesley Islands had "no people or a very low population".

Geography

The islands, which lie in the Shire of Mornington, are (west to east): * Allen Island * Horseshoe Island * Albinia Island * Bentinck Island * Fowler Island *

Sweers Island Sweers Island is an island in the South Wellesley Islands in the Gulf of Carpentaria, Queensland, Australia. Most of the island is Aboriginal Freehold Land, held in trust by the Kaiadilt Aboriginal Land Trust (KALT) on behalf of the tradition ...

History

Kayardild language Kayardild is a moribund Tangkic language spoken by 43 of the Kaiadilt on the South Wellesley Islands, north west Queensland, Australia. Other members of the family include Yangkaal (spoken by the Yangkaal people), Lardil, and Yukulta (Gan ...

(also known as Kaiadilt, the name of the people of Bentinck Island, also spelt Gayadilta) is a language of the

. The Kayardild language region includes the landscape within the local government boundaries of the

Mornington Shire Council The Shire of Mornington is a local government area in northwestern Queensland, Australia. The shire covers the Wellesley Islands, which includes Mornington Island; the South Wellesley Islands; Bountiful Islands; and West Wellesley / Forsyth ...

. Explorer

Matthew Flinders Captain (Royal Navy), Captain Matthew Flinders (16 March 1774 – 19 July 1814) was a British Royal Navy officer, navigator and cartographer who led the first littoral zone, inshore circumnavigate, circumnavigation of mainland Australia, then ...

charted the islands in 1802 and assigned European names to Bentinck Island, the island group (Wellesley) and the largest island (

Mornington Island Mornington Island, also known as Kunhanhaa, is an island in the Gulf of Carpentaria in the Shire of Mornington, Queensland, Australia. It is the northernmost and, at , the largest of 22 islands that form the Wellesley Islands group. The larg ...

) in honour of

Lord William Bentinck Lieutenant-general (United Kingdom), Lieutenant General Lord William Henry Cavendish-Bentinck (14 September 177417 June 1839), known as Lord William Bentinck, was a British military commander and politician who served as the governor of the Be ...

, who was then

Governor of Madras This is a list of the governors, agents, and presidents of colonial Madras, initially of the English East India Company, up to the end of British colonial rule in 1947. English Agents In 1639, the grant of Madras to the English was finalized ...

, India, and Richard Wellesley, 2nd Earl of Mornington and

Governor-General of Bengal The governor-general of India (1833 to 1950, from 1858 to 1947 the viceroy and governor-general of India, commonly shortened to viceroy of India) was the representative of the monarch of the United Kingdom in their capacity as the emperor o ...

. In 1803, the two men had acted as interceded on Flinders' behalf to persuade the French to release Flinders after he had been imprisoned by them on

Mauritius Mauritius, officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island country in the Indian Ocean, about off the southeastern coast of East Africa, east of Madagascar. It includes the main island (also called Mauritius), as well as Rodrigues, Ag ...

. Sometime around 1916, a man remembered only as McKenzie came to Bentinck Island and set up a sheep run, basing himself on a site at the mouth of the Kurumnbali estuary. He would ride over the island, accompanied by a pack of dogs, and shoot any Kaiadilt man who came within sight; in local memory, he murdered at least 11 people. He also kidnapped and raped native girls. He then moved to Sweers Island, and set up a lime kiln there. The Kaiadilt managed to return to Sweers only on McKenzie's departure. The massacre was only recorded by researchers in the 1980s.

was declared an

Aboriginal reserve An Aboriginal reserve, also called simply reserve, was a government-sanctioned settlement for Aboriginal Australians, created under various state and federal legislation. Along with missions and other institutions, they were used from the 19th ...

in 1934. After a cyclonic tidal surge swept the area in 1948, which followed fast on the severe drought that struck in 1946, the Kaiadilt were transferred by missionaries and the

Queensland Government The Queensland Government is the state government of Queensland, Australia, a Parliament, parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Government is formed by the party or coalition that has gained a majority in the Queensland Legislative Assembly, ...

, the largest island in the group. The uprooting effectively set in place the process of the destruction of both Kaiadilt culture and language since all children were restricted to dormitories, away from their parents and kin, and the transmission of the language and lore was lost. On Mornington Island they lived in a separate zone, in beach humpies facing Bentinck Island. They were looked down on by the Indigenous

Lardil people The Lardil people, who prefer to be known as (meaning people of Kunhanhaa, the traditional name for Mornington Island), are an Aboriginal Australian people and the traditional custodians of Mornington Island in the Wellesley Islands chain in t ...

of Mornington Island, who denied them access to the fishing grounds. Conditions were so severe that for several years all children were stillborn, creating a gap in the generations. File:Bentinck_Island_04.jpg, Southern part of Bentinck Island and Albinia Island File:Bentinck_Island_01.jpg, Bentinck Island with the Australian continent in the background File:Sweers_Island_01.jpg, the small Fowler Island is located between Seers Island and Bentinck Island File:Locator_map_of_Bentinck_Island.jpg, Location of Bentinck Island File:Sweers Island 02.jpg, Southern part of Sweers Island

Demographics

In the , South Wellesley Islands had "no people or a very low population". In the , South Wellesley Islands had "no people or a very low population".

References

External links

{{Shire of Mornington Islands of Queensland North West Queensland Gulf of Carpentaria Shire of Mornington (Queensland) Massacres of ethnic groups Localities in Queensland

Geography

History

Demographics

See also

References

External links