Shoalwater Bay
Shoalwater Bay, around 120 kilometres north of Rockhampton,is a noted dugong habitat within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, bounded by the Torilla Peninsula to the west and the Warginburra Peninsula and Leicester and Townshend islands to the east.
James Cook named the southeastern section of what he labelled as the Bay of Inlets — extending from Cape Palmerston to Cape Townshend — Shoalwater Bay due to the bay's numerous sandbanks. Matthew Flinders conducted a more detailed investigation of the area in 1802, landing on Akens Island and exploring the head of the bay.
After European settlers arrived in the area in 1858, the area around the bay had been divided into four pastoral holdings — Tilpal, Raspberry Creek, The Peninsula and Torilla — by the early 1860s. The process of settlement, with the inevitable conflict over resources vital to the new arrivals and the Darumbal people, was accompanied by the usual wave of resistance and reprisal, with several well-documented massacres. The town of Stanage on the Torilla holding, established by the Rogers family in the early 1870s, was named after their hometown.
The bay and much of the surrounding land — 4,545 square kilometres, including the Warginburra Peninsula, the Torilla Peninsula east of the Stanage Bay Road, Townshend and Leicester Islands, and a sizeable section of the bay's hinterland north of Byfield — have been a military training area for the Australian Defence Forces since 1966.
Missing links:
Great Barrier Reef Marine Park
Warginburra Peninsula
Leicester Island
Townshend island
Bay of Inlets
Cape Townshend
Akens Island
Tilpal Station
Raspberry Creek Station
The Peninsula Station
Torilla Station
Stanage
Rogers family
Stanage Bay Roa
Byfield
