Blue Lake National park lies in Quandamooka territory on Straddie / Minjerribah

The scrubs are gone, the hunting and the laughter.
The eagle is gone, the emu and the kangaroo are gone from this place.
The bora ring is gone.
The corroboree is gone.
And we are going.


(from a poem by Kath Walker / Oodgeroo Noonuccal from her first book, "We are Going" published in 1964.)

We are anchored off the northern end of North Stradbroke Island, Straddie to the locals and Minjerribah to its traditional owners, the Quandamooka people. The normally hot, sticky, stormy Brisbane summer weather has gone away for the moment, perhaps for a holiday (!) We are getting day after day of dry, sunny skies and light to moderate easterlies, perfect for anchoring on the east side of Moreton Bay or off the sheltered west coast of the big sand islands like Straddie.

Minjerribah is now mostly owned by what is left of the Quandamooka Aboriginal people, after a landmark Native Title decision in 2011 which saw most of North Stradbroke returned to their stewardship, as well as the southern end of Moreton to the north, Peel Island to the west and a fair bit of southern Moreton Bay. The Quandamooka people once roamed right through this area and on the mainland from the Logan River through to the Brisbane River. No doubt there was plenty of tucker to eat and life was generally easy before European colonisation, albeit with an average life expectancy about half the present day one!

Colonisation followed a familiar pattern as elsewhere. Despite early reports that the island's Quandamooka people were generous and hospitable to the ragbag of foreign stragglers who landed one way or another on Straddie's shores, they soon lost all of their land and were reduced in numbers by disease, the sorry remainder herded into a reservation at Myora, where there is a natural freshwater spring. If it wasn't for activism in the 60s, that would probably have been the end of the story. One of the Quandamookas, Kath Walker, became a well known poet and author and campaigned for Aboriginal rights at a time when the first Australians were denied citizenship in a land they had occupied for 50,000 years. She changed her name in disgust at the approach successive federal and state governments were dealing with Aboriginal affairs to Oodgeroo Noonuccal, a Quandamooka name. She was instrumental in helping pave the way for the 1967 referendum which decisively confirmed Australian citizenship for all of its first people, but died before her island's Native Title determination came to fruition.

Today, Straddie is still very much a modern European Australian entity. Hundreds of SUVs and other vehicles pour off the car ferry from Cleveland every day, exploring the 4WD tracks, the Brown and Blue lakes and ocean side beaches. Dunwich, Amity and Point Lookout, the island's three settlements, are like any other small Australian seaside villages, inundated by summer crowds. However, there have been changes. The Quandamooka islanders now have a much bigger say in development and conservation and have helped to impose limits on destructive sand mining and are slowly asserting themselves. Interpretive signs have been erected wherever there are cultural and natural reminders of what went on before Australia was colonised.

They are often sad to read, giving a glimpse of a period in human history when people had an intimate self sustaining relationship with nature, rather than the out of control, consumerist Titanic that we have today.

Some visitors to Australia despair of its lack of 'culture' and the vacuous uniformity of its identikit towns and suburbs, but these indigenous links to the past, for those who care to find them, are like juicy half hidden currants in an otherwise tasteless Australian cultural dough.

In 2017, one of South East Queensland's electoral districts was named "Oodgeroo," in recognition of Oodgeroo Noonuccal's contribution to the fostering of a socially more enlightened Queensland.



Blue lake / Kulburra is a naturally occurring freshwater 'window' lake formed by seepage from the water table. You have to walk 3 km to it through the bush, which limits the number of gawpers considerably!



Freshwater Brown lake / Bummiera, looking suspiciously blue in this photo, is easy to access by day trippers and has a lovely, white beach.



These grass trees are all over the place in the eucalyptus understorey on the sand islands.