Talk:Fitzroy Island (Queensland)

Work in Progress
I have initiated this article as part of the north queensland cultural landscapes sub-category, within the scope of the anthropology project .. as it accompanies Ngimun, Yidyam, and Ngarrabullgan as geological features of North Queensland of significance to local Australian Aboriginal peoples, names by them within oral history/mythology, and forming part of a greater 'story' of a cultural landscape of demonstrably great antiquity.

I will use this discussion page (below) to summarise and chronologically arrange the mythology, and some of the natural and cultural history of Gabar (Kobi) as far as I am able to distill it from the reference materials available to me .. identifying the story tellers and sources as far as possible .. from which the narrative for the actual article itself is proposed to be written/constructed. I hope there is no objection to this kind of proposoal/ approach? Bruceanthro (talk) 07:57, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Natural and Cultural History Chronology
19050200 Yarrabah Mission (being 'managed' by Rev. Ernest Gribble) obtains a lease over Gabar (Fitzroy Island) to grow coconuts and as a 'change of residence' to send 'boys' from Yarrabah from time to time

19730000 Linguist Bob Dixon records Yidiji texts spoken by Dick Moses. He notices a recurrent theme of these texts is that the sea levels were once lower, and Dixon later writes :

"One recurrent theme was that the sea used to be lower, the coast being where the Barrier Reef now is. This accords exactly with historical facts at the end of the last Ice Age, some ten millenia ago.  Green Island used to be about four times as big as it is now - Dick maintained - only the north-west corner remains above water: this is quite consistent with the water depths around.

Even the world for "island", jarruway, has an interesting second sense: "small hill". What were originally the tops of small hills became islands as the sea level encroached. The name of Fitzroy Island is Gabar, "lower arm" because most of this geographical feature was submerged and only one limb remains above water today. And perhaps most significant of all, Moses tells us of a place, Mudaga, named after the pencil cedar trees that at one time grew there. It was half-way between Fitxroy Island and King Beach and has now been completely submerged...

..Many of the texts Moses recorded described the sea level rising, and people throwing hot stones into the water to try to stem the inundation.." Bruceanthro (talk) 13:31, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Who is the island named for?
Who was this person FitzRoy that Cook named the island for? And why did he deserve the honour? I'm not going to come back here to read the answer; I just think this information should be in the article. WikiParker (talk) 21:45, 4 February 2017 (UTC)


 * This person was Robert FitzRoy.--Ratzer (talk) 09:59, 3 May 2018 (UTC)