Return to a childhood haunt

Personally King Island had a completely different history from the one I wrote in my last Auz post. To me it was a fascinating island because it could be reached on foot at low tide. Originally called Yerra-bin by the Aboriginal people of Quandamooka (Moreton Bay), the name was later changed to King.

Tiny island in the bay

King Island was a small island off Wellington Point that was a popular Moreton Bay tourist destination in the early 1900s. For a couple of years during that era, the Phillips family lived on the island because one of their children was advised to bathe daily in the salt water to ease her polio symptoms.

Loch Ard Disaster

In 1878, as Captain Gibb navigated his ship between Cape Otway and King Island with mist obscuring the passage, the Loch Ard was shipwrecked. Of the fifty-four passengers and crew, only two survived.