Shoalwater Bay

Shoalwater Bay is a large bay on the central coast of Queensland, Australia, located 100 km north of the coastal town of Yeppoon and 628 km north-north-west of the state capital, Brisbane. Since 1966, the land surrounding Shoalwater Bay has been under the ownership of the Australian Defence Force, for the purpose of military training exercises. Shoalwater Bay is also a noted dugong habitat and is part of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. [http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/c/cook/james/c77j/chapter8.html]

The bay is bounded by the Torilla Peninsula to the west and the Warginburra Peninsula and Leicester and Townshend islands to the east.

History

The first recorded European to sight Shoalwater Bay was British navigator James Cook on May 28, 1770. Cook referred to the entire region, from Cape Palmerston (south of Mackay) to Cape Townshend, including Shoalwater Bay, as the "Bay of Inlets", a name which is no longer in use. [http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/c/cook/james/c77j/chapter8.html] Cook bestowed the name "Shoalwater Bay" on the southeasternmost of these bays, a reference to the number of sandbars in the bay. [http://www.nrw.qld.gov.au/property/placenames/detail.php?id=30764] Following Cook, Matthew Flinders conducted further exploration of Shoalwater Bay in 1802, landing on Akens Island (a small island on the western side of Shoalwater Bay) and exploring the head of the bay. Flinders described the land as such:

:"The hills are stony, but some of them are clothed with grass and wood, and the pine grows in the gullies between them. The low land is sandy or stony, but covered with wood & herbage. Fresh water stands in ponds at the foot of the hills." [http://image.sl.nsw.gov.au/Ebind/s1_25/a056/a056091/a056091.html]

Settlement of the Rockhampton region commenced in 1853. By 1860, vast areas of the Shoalwater Bay region has been claimed by settlers. This settlement resulted in the dispersal - often violently - of the traditional inhabitants of Shoalwater Bay, the Darumbal people.

Shoalwater Bay Military Training Area

The Shoalwater Bay Military Training Area encompasses 454,500 hectares (4,545 km²), which includes the Warginburra Peninsula, the Torilla Peninsula east of the Stanage Bay Road, Townshend and Leicester Islands, and a sizable chunk of the Shoalwater Bay hinterland north of the village of Byfield. [http://www.deh.gov.au/heritage/commonwealth/qld.html#sho] Suggestion that the Shoalwater Bay region be acquired for the purpose of a training ground first appeared in 1960. The Army formally took control of the land on July 1, 1965; by the following year, the last landholder had vacated his property.

Military exercises with the United States have aroused considerable controversy in the Rockhampton-Yeppoon area, due to the threat of environmental damage to the Shoalwater Bay region. In recent years, concern has been raised about the possibility of depleted uranium weaponry been used during training exercises at Shoalwater Bay. [http://www.abc.net.au/news/australia/qld/capricornia/200506/s1385164.htm] See also http://transformations.cqu.edu.au/journal/issue_13/article_06.shtmlSee also http://www.peaceconvergence.com

See also

* Williamson Airfield - a military airfield located within the Shoalwater Bay Military Training Area
* Woomera Prohibited Area
* Exercise Talisman Sabre

References

* Cosgrove, B. 1996, "Shoalwater Bay: Settlers in a Queensland Wilderness". Central Queensland University Press, Rockhampton. ISBN 1-875998-16-0.