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Story of a landscape

Belinda Daly

I’ve written a lot about the clearing of the island during the first few years of the prison’s establishment.

So today I’ll just post up some interesting paintings, drawings and photographs taken at various times in the island’s history, and your eyes can note the vegetation, the built and natural features and the changes over time.

Each image is amazing in its own right. Seeing them in a series pieces together the environmental history of an island landscape.

They tell a powerful story. One that had been repeated many times all over our wide brown land.

St Helena Island, Moreton Bay, 1853

Montagu of Beaulieu, Henry John Douglas-Scott-Montagu. (1853). St. Helena, Moreton Bay, 20th July, 1853 from http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-134723485

 

St Helena Island, Moreton Bay 1868

Clearing of native vegetation 1868, John Oxley collection, QPWS

 

St Helena Island, Moreton Bay 1870

Penal station at St. Helena, Moreton Bay, Queensland, pencil sketch, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.

 

St Helena Island, Moreton Bay 1878

St Helena Island, Moreton Bay, 1878

St Helena Island, Moreton Bay early 1900’s

St Helena Island, Moreton Bay 1987

Aerial of St Helena ruins, 1987, from Henry Collection, QPWS

 

St Helena Island, Moreton Bay 2017

Aerial of St Helena Island, from Mette and Niels Juel (Veloshotz)

 

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