In 1836 the “Stirling Castle” was wrecked on Fraser Island and the survivors lived with the aborigines until rescued by a search party from Brisbane. Eliza Fraser was one of the passengers and after the death of her husband from natural causes, toured the world telling of the hardships she endured. The island was originally named Fraser’s Island by European settlers after Eliza Fraser.

In more modern times Fraser Island has been a source of wealth from mining, timber and tourism. There were considerable deposits of rutile on Fraser Island and the sands were mined for this resource from 1949 until the 1970’s when the islands tourism potential and a protest campaign brought this activity to an end. Fraser island was also logged very heavily as the forests there contained many valuable species. The Satinay in particular was heavily logged. It is the world’s hardest hardwood and impervious to marine worms. The shores of the Suez Canal were lined with its timber, removed from the forests of Fraser Island. Inevitably, the practice of logging on Fraser Island was terminated and the forests left to regenerate and today very little evidence of these practices can be seen.