To celebrate the digitisation and release of the building plans of the Quarantine Station, Magnetic Island by the JCU Library Special Collections, Special Collections Volunteer, Liz Downes, explores the history of the Magnetic Island Quarantine Station.
Quarantine – a word we are only too familiar with, thanks to the pandemic that engulfed the world in 2020. Until then most of us, in recent times at least, would more probably have associated the word with measures to protect Australian agricultural industries from pests and diseases imported from overseas. Even now, few of us would know that the origin of the word (from the early Venetian quarantena = forty) referred to the forty-day period of isolation imposed on ships’ crews and passengers when they arrived in port during outbreaks of the bubonic plague. By comparison, the fourteen day quarantine required of people arriving in Australia during the Covid-19 crisis seems almost trivial.
Nonetheless, the necessity of human quarantine was recognized quite early in post-1788 Australia with the first Quarantine Act passed in 1832. Ten years later Queensland’s first quarantine station was established on North Stradbroke Island.
Islands held obvious appeal for this purpose, with the ocean creating a natural barrier between infection and the mainland population, so it is no surprise that Magnetic Island became the site for what was to become Queensland’s second quarantine facility. In fact the island had already been fulfilling this function, apparently without any formal designation or structure, since the late 1870s. For several years the pioneer Butler family cared for sick passengers or crew-members, who were rowed ashore from ships anchored in Cleveland Bay to be accommodated in tents behind the Picnic Bay beach – men at one end, women at the other. Reportedly, Harry Butler and his sons tended to the men while his wife and daughters cared for the women. For those who did not survive illnesses for which there was no cure and only the most basic treatment, Harry was obliged to perform the roles of undertaker, gravedigger and clergyman.
 |
| A view from Cockle Bay towards West Point, Magnetic Island. Quarantine station buildings faintly visible on the shore. North Queensland Photographic Collection, NQID00294. |
With Townsville’s population growing and its port attracting an increasing number of ships, this situation could not continue. In 1883 plans for a properly equipped quarantine station were commissioned and the following year construction began on the shores of West Point, the unimaginatively named western point of Magnetic Island, roughly opposite the mainland beach at Cape Pallarenda. By mid-1885 a hospital building, separate quarters for men, women and married couples, and a store, had been completed by local builders, Lesser and Soarre. Between 1886-88 two builders (Cavell & Holt and C.A Sparre) constructed a caretaker’s cottage, surgeon’s quarters, combined wash-house and kitchen, and a luggage shed. The total cost of construction was in excess of £15,000. It is the plans for the last four buildings that are held in the Library Special Collections. The location of the earlier drawings, if they survive, is not known.
 |
| Quarantine station on Magnetic Island, newspaper report from the Townsville Daily Bulletin, 1905. North Queensland Photographic Collection, NQID03541. |
So what became of the island’s quarantine station? Despite the apparent desirability of an island location, the West Point site posed many practical problems: its distance from the port, lack of water and the difficulty of access for landing patients and supplies, as well as for visiting medical authorities. It also proved less than adequate when a shipload of passengers needed to be quarantined after a case of bubonic plague was identified on board the SS Cintra in 1900. On top of these problems two severe cyclones, Sigma in 1896 and Leonta in 1903, caused significant damage. According to a pencilled note inscribed across the plans for the luggage shed, the last building to be constructed, this was washed away completely by Sigma.
By 1910 the need for a mainland quarantine facility had become increasingly obvious and the decision was made to relocate the station to Cape Pallarenda, then known as Cape Marlow. Like West Point, this site also had the advantage of being separated from the town but, in this case, the natural barrier of bush, rather than ocean, made access easier for those who needed it.
Before this happened, however, the Australian Navy took over the Magnetic Island Quarantine Station in the early months of the first world war, equipping it as a Service Hospital in preparation for casualties arising from hostilities off New Guinea, which was then a German possession, arguably making it the first service hospital of this conflict.
The planned removal eventually took place over several months in 1915-16, with the Magnetic Island buildings being dismantled and transported by barge to the new site. Here they were either re-erected, with appropriate renovations and additions, or their materials were used in the construction of new buildings. A note on the plans for the surgeon’s quarters indicates this was one of the buildings reconstructed at Pallarenda. The relocated quarantine station, which also included some entirely new buildings, opened in 1917 – a timely event given the impending influenza pandemic of 1918-19 – and remained operational until 1973.
 |
| Building on the site of the former Cape Pallarenda Quarantine station, possibly reconstructed or adapted fron an original West Point, Magnetic Island building. Photograph by Liz Downes. |
Liz Downes
Comments