History
Holbourne Island became well known in 1875, when 18 survivors of the shipwreck SS Gothenburg reached its shores. Four survivors arrived on a damaged port lifeboat on 25 February, where they survived by eating raw bird's eggs and drinking rain water that had pooled in the island rocks. The following day, 14 survivors from a starboard lifeboat also landed. Because rescue was uncertain, the survivors engraved their names on the concave side of a large turtle shell, which is displayed in the South Australian Museum, on North Terrace in Adelaide.
On Sunday, 28 February, 15 of them set off in the starboard lifeboat for an island about 20 miles (32 km) away to the south, which seemed to be more in the track of ships. A rescue ship sent looking for survivors of the Gothenburg, picked up the group and took them safely to Bowen. The ship subsequently returned to Holbourne Island and rescued the three remaining survivors.
Read more about this topic: Holbourne Island National Park
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.... It is not “history” which uses men as a means of achieving—as if it were an individual person—its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art’s audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.”
—Henry Geldzahler (1935–1994)