History
Macassan trepangers once travelled thousands of kilometres from Sulawesi to Mornington Island and other Australian mainland destinations in search of sea cucumbers. The eastern cape of the island was named Cape Van Diemen after Anthony van Diemen.
The Mornington Island Airport was a temporary airfield used by the RAAF and allied air forces during World War II. Penile subincision was traditionally performed on the island for those wanting to learn a complex ceremonial language called Damin. In 1978, the Queensland government decided to take over control of both the Aurukun and Mornington Island Aboriginal reserves.
Cyclones routinely hit the island. In 2000 Cyclone Steve passed directly over the island. Tropical Cyclone May passed in February 1988 and Tropical Cyclone Bernie passed to the west in early 2002. Tropical Cyclone Fritz passed directly over the island on the 12 February 2003. Severe Tropical Cyclone Harvey caused damage on the island in February, 2005.
Read more about this topic: Mornington Island
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“There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the natures of the times deceased,
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)