2015-11-10 - P&O Agenda - Item 7, Attach 1 - Historical Ecology of the Noosa Estuary Fisheries

this mode of transport that facilitated the trade of oysters to Brisbane. In the
early 1900s it was stated that approximately four parties of licensed fishermen
supplied Gympie and other local towns with fish (The Brisbane Courier, 26 Sept
1908; Marine Department Report 1909), although the number of local fishing
families was higher than this (Adams 2004). The net fishing industry remained
largely localised to Gympie and the surrounding towns until the ice works was
established at Tewantin, at which point fish could be more readily transported to
the metropolitan market in Brisbane (see Adams 2004 and references therein).

Oyster fishing

Few records remain of the oysters and the oyster fishery that once existed in the
Noosa River. However, occasional accounts exist in fishery inspector reports and
popular articles, which, when pieced together provide insights into the past
abundance of oysters and the commercial industry. In 1876 ‘Wybah Lake’ was
described as the ‘oyster ground of the Tewantin people’ (The Telegraph, 12 Feb
1876). A visitor to the Noosa region the following year recorded that he came
across large mounds of oyster shells within the Tewantin area, of such
significance that they formed one of the ‘Lions of Tewantin’. By this date these
mounds were already being dug into for road material and were subsequently
destroyed. Stone tools were also found within them (The Brisbane Courier, 5 Jul
1877) although there is no record to say if these were preserved. A couple of
articles published later that same decade state that large quantities of oyster
shell remains existed at the location where the steamboat Culgoa (which
transported timber, passengers and goods between Noosa and Brisbane from the
1870s) berthed (Maryborough Chronicle, 1 Nov 1877):


“Other settlements worthy of mention are Tewantin, a Government township on
Noosa harbour, chiefly remarkable for the numerous aboriginal shell-mounds that
are found in the vicinity, evident traces of a former very dense population. The face
of one of these mounds, I may here parenthetically remark, forms a natural wharf
of considerable extent, and is as such used by the small steamer that plies weekly to
and from Brisbane.” Australian Town and Country Journal, 23 Aug 1879.




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