64 Australian Geographic
We had bush-bashed up from Honeymoon Bay, on
the island’s south-west, to find these docile
marsupials. This was a particular sort of Australian
landscape: home to the endemic best of sinuous
eucalypts and figs, but also the introduced worst of
prickly pear and lantana. Looking down from the
koala’s hill, we were greeted by a fairytale landscape
of soft green grasses and dark green hoop pines.
The island is bordered by the deep blue expanse
of the 650m-wide Egremont Passage, and beyond
that the sculptured velveteen shapes of Keswick
Island rise from the sea like a nest of slumbering
prehistoric creatures. Mainland Australia appears
further westwards, its hazy lavender coastline
merging into an even hazier purple escarpment.
The koala opened its eyes, regarded our cameras
and stretched into a new pose. The experience was
magical, but koala-spotting is only a small part of
what’s possible and wonderful here. St Bees, Keswick,
Scawfell and Cockermouth are among the nine
South Cumberland Islands. They lie south of the
better-known Whitsundays and are protected within
South Cumberland Islands National Park.
Adding to St Bees’ fairytale aura, the air was thick
with butterflies. More than 40 species, including the
ubiquitous blue tiger, have been recorded across these
islands. There are also shorebirds, curlews, bats and
owls. Whales swim into the Egremont Passage
between here and Keswick from June to October,
some already with young, others to give birth. And
there are striking coral communities, too – a trip in
a glass-bottomed boat reveals vast staghorn forests,
brilliant iridescent corals and myriad fishes, includ-
ing species of rabbitfish, angelfish and damselfish.
“Turtles, sharks, whales, schools of fish; you see
everything here,” explained Brett Curd, Keswick
Island’s operations officer. He is employed by
Keswick Developments to oversee everything from
construction and landscaping to running the local
shop and island’s runway. “We’ve had black-tipped
and white-tipped reef sharks, leopard rays, dolphins
and even manta rays. Three of them were playing in
close one day, just flipping around in the water.”
“There’s a turtle,” Brett added – and there was,
its head bobbing out of the water as it swam by his
waterside verandah.WE WERE CROSSING the hillside when we saw the picture-postcard
koala tucked into the nook of a wild prune tree, a metre or so above us.
It was late March and a southerly wind dulled the still-harsh autumnal
sun as it shone down upon St Bees, an 1100ha island, 30km north-east
of Mackay, on the Queensland coast.
Ashley Hay is a Brisbane-based writer whose novel The
Railwayman’s Wife was awarded the Colin Roderick Prize for
“the best book published in 2013 reflecting Australian life”.
Her last AG story was about Sydney’s Opera House (AG 116 ).Andrew Gregory is an award-winning photographer who
specialises in landscapes. He’s also an adventurer, long-time
AG contributor and past AG Society Spirit of Adventure awar-
dee. His last story was about drone photography in AG 125.W
E’D COME TO EXPLORE the islands in the
off-season, at the unreliable tail end of
the cyclone season. Temperatures were
peaking around 30 ̊C by day, the water wasn’t much
cooler at about 26 ̊C, and by a stroke of luck we
seemed to have these tropical paradises to ourselves.
These islands, however, are far more than simply
coconut-palm-fringed getaways. In biogeographic
terms, St Bees and Keswick have been fantastic
field laboratories for exploring how resident species
interact with each other and with flora and fauna on
neighbouring islands.
The koalas are a case in point. They were relocated
from Proserpine, 125km north of Mackay, to St Bees
in the 1930s, when the island was leased and grazed.
Despite being free from predation and diseases
ravaging mainland populations, they’ve maintained
a relatively stable colony size.
To scientists, this stability is an ongoing conun-
drum that’s continuing to be investigated. Other
island populations tend to thrive to the point that
they multiply exponentially, ultimately perishing
after eating themselves out of house and home; or
they fail to thrive, and quietly disappear.
The puzzle first attracted scientific attention in
the late 1990s and remains unexplained, says
Dr Alistair Melzer, a Central Queensland University
ecologist. The bacterial disease chlamydia ravages
many other koala populations, causing high rates of
infertility, but although it’s been detected in a few St
Bees’ koalas, it doesn’t seem to be impacting numbers.
Also, although most adult females here give birth
each year, the population isn’t increasing. “ Something
happens to the joeys around the point of weaning,
and a lot of them just disappear,” Alistair explains.
“They’re too small to tag, so we’ve got no way of