Booms and declines

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A while ago, I was asked by my father to write a little bit about the history of Port Douglas. To do this, I went to the local museum (the old Courthouse), I've done some research in the internet (where I got most of the information from), I went to see a play at a local theater (related to the contemporary history of this town) and I met with Australian diving and videography legend, Ben Cropp.



The Courthouse museum is a small one and to tell the truth, it didn't really help much. The main attraction is a representation of the trial of Ellen Thompson, the only woman to have ever been hanged in Queensland (and it also includes the stories of the people involved in the trial). It has information about other topics, such as the Chinese presence in the town in the 1800's, early settlers, the creation of the local police force, the lighthouse in the Low Isles, etc., but nothing ordered chronologically.



The history of Port Douglas is a series of booms and declines and everything started when gold was discovered in the Hodgkinson river in 1873, a river that is actually closer to Cairns than Port Douglas.

There was an immediate need to find a port to dispatch the precious mineral and after a man named Christie Palmerston created the "Bump Track" from the river to the coast in 1877, a settlement was quickly established in Port Douglas. The town had different names before, such as Island Point and Port Owen and was also known as Terrigal, Owensville, White Island Point and Salisbury.



In November 1877 the town was officially named Port Douglas, after Queensland's premier of the time, John Douglas.

In a short time, government offices were established, as well as hotels, banks and shipping branches from Cooktown companies.

A lot of significant events happened in 1878: a hospital was built and the cemetery was established, the first piece of land was sold at 25 pounds per acre and by the end of the year, a lighthouse was erected in the Low Isles (small islands a few miles from Port Douglas).

The small town quickly expanded and in 1882, there were 14 hotels. In its peak, Port Douglas had about 12,000 people living in it and there were 27 hotels.



But in 1885, Cairns was chosen as final destination for the railway from the "Tablelands" (region in Queensland that included some of the mining areas, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablelands_Region) and that meant there was no further development of Port Douglas. This was the birth of the "Kuranda railway".



A lot of people raised cattle during the following years, but around 1895-1896 a tick fever wiped out the existing cattle almost completely and landowners switched to sugar cane plantations, with the first sugar cane crush at the Mossman Mill in 1897 (Mossman is a town about 15km from Port Douglas). During those years, a lot of Asian immigrants arrived to work the sugar cane plantations, with noticeable differences between the immigrants from different countries of origin. Chinese were the majority, adding up to about one third of the total population in Port Douglas and weren't well looked upon. There were some Koreans and people from south east Asia as well. The Japanese were better considered, had jobs of higher complexity and had their own inspectors to ensure their well being.



In 1897, a woman named Ellen Thompson and her lover John Harrison were accused of the murder of Ellen's husband, William Thompson and sentenced to death. She always said she was innocent, and even though a day before the execution, John confessed to have done it himself, both were hanged. She's the only woman in Queensland to have been legally hanged. The small Port Douglas museum centers around this tragic event.



In 1900 a small rail line (that still exists today) was built from the Mossman Mill to the Port Douglas wharf, mainly for sugar, but also for passengers and freight. The population slowly grew and the port was somehow revived. Later, in 1904, a timber wharf and storage shed was built. It'd be later known as Fisherman's wharf and then as Ben Cropp's shipwreck museum.



In 1911 a massive cyclone hit Port Douglas and 40mm of rain fell in 24 hours, killing two people and damaging a lot of infrastructure.



By 1920, the bussiness center moved to Mossman, where the Mill was. In 1933 the Cooktown Highway between Cairns and Mossman was opened and Port Douglas was bypassed. The last time sugar was railed to the wharf was in 1958 and from then on, it was taken to Cairns. Soon Port Douglas became a small fishing village and by 1960, only about 100 people lived there.



Now to continue the story, I'll write about Ben Cropp (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Cropp). He's a renowned Australian diver and underwater videographer. He lives in the Port Douglas Marina, in his boat called "Spirit of Freedom". His boat is actually right next to "Calypso", the boat I worked on for more than 5 months. I had no idea who the 77 year old man on the boat was, until Anthony Capogreco (one of my housemates), told me about Ben, after I told him I wanted to write about Port Douglas' history. Anthony suggested that Ben Cropp would be someone interesting to talk to, because he had been living in Port Douglas since the 60's.



At first I tought of just asking him about the town's evolution from a fishing village to the tourist mecca it is today, but after doing some research, I thought it'd be just as interesting to learn a bit about his life as well.



I called Ben and asked him if I could meet him to ask about Port Douglas' recent history. He agreed and invited me to his boat one afternoon after I finished work. I was met by him and his small dog.

He started telling me about his early years when he started spearfishing with his friends (or "diving" as they used to call it) and a few years later he entered spearfishing competitions, of which he won 6 national titles. He told me he and his mates all became spearfishing champions at some point.

After that he started taking up diving, before it was popular and without any proper course or use of dive tables. He borrowed a friend's scuba tank and went to try it out. At one point he ran out of air and had to surface. Luckily he remembered his friend saying "never hold your breath" and he blew air out all the way up, saving his life.

A few years later he opened a dive school in Sydney, which he ran and certified people, but never got himself certified. He told me the following annecdote: years later he went to rent gear at a dive shop and they wouldn't let him take any gear, because he didn't have any credentials (this was when he was already a renowned videographer and had discovered numerous wrecks in Australia). After that he decided to get a certification and just asked for cards and received the highest diving certifications from a number of different scuba agencies.

In 2000 he was made part of the International Scuba Diving Hall of fame, along with Jacques Cousteau, among others.



In the 60's he was known as a shark hunter, but gave it up in 1962 to become an underwater videographer and a conservacionist. He has succesfully shot and produced about 150 films in his career.



He's also known for having found about 100 ship wrecks (he found 25 in just one trip as he told me), including the "Pandora", Australia's most famous shipwreck (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Pandora_(1779)).



Ben Cropp arrived in Port Douglas in the early- late 60's when it was still a fishing village. "Everybody waved to each other when passing by and everyone knew everybody else" he told me. Dirt roads, a few houses, hotels and 4 pubs made up the town which had about 300 people, give or take. He had found a quiet spot to settle down.



At one point he convinced the town council to rent him the "Sugar Wharf" which was not being used, to mount a shipwreck museum, which functioned from 1980 and for several years onwards. After the contract ended, the council decided not to renew it and most of the things that were in exhibition are now in storage areas. He has unsuccesfully tried to have a museum put all these items for permanent display.



And now for the final part of Port Douglas's history: in the 1970's, tourists began to discover Port Douglas as a quiet holiday paradise destination and Quicksilver tours started operating trips to the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) in 1982 (nowadays Quicksilver is the largest company operating in the GBR and they own a number of different companies).



In 1984, the Cairns International airport started operating, further attracting tourists from all over the world.



To continue the last part of Port Douglas' history, I'll mention a theater play I went to see in November. It was called "Too good to be true" and it's mainly about a very controversial character of this town's history, a man named Christopher Skase.

He was a young ambitious self made billionaire. In 1975 he bought a small Tasmanian company called "Qintex" and in the late 80's it was worth 1,5 billion dollars.

He owned a number of resorts and he saw the potential of Port Douglas as a tourist destination and in 1984 he built the Sheraton Mirage, Port Douglas' first luxury hotel. He invested millions of dollars in paving streets and planting palm trees all around the town. In the late 80's, his company overextended and eventually went broke. Skase knew this and started moving money to offshore accounts and fled the country and established himself in Mallorca, Spain, before being convicted. He became one of the most wanted fugitives in Australia. A long process of trying to extradite him from Spain went on during the 90's and in 1998 when he was forced to leave Spain, he had become a citizen of Dominica. He died of stomach cancer at the age of 52.



Back to the theater; this play was written by a local screenwriter and it was performed by amateurs that are part of the "Clink Theater" drama arts group, a local theater of Port Douglas that was established in 1992. This play was to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the theater. The play itself was a musical and it was pretty good, telling Skase's influence (and that of his wife Pixie as well) and their legacy, for better or for worse.



Since Skase's investments, Port Douglas has become a town that is a popular destination for tourists that want to visit the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree World Heritage Rainforest.

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