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Yarrabah Aboriginal Shire Council Yarrabah, a former Aboriginal mission settlement, is a community governed by an Aboriginal Council, 15 km east of Cairns at Cape Grafton. The mission was founded by John Gribble in 1892. Gribble, formerly a minister in the Methodist and Congregational Churches in Victoria had prior experience with Aboriginal missions both there and in Western Australia. In 1883 Gribble had been ordained an Anglican priest, and mostly on his own initiative journeyed to Cairns and obtained approval from the colonial government to set up a mission on land eventually proclaimed as a reserve. Few Aborigines sought sanctuary there for the first two years, by then Gribble departed because of ill health, and the management of the mission passed to his son Edward, who became an Anglican minister in 1898, the year that St Alban's church at Yarrabah was dedicated. The settlement was under Anglican Church management until 1960 when the Department of Native Affairs assumed control. In 1904 the Fraser Island people were moved to Yarrabah, over 1000 km away. The population probably numbered several hundred, as in 1902 there were 93 pupils at the Yarrabah school. In 1915 mission records showed 322 'native population', whereas census figures were half this number. Anglican authorities encouraged marriages and settlement at the mission and forbade the marriage of so-called full-blood women to whites or aliens. In 1903 Yarrabah, known as Cape Grafton, was described in the Australian handbook Source: queenslandplaces.com.au/yarrabah-aboriginal-shire-council

Shell found in or about coral reef bottom is hard and of good quality, although subject to these borers. Shell along the east coast of York Peninsula is very like the Papuan coast shell but is much larger and heavier when fully grown. The deep-water shell of Darnley Island waters is really a reef shell. The best quality is found on what is known as the old ground, which covers the area over the western approach to Torres Strait. The sea-bed, affected by the waste from the coast and by discharge from rivers, appears to affect the quality of the mother-of-pearl shell. The beautiful colouring of the pearl shell is divided into two general classes: white or silver-lipped and gold or orange-lipped. The white-lipped shell is the natural shell without the gold-lip colouring. The latter colouring extends over the entire back of the shell, penetrating a more or less shallow distance into the nacre, and then right to the thin outer edge, hence "lip." Gold-lip shell is some pounds sterling per ton of less value commercially than silver-lipped. Source: anglicanhistory.org/aus/white1918/05.html

cool!

rare bird and fast too