Map - Fantome Island (Fantome (Eumili) Island)

Fantome Island (Fantome (Eumili) Island)
Fantome Island is one of the islands in the Palm Island group. It is neighboured by Great Palm Island and is 65 km north-east of Townsville, Queensland on the east coast of Australia. The island is small with an area of 7.8 km2 and is surrounded by a fringing reef. The Djabugay (Aboriginal) name for this island is Eumilli Island.

The island is known for its 1928 lock hospital (for those with venereal disease) and 1939 leprosarium, known as the lazaret. Both are now heritage-listed on the Queensland Heritage Register, as Fantome Island Lock Hospital and Lazaret Sites. The island is no longer inhabited.

Along with nine of the other islands within the Palm Islands group, it falls under the local government area of the Aboriginal Shire of Palm Island.

Fantome was gazetted as an Aboriginal reserve in 1925.

The Fantome Island Lock Hospital for the treatment of Aboriginal people with venereal diseases was established on Fantome Island in 1928. The Franciscan Missionaries of Mary took over the running of the hospital in 1939. This institution closed in 1945. In 1940 a leprosarium was established on the island; upon its closure in 1973, it was purged by fire. The island is the site of 200 graves.

In 1926 a lock hospital was built on Fantome Island; Aboriginal people were sent there mainly for treatment of sexually transmitted diseases. In 1936 Fantome Island became a medical clearing station where people sent to Palm Island were examined and treated if necessary. A leprosarium was established on Fantome in 1939. After World War II the hospital was closed, and by 1965 only the leprosarium remained on Fantome Island; it was administered by a Roman Catholic nursing order until 1973, when the inhabitants were moved to Palm Island. The administrators had complete and unaccountable control over the lives of residents. Punishments included the shaving of the girls' heads.

In 1907, a leprosarium to house all Queensland patients with leprosy was established on Peel Island in Moreton Bay near Brisbane. In 1940, the Indigenous patients were transferred from Peel Island to Fantome Island, under police escort and in conditions of great secrecy. The numbers of people admitted to Peel Island fluctuated during the mid-1920s and rose to 47 new cases in 1928. Although no new cases were reported in 1929 the reason might have been the secrecy with which this whole issue was managed by the Queensland Health authorities and the inability of the health regime to locate and track down the source of infection. This was not a simple problem and it persisted well into the next decade.

The head of the Australian Institute of Tropical Medicine, Dr Raphael Cilento endeavoured to describe the problem in one of his reports. He wrote that when Kuranda (Mona Mona) reserve started in 1914, the majority of the Aboriginal people brought there belonged to the Djabugay language group, a closely knit group. There were a few others from as far north as the Gulf region and some from Mossman, and a large number had been born in fringe-camps and had grown up close to white settlement knowing no other life. The first case of leprosy reported among Aboriginal people in the region "was an old woman, Nellie, who died in 1916". She was avoided by other locals. She had no known descendants at the settlement.

In 1932, Cilento described his vision for Fantome: "The whole (local)population should be worked through Fantome & then regraded into new cases, incurable aged, incurable young & part cured & thence drafted when clean back into Palm from which they can be sent out into the mainland to be (1) assimilated if white enough; (2) employed under supervision & protection; or (3) kept on Palm as minor officials or peasant proprietors working personal strips around a collective farm."

In June 1975, the two existing reserves became a single reserve for official purposes, under the control of the Aboriginal and Island Affairs Department. In 1986 this was rescinded, and Fantome Island was transferred to the Palm Island Community Council by a Deed of Grant in Trust (DOGIT). 
Map - Fantome Island (Fantome (Eumili) Island)
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Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of 7617930 km2, Australia is the largest country by area in Oceania and the world's sixth-largest country. Australia is the oldest, flattest, and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils. It is a megadiverse country, and its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes and climates, with deserts in the centre, tropical rainforests in the north-east, and mountain ranges in the south-east.

The ancestors of Aboriginal Australians began arriving from south east Asia approximately 65,000 years ago, during the last ice age. Arriving by sea, they settled the continent and had formed approximately 250 distinct language groups by the time of European settlement, maintaining some of the longest known continuing artistic and religious traditions in the world. Australia's written history commenced with the European maritime exploration of Australia. The Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon was the first known European to reach Australia, in 1606. In 1770, the British explorer James Cook mapped and claimed the east coast of Australia for Great Britain, and the First Fleet of British ships arrived at Sydney in 1788 to establish the penal colony of New South Wales. The European population grew in subsequent decades, and by the end of the 1850s gold rush, most of the continent had been explored by European settlers and an additional five self-governing British colonies established. Democratic parliaments were gradually established through the 19th century, culminating with a vote for the federation of the six colonies and foundation of the Commonwealth of Australia on 1 January 1901. Australia has since maintained a stable liberal democratic political system and wealthy market economy.
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