Fantome Island is one of the islands in the Great Palm Island group. It is neighboured by Great Palm Island and is 65 km (40 mi) north-east of Townsville, Queensland on the east coast of Australia. The Aboriginal name for this island is Eumilli Island. The island is small with an area of 7.8 km2 (3.01 sq mi) and is surrounded by a fringing reef.
Fantome Island Location Map
This isolated tropical island off the North Queensland coast became home to a close-knit community of indigenous “lepers” whose marginalized existence was hidden from white society and has, until recently, remained absent from the mainstream historical record.
View of Fantome Island, no date.
Photo: CityLibraries Townsville Local History Collection.
A Lock Hospital for the treatment of Indigenous patients suffering from venereal diseases was established on Fantome Island in 1928. This institution closed in 1945. In 1940 a leprosarium (lazaret) was established on the island; Upon its closure in 1973, it was purged by fire. The island is now the site of 200 graves.
Cared for by nuns from the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary the isolation of these poor souls was the consequence of apartheid-like policies developed by the Queensland government and medical establishment which espoused a eugenicist philosophy and regarded racial segregation as standard practice.
History
In Queensland in 1920 there were 31 lepers and they were mostly indigenous Australians, though their numbers also included Torres Strait Islanders, Kanakas, Europeans and Asians. This figure represents a decline in the number of Aborigines contracting the disease of whom there had been 35 in 1910. The number of infected Aborigines rose to 36 in 1925, so it was obvious that leprosy was not about to disappear.
The regions from which the new cases came were all in the north. A number of towns in the north such as Cherbourg, Taroom, Bundaberg, Innisfail and Ingham provided one leper each and two came from Cardwell. Leprosy had therefore become a disease of the north: no further new cases were reported from the southern areas of the State after 1925.
In 1907, a leprosarium to house all Queensland patients suffering from leprosy was established on Peel Island in Moreton Bay near Brisbane. In January 1940, a train carrying 49 people who were afflicted with leprosy arrived in North Queensland in a transfer from the Peel Island lazaret (or leprosarium) in Moreton Bay, to Fantome Island.
Fantome Island Lazaret, c.1940.
Photo: Father Tom Dixon, in "From the Frontier: A Pictorial History of Queensland"
They were moved because medical and government officials of the day decided that Peel Island should only be used to treat “white” patients with leprosy, and chose Fantome Island as the location to isolate “coloured” patients suffering from the disease.
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 coloured patients were transferred from Peel Island to Fantome Island, under police escort and in conditions of great secrecy.
The majority of these “coloured” patients - as they were referred to - were of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Island origin, although some were South Sea Islanders or Chinese.
There were already 25 Indigenous patients at the hospital when the Peel Island group arrived at Fantome Island, which meant the new lazaret had to cope with 74 patients, all before it was even fully completed.
Establishing a lazaret on Fantome Island was touted as an “important step in the investigation and treatment of leprosy” among the Indigenous population. At this time, Fantome Island was already in use as an isolation hospital for treating Indigenous patients with sexually transmitted illnesses. The leprosarium was to be located on the opposite side of the island.
Queensland Director-General of Health and Medical Services, Sir Raphael Cilento’s official view was that as the majority of the “coloured lepers” from Peel Island were originally from the North Queensland region, it was in their own best interests to be moved to Fantome Island, nearer to their “tribal origins”.
Sir Raphael Cilento, June 1945. John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.
In truth, Cilento believed that moving the Indigenous “lepers” to Fantome Island would save the government money. At Peel Island the cost of caring for a leprosy patient was £70 per annum, whereas Cilento anticipated that patients at Fantome Island would only cost the government £12 - £15 per annum.
In February 1940, four nuns from the Catholic missionary order of Our Lady Help of Christians arrived in Townsville by train, en route to Fantome Island, to commence work at the lazaret. Mother Peter, Sisters Agnes, Catherine and Bernadette spent several months at Peel Island undergoing training in the treatment of leprosy before travelling north.
Fantome Island, no date.
Photo: CityLibraries Townsville Local History Collection.
The Peel Island patients arrived at Fantome Island with a police escort and were also accompanied by Matron O’Brien from the Peel Island lazaret. Matron O’Brien was appalled at the poor quality of the food provided to the patients when they arrived, and complained in a report about her trip that the patients had not been fed any green vegetables during her month-long stay.
This does not seem to have been a concern to the Superintendent, Mr F.H. Julian though, and poor nutrition may well have contributed to the 14 deaths that occurred at the lazaret on Fantome Island by the end of 1940.
The lazaret remained in use until 1973.
Video: Tom Martin shares his story about his family connection to Fantome Island (near Orpheus Island) where a few artifacts remain of the indigenous leprosy colony mission that operated from 1939 to 1973.
Sources:
http://www.der.org/films/fantome-island.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantome_Island
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantome_Island_Lock_Hospital_and_Lazaret_Sites
http://www.leprosyheritage.com/peel-island-and-fantome-island-australia.html
https://northqueenslandhistory.blogspot.com.au/2015/05/fantome-island.html
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