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Are you among the 20,000 people who visit St Helena each year by day or night, a boatie, a history buff, a teacher, or simply a reader who enjoys a frisson of horror? St Helena Island Moreto Bay is for you. This impressive tome on satin paper, generously illustrated with black and white photos and archibal material, traces the island's fortunes, particularly since Flinders recorded it as a "veritable garden of eden in 1799. The aborigines, whose midden date back 2,700 years, named it Noogoon and gave the island its European name, too.
The island has produced dugong oil, sugar cane, sisal and prisoner-made goods. It has been an intended quarantine station, a dumping ground for Brisbane's night oil, a prison, a treasure trove for vandals and the state's first historical national park.
Today several commerical boating companies operate tours, with accredited guides including author Lauren Penny.
She and some colleagues have researched for more than 10 years so that we can appreciate what the prison meant for criminals, warders and superintendents.
She has put names and lives to the numbered crosses and children's cemeteries. She gives a reader-friendly, year by year account of developments, escapes, punishments.
St Helena was never a convict jail or a lazaret (Peel Island took lepers). Penny has dispelled its myths and increased its romance.
The book is available through emailing: Queensland Prison & Penal Historical Association: qppha@bigpond.com. Profits will help fund preservation on this fascinating 200ha island on Brisbane's doorstep. Barbara Baker - Book reviewer - Courier Mail newspaper 14th May, 2011.
Other reviews can be viewed via
the website: www.sthelenaisland.net
Queensland National Trust Heritage Awards 2011. Gold award presented 'For a well researched and cohesive publication which balances reproduced images, plans,correspondence and file reports of this colonial-era prison with its historical narrative. The product of many hours of volunteer labour, this project makes a key contribution to public knowledge of the St Helena penal settlement, its remaining structures and the lives led by its inmates and their prison custodians'. Lauren Penny www.sthelenaisland.net email: qppha@bigpond.com