[1] Bedarra Island is approximately seven kilometres off the tropical North Queensland coast, midway between Townsville and Cairns, the nearest coastal town being Mission Beach.

The island consists of pristine coral sandy beaches with coves formed by giant granite boulders and fringed with lush green jungle.

Captain Henry Allason, inspired by Banfields book Confessions of A Beachcomber,[4] purchased Bedarra from the Queensland Lands Department in 1913 for the paltry sum of 20 pounds.

Noel Wood, an Australian landscape artist, purchased East Bedarra in the late 1930s and over time it was developed into a luxury tourist destination.

Bedarra Island Resort and a number of private homes were damaged with buildings left in splinters, facilities in ruins and gardens stripped bare.

Sea turtles and dugongs can be observed around Bedarra Island and recently Migaloo, the white humped back whale, was spotted from a lookout engaged in its annual migration north (late June).

[5] The island has few mammals; the largest is the echidna and there is also the fawn footed melomys, a small native rodent named after Edmund James Banfield who first described it.

They are usually colonial in their roost behaviour, nesting in caves, crevices and sometimes roof ceilings of the open plan houses on the island.

The most easily observed bird life in the rainforest, are the large mound builders – the orange footed scrub fowl.

Australian artist Noel Wood (1912–2001) visited the island in 1936 and negotiated the purchase of a site near the mangroves on one side of the peninsula.

There is a brass plaque at the northern end of Bingil Bay - the tribute from poet Judith Wright reads "John Busst, Artist and lover of beauty, who thought that man and nature might survive".

In 1940, artist John Busst leased the south-eastern corner for ten shillings a week before the Coleman's sold to former island guests Dick Greatrix and Pierre Huret who had fallen in love with the place.

The two men lived on the island for seven years creating an area of landscaped gardens and introducing exotic plants to the rainforest before selling to longtime tenant Busst and his sister Phyllis.

Portions of the island were sub-divided and sold off over the years until in 1957 Ken and Cynthia Druitt took over and developed a small tourist resort.

That year John Busst sold his remaining holding at Bedarra Bay, to Colin Scott, a grazier from Victoria, who ran the property as a private retreat.