However, this settlement at Dunwich was short lived as problems with unloading goods in poor weather, smuggling, and hostile Aborigines, resulted in the closure of the out-station in 1831.

[1] Between 1843 and 1847 the first Catholic Mission to Aborigines in the Australian colonies was established at Dunwich, with four Passionist Fathers occupying the former convict buildings.

The mission failed, largely due to the poor state of the buildings in which it was accommodated, and the high degree of exposure of the indigenous peoples of Stradbroke Island to Europeans.

However, Dunwich continued to be utilised by the government for a variety of institutional purposes for which its isolation rendered it particularly suitable, both for health reasons and in response to social and cultural values of the time.

In late 1849, in consideration of the numbers of free settlers who were expected arrive in Moreton Bay, the Colonial Secretary requested the Police Magistrate in Brisbane to suggest a suitable site for a quarantine station.

[1] Within two months of the opening of the quarantine station, the ship Emigrant, with an outbreak of typhus on board, reached Moreton Bay.

Accommodation on an island close to Brisbane, yet separated from it, effectively removed Asylum inmates from society and made administrative control easier.

[1] After cleaning up the grounds in late 1947, control of the cemetery, which was on Crown Land, passed to the Department of Health and Home Affairs, though it was a matter of some dispute as to who should be responsible for its maintenance.

Though a local, Power Irvine Nelson Dickson, acted as an honorary caretaker in the 1950s, the cemetery gradually fell into disrepair as headstones and grave markers suffered from vandalism and theft.

This was constructed of bricks from the former Asylum laundry, which had been demolished, by the sand-mining company Consolidated Rutile Limited, in honour of all the inmates lying in unmarked graves.

The burials of passengers from the 1850 typhus epidemic aboard the Emigrant and those of the doctors who treated them are evidence for the early use of North Stradbroke Island as a quarantine station.

They are evidence for 19th and early 20th century government policies and community values regarding health and social welfare that determined the isolation of the poor, elderly, infirm and diseased from the mainstream of society.