James Morrill (castaway)

He survived a journey in a makeshift raft to the mainland near where the modern city of Townsville is now situated, and was taken in by a local clan of Aboriginal Australians.

Morrill is regarded as the first white man to have resided permanently in North Queensland and is one of only a few European people to have lived for an extended period completely within traditional Aboriginal culture.

In 1844, Morrill went to London and was induced to sign up to sail aboard the troopship HMS Ramillies which was bound for Australia carrying soldiers of the Royal Artillery and the 11th and 99th Regiments.

A raft equipped with a sail was constructed and the remaining 21 people were placed on board with only a few tins of meat and a small keg of water as provisions.

[2] The raft and its occupants set off in an attempt to reach safety, supplementing their meagre rations with rainwater and fish and bird meat.

After two years, the boy, the captain and his wife had died and Morrill, now the only survivor of the shipwreck, became lonely and returned to live with the clan at Mount Elliot.

Another report was given to them of how a lot of white and black people on horseback were "shooting down" the Port Denison tribe which Morrill had lived with previously.

[2] By this stage it was 1863 and Morrill decided to shift away south from the Mount Elliot tribe to live on the Burdekin River where he thought he would be better placed to approach one of the British colonisers.

It was decided that the best means of survival of both Morrill and the Mount Elliot tribe was for him to approach the newly formed Jarvisfield sheep station established by Edward Spencer Antill, and try to make contact with some of the stockmen.

From this position he yelled out "What cheer, shipmates" to some stockmen in a hut, who seeing a naked "red or yellow man standing on the rails", came out armed with a firearm.

The bread got stuck in his throat and the tea was too sweet with Morrill later writing that he wasn't hungry anyway because he and his tribe had caught and feasted on 20 small wallabies earlier that day.

The next morning Morrill had an emotional farewell to the tribe he had lived with for most of the previous 17 years and he struggled to overcome "the feeling of love I had for my old friends and companions."

He offered to act as a sort of liaison officer between the local Aboriginal people and the British to try and change a system that "so practically and so persistently insisted upon the destruction of the native".

[5] This offer was rejected by the colonial authorities,[6] with one settler warning he would "give a small piece of lead" in Morrill's direction if he tried to implement amicable relations toward Aboriginal people in the vicinity of his squattage.

He was utilised by George Elphinstone Dalrymple in his 1864 expedition to Rockingham Bay where he was told to convey the message to the local Aboriginal people that they had come "to occupy the land and would shoot any who approached."

He took a job as a warehouse keeper and looked after the churchyards at Bowen, and in September 1864 he married a domestic servant by the name Eliza Ross.