John Busst

In 1934 Busst followed Jorgensen to Eltham, an outer suburb of Melbourne, which had attracted artists since the early 1900s, to help build the community of painters, sculptors, musicians and crafts-people later known as Montsalvat.

[1] Mission Beach, Bingil Bay, Dunk and Bedarra Islands remained relatively undeveloped during the first half of the twentieth century, due to their isolation and frequent destructive cyclones.

In 1957 John and Alison Busst sold their home on Bedarra Island and moved to Bingil Bay on just less than 10 acres (4ha) which extended to the beach with views over the Coral Sea and Great Barrier Reef.

He employed a local builder to erect the shell of the building using bricks from the Silkwood Brickworks, and then used bamboo, an exotic that had been planted in the district in the nineteenth century, to create decorative ceiling features, architraves and fittings throughout the residence and to make furniture.

Patricia Clare, who visited the Busst's new home at Bingil Bay in the 1960s, later wrote:[1][4]"The white house stood on its own cliff, the rainforest behind it, and in front the satin shine of blue water stretching away to where the reefs of lime lay hidden.

Busst observed large areas of rainforest being felled for sugar and banana cultivation and cattle, with subsequent wet season rain pouring topsoil out into the ocean.

This resulted in pesticides, nutrients and phosphates being flushed out to sea and onto the Great Barrier Reef, which was also under pressure from unsustainable fishing practices and infestations of the crown-of-thorns starfish (Acanthaster planci).

He attracted wide press coverage for the case and enlisted the help of his long-time friend Prime Minister Harold Holt who, after being introduced to Bingil Bay by John Busst, built a holiday home nearby.

Busst wrote to both Harold Holt and Opposition Leader Gough Whitlam proposing a moratorium on drilling on the reef and their support for a tropical marine science research centre for Townsville.

In March 1970 an oil tanker ran aground in the Torres Strait and an alarmed federal government upgraded the Inquiry to the Royal Commission into Exploratory and Production Drilling for Petroleum in the Area of the Great Barrier Reef.

[1] During these campaigns waged in the 1960s to conserve Queensland's Great Barrier Reef and its tropical rainforests, Busst's house at Bingil Bay, Ninney Rise, became a centre for the movement.

It hosted a range of influential visitors, including: politicians such as Harold Holt; noteworthy scientists such as marine biologist Dr Don McMichael, Japanese ornithologist Dr Jiro Kikkawa, rainforest ecologists Len Webb and Geoff Tracey, and United States marine collector and littoral zoologist Eddie Hegerl and his dive team; numerous conservation workers; and author Judith Wright.