Mary Watson's Monument is a heritage-listed memorial at Charlotte Street, Cooktown, Shire of Cook, Queensland, Australia.

To her contemporaries, she epitomised the self-sacrifice of countless women who were helping to "civilise" the bush, and her youth, her brave struggle to save her infant, and the sad little journal she kept until the end, created an additional pathos and sense of the heroic to her story which captured the public imagination.

Watson returned to Cooktown in March 1881 to await the birth of her first child early in June, and was back on Lizard Island with her baby by July.

On 27 September, a group of mainland Aborigines arrived at Lizard Island, which, according to oral tradition, contained a sacred site in the approximate vicinity of the beche-de-mer station.

It is thought that on 29 September they speared and killed Ah Leong, who was working in the garden approximately quarter of a mile from Watson's dwelling, although his body was never found.

On 30 September, they gathered on the beach below the dwelling, dispersed when Watson fired a rifle and revolver, but returned on 1 October and severely wounded Ah Sam.

Fearing a further attack and lacking any other means of escape, Watson packed a few belongings, food, water and two paddles into a cut-down iron ship's tank used for boiling the beche-de-mer, and set off with Ah Sam and the baby on 2 October.

As Aborigines were camped there, the refugees moved to a reef as soon as the tide was in and on 7 October pulled to No.5 Howick Island which, although it lay along the steamer route, unfortunately lacked fresh water.

A punitive raid was carried out, but historian Geoffrey Bolton suggests the wrong group of Aborigines were dealt with.

[1] In 1885, public subscription was called for a drinking-fountain memorial to Watson, and this was erected with the co-operation of the Cooktown Municipal Council in 1886 at a cost of £165.

The inscription on the western panel reads: Five fearful days beneath the scorching glare Her babe she nursed.

God knows the pangs that woman had to bear, Whose last sad entry showed a mother's care' Then - "Near dead with thirst".

Mary Watson's Monument is significant as an important reminder of the tragedies which accompanied early European settlement in Queensland, and of the lack of communication and understanding between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples during this "frontier" phase of our history.

That the memorial does not commemorate Ah Sam, the young Chinese man who perished with Mrs Watson, is evidence of the disjunctive nature of Queensland's early colonial society, and in the omission, remains a clear illustration of the racist attitudes of the time.

It has heritage value as a good example of its type: a decorative, late 19th century public memorial drinking fountain which encompasses both utilitarian and commemorative functions.

It has aesthetic value, and makes a pleasing contribution to the historic streetscape of Charlotte Street, Cooktown's principal thoroughfare.