'First whites' on Old Woman Island tried to claim for surf club
MEET the sole survivor of a group of blokes believed to be the first 'white people' to spend the night on Mudjimba's Old Woman Island.
Sunshine Coast
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MEET the sole survivor of a group of blokes believed to be the first "white people" to spend the night on Mudjimba's Old Woman Island.
Ken Chadwick was 18 in 1946 when he and group of friends and lifesavers from the Mooloolaba Surf Club decided after the busy December holiday period to explore new territory.
They set their sights on Old Woman Island, about 10km off shore from Mooloolaba and borrowed one of the club's old training boats, the "Spray".
This would make them the first members of a surf club to ever set food on Old Woman's Island and possibly the first white men.
They thought they could perhaps even claim the island for the Mooloolaba Surf Club.
But what happened to the "motley" crew of six adventurers would become the subject of local folklore years later.
Their account, written up in the Mooloolaba Surf Club's book on its 50th anniversary in 1997, read more like fiction than fact.
Mr Chadwick told how the group took "bottles of milk and rum and bread and rum and baked beans and rum" as sustenance for the journey.
"Really everything we needed," Mr Chadwick wrote.
Arthur Murray accompanied the group on a surf ski and 70 years later Mr Chadwick still remembered what good fortune that was.
"I don't know if we would have worked out a way to get on shore if Arthur hadn't been there," he said.
It was "lovely weather" the day they set out and it didn't take long for the intrepid blokes to arrive on the island.
They spent the afternoon "exploring" the island where they found mutton bird nests and caught a few birds which they plucked and cooked for dinner over an open fire.
They also found a beautiful lagoon to swim in.
Back in those days, there weren't apps to do a quick weather check and while they set out in good weather, it quickly changed overnight.
By the next day, the "wind was howling to cyclonic proportions," Mr Chadwick said.
And then it began to rain.
By daylight, the waves were up and roaring in masses and they had little hope of getting out or being smashed.
But there were also no mobile phones in 1946 and there were certainly no phones on Old Woman Island.
The men took a vote and decided they would have to take their chances and row out of there.
Surviving getting off the island was one thing, but then they had to face the full force of the wind.
"In 30 minutes we'd gone about 100 yards," Mr Chadwick recalled.
"The swell and the wind were too much," he wrote.
They considered going for Coolum Beach, or Noosa, but "there was no David Low Way" in those days.
As the men pondered their fate, they saw a boat.
The night before, while still having fun, they'd set off a rescue beacon from the island to let people know they had arrived safely.
Those on land thought they were in trouble and sent out a rescue boat and thank goodness they had.
The crew received a safe tow home to a crowd cheering on the beach.
Mr Chadwick said they all wanted to crawl into a rock and hide from the embarrassment. They also received a reprimand from the Mooloolaba Surf Club committee for putting their lives and others at risks as well as surf club property.
Mr Chadwick said all the mates who had joined him on the trip of a lifetime had since died and so much had changed on the Sunshine Coast since then.
As for claiming the island for the surf club, even this feat didn't go as planned.
One of the group, George Walker, was supposed to "claim the island for the Mooloolaba club" by placing a beach umbrella in the club colours instead of a flag on its shores.
Unfortunately, the flag/umbrella bearer stumbled and ended up a "tangled mass of arms, legs, arse and beach umbrella (partly opened".
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