Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2014L00095:body:0:p18
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2014L00095
Segment Type: other
Provision Reference: 
Character Range: 45108–47945

Shute Harbour (20º20'21"s, 148º55'48"e) (
Figure 3).

Dent Island is in the Great Barrier Reef, between the Queens­land coast and the outer Reef. It is approximately 1.5 km west of the largest inhabited island in the Whitsundays, Hamilton Island, positioned about midway along the coastline between Brisbane and Cairns. The island has a surveyed area of about 312 ha.

4.2. Geology
Dent Island is a steep island with an undulating coastline rising to rounded hills. The island is dissected by small gullies and has shallow embayments on all sides. In places the shore has been cut into rocky bluffs.   The geology of Dent Island comprises Whitsunday Volcanics, waterlaid acid to intermediate air-fall pyroclastics, minor pyroclastic flows and lava.

4.3. The occupation and use of Dent Island
Government archives contain records of a succession of licences, leases and transfers of property on Dent Island; however, written records of Indigenous occupation are limited.

4.3.1. Indigenous occupation and use
Coppinger (1883) counted 40 or 50 Aboriginal people on Dent Island in 1882 and stated his surprise at the large number of children.  During the early post-contact period Dent Island became a refuge for many Aboriginal people. Blackwood (1997) also reports that about 50 people were living around the Dent Island Lighthouse in the early 1880s. By the 1930s most of the offshore islands were almost completely depopulated of Aboriginal people, with the exception of those people who stayed on to work at islands occupied by European settlers (Farr 1965; Blackwood 1997).

Prior to European contact, the entire Whitsunday region including all the islands had been home to the Gnaro people of the Birri-Gubba nation, at least since the last major sea level rise in the late Pleistocene period (i.e. the end of the last ice age). As a result, Gnaro people have sites of significance to them that are below the current sea level.

Throughout the Whitsunday Islands there are sites of significance such as the petraglyphs of Nara Inlet which show tangible evidence of occupation and use. Unseen, and just as significant, are the intangible sites of significance to the Gnaro people which leave no physical evidence of occupation and use.  It is known that the Gnaro people have visited and occupied all the islands in the region for reasons of subsistence, shelter, seasonal changes in natural resource availability, ceremonial and other reasons. It can be said that the entire Whitsunday region is culturally significant to the Gnaro people.

4.3.2. Lightkeepers, pastoralists and tourists
The lightstation occupies only a small portion of Dent Island and the Queensland government has granted a succession of licenses and leases for the remainder (Blackwood 1997).

From 1905 until 1912 Michael Ahern held an occupation licence over