Westernport's two biggest islands are French and Phillip Islands. Do you know the third and fourth largest? They are in the northwest corner of the bay, either side of the Rutherford Inlet, and there is precious little known about them. Then, again, not too much has happened on them, either.
Quail Island is largely surrounded by mangroves and tidal channels, with the exception being the Rutherford Inlet – some people call it Rutherford Creek, but I cannot – on the island's east side.
In March 1866 James Watson rode the 11 miles from Cranbourne, then a small and unimpressive spot, to Quail Island "passing the fences of Mr Cameron's run, skirting the town, and following a track through the thick scrub over low hills to the bight of Western Port."
I believe that Quail Island was so named for the Japanese Snipe that were hunted by local and Melbourne sportsmen, a fast-flying and had-to-shoot little bird. There were once quite a few snipe along the Tarago, too. Even when Quail Island was a horse property I doubt there would have been many, if any, quail on it.
Quail Island was, according to Gunson "a run of 2000 acres…leased by De Arth, a retired sea captain, for many years but in 1907 it reverted to the Crown and was created a sanctuary." Local memories suggest there were many goats left on the island when De Arth left it. He had some stock on it, but was mainly interested in raising horses. The whole island covers 2500 acres, 1000 hectares. In a legal argument between James Wheatley, who had the island in 1864 and Henry Greer, a local landholder, 'Quali Island Station' is described as 1800 acres.
Two years later part of Quail Island was reserved by the Acclimatisation Society – think blackbirds, blackberries, rabbits, deer and other less-that-helpful imports – and in 1867 nine Indian partridges and seven Cape partridges were sent down to Quail Island for release.
The island cannot have been wholly used for acclimatisation of imported species because a number of people held it under licence, including Alexander Hunter, James Ridley and Francis Callanan. He might well have been the last licensee on the island because he had it until 1915, when it was abandoned and reverted to being Crown Land.
Quail Island was swept almost clear by the great fires of 1898. There was a small house on the island and a small jetty, but no sign of these now remains. The housekeeper of the small house on the island once lost her way and could not find the path. She lay down, cold and despairing ready to die, but after three days she was spotted by a surveyor and rescued. I don't know whose house it was, but it must have had a link to De Arth's presence on the island.
The current importance of Quail Island, though it is little known, is as a sanctuary for a very diverse population. It is home to bandicoots and to a range of waterbirds, some of them quite uncommon. It had also ben home to feral pigs, foxes and rabbits, though those populations have been largely eradicated. During the few years before COVID 19 Parks Victoria did wonders in eradicating feral vermin
It was a koala sanctuary from 1907. The island was declared a sanctuary for wildlife and it had a growing koala population. In the 1930s the koala population introduced to French Island had multiplied to the point where settlers were seeking permission to shoot them to save the trees.
Boatloads of koalas were brought across to Quail Island (and to Chinaman Island) with 165 according to one report and 200 according to another. arriving between 1930 and 1923.
In the end a number of koalas were captured and transplanted to Healesville and other places. In the 1950s the Melbourne Zoo was still harvesting Manna Gum branches and trucking them to Melbourne for koalas.
Then, in 1936, a fire swept the island and the koala population suffered dreadfully. There was a great to-do about this, with people saying Quail Island and Chinaman Island provided awful places for koalas and that the population there was starving.
The argument waxed and waned through the 1930s and into the 1940s – conservation is not a new invention – and in 1944 some 1308 koalas were removed from the island. The koalas brought from French Island must have prospered mightily.
We can't mention Quail Island while ignoring its eastern neighbour. Chinaman Island (let's use the name before some politically-correct person demands it be renamed) forms the northeast side of Rutherford Inlet, opposite Quail Island and now linked to it by a common purpose.
Chinaman Island is part of the flora and fauna reserve there now but there is little recorded about its past. Apparently some professional fishermen had a rough camp on it at one time, and there is a persistent story that a team of Chinese fishermen had a camp on the island where they dried the fish they caught, to send them back to China.
This is a recurring theme in our history and it is an example of things that were not 'official' and so fell through the cracks. There is a persistent story about Chinese fishermen drying fish near Port Albert, and one about a Chinese fishing camp at Sealers' Cove. Nothing else much seems to be known – but there is obviously a need for serious research on it.
In 1908 or thereabouts it was considered for closer settlement and even for a labour colony but nothing came of the proposals, probably because access was a real problem.
In 1967 it was proposed that Quail island could become a jetport serving Melbourne and the Peninsula. At that time there was a proposal to build a causeway from Stockyard Point, and to dredge a channel up to the causeway to provide a harbour for commercial shipping.
There also were plans to build a very large power station near the McLeod Prison Farm to serve the industries that were expected to come to the area. None of that happened, of course, but it could have and it is interesting to contemplate what might have happened to the five coastal villages.