This page designed by
Number of Visitors to this page:
Conway Beach. Lieutenant James Cook named Cape Conway on 3 June 1770 after Henry Seymour Conway (1721Ð 1795) then Secretary of State who is described in the editor's
footnote to Cook's journal as 'an honest and charming man but a better soldier than a General, a better
General than a Statesman'. This however did not prevent Conway eventually becoming a Field Marshall.
From Cook's naming of the cape flowed in time the other Conway names in the area. *The above History is reproduced by kind permission of Mr. Ray Blackwood
from his book The Whitsunday Islands-An Historical Dictionary. Please
visit his site here to find out more
facts, myths and mythunderstandings
of the Whitsundays.
On 9 June 1819 almost 49 years to the day after Cook's naming, Lieutenant P. P. King, RN, and the
botanist Allan Cunningham landed from HMS Mermaid on a Shingley beach in a small bight on the
north side of Cape Conway, King to take bearings, Cunningham to examine the flora. King commented
on the good supply of fresh water behind the beach. Both King's and Cunningham's narratives and
particularly King's sailing directions for the area make it clear this beach is the first small one north of Cape
Conway opposite Ripple Rocks. The small bight King mentions has as its northern headland a distinctive
conical pinnacle of rock on the shore-line which from the north at first appears to be a small island.
The beach is a steeply sloping rampart of pebbles closing off the seaward end of an attractive small valley
which cuts north-west into Cape Conway and along the bed of which flows a sizeable creek of fresh water. At
the seaward end, behind the rampart is a large deep pool of water (the 'Bason' as Cunningham called it)
which varies in size from season to season. It contained brackish water when inspected by the author in
September 1990 and July 1995, but in the wet season would contain fresh water. The stream was referred to
by Cunningham as a 'fine rill' (which indeed it is) which he followed for about one hundred yards and planted
peach and apricot seeds beside it though a cursory examination of the area in September 1990 did not
reveal any descendants of the seeds (King, P. P. Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of
Australia London 1827; Allan Cunningham's journal).
Back