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Cow and Calf Islands
HISTORY
Cow and Calf Islands (Long Island Sound)
In March 1843 HMS Fly commanded
by Lieutenant F. P. Blackwood, RN, anchored in Port Molle and on
25 March Blackwood and the ship's naturalist, J. Beete Jukes, took the
ship's boat to explore the head of the port and found it opened into the passage
today known as Long Island Sound. They spent that night camped 'on a
little rocky island at the opening of this strait' which Blackwood's
charts show to be the larger of the two islets now known as Cow and Calf
Islands (Jukes, J.B.Narrative of the Surveying Voyage of HMS Fly London
1847).
Thus this pair of islands entered the history books but at that time they were not named and had to await the arrival in 1933 of Lieutenant Commander C. G. Little, RAN, in HMAS Moresby whose charts show he gave them their somewhat unromantic name which arises from the close proximity of the two islands and the larger size of one. Names of this nature are common, for example, Hen and Chickens, Sow and Pigs, Finger and Thumb.
In 1970 both islands were declared national parks.
The Information on the Whitsunday Islands is reproduced by kind permission of Mr. Ray Blackwood from his book: " The Whitsunday Islands An Historical Dictionary ".
Please visit his site here. It is well worth the time!