Impacts on dugongs - The Great Barrier Reef: An Environmental History - page 108

dugong oil, although previously that retailer had purchased large quantities of the
oil. Yet, by 1960, the drug store at Boigu Island reported receiving fresh stocks
amounting to 140 gallons of dugong oil. The following year, two dugong fishers
in Torres Strait reported that the animals had been 'scarce in their area', but
they expected an improvement in their numbers during the north-west monsoon
season, and an order for 100 gallons of dugong oil had been placed. By 1963,
supplies of dugong oil had been replenishe d. 14 Fluctuations in the supply and
demand of dugong oil continued during the 1960s. In 1966, the Deputy Director
of Native Affairs wrote that dugong oil was urgently required at Thursday Island
for medical purposes; by 1970, however, a surplus of dugong oil had accumulated.
In contrast to the abundance of dugong oil in Torres Strait, the product was
reported to be scarce in pharmacist shops in Cairns, although supplies of the oil
could be obtained from Lockhart River Mission, which had for some time boiled
its own stocks of dugong blubber . 15
In 1969, the dugong was legally protected in Queensland waters, and by 1970
the commercial production of dugong oil for Indigenous communities had almost
ceased, with the exception of small quantities of oil traded between several Torres
Strait Islands. In 1970, the remaining stocks of 123 gallons of dugong oil at Boigu
Island were sold. In place of the commercial dugong fishery, the introduction of
a system of permits for Indigenous communities to harvest a limited numbers of
dugongs and marine turtles was receiving consideration; by 1971, arrangements
to allow Indigenous people who did not usually live on Reserves to take thirty
dugongs and sixty turtles in any year were being debated. A small fishery for
dugong oil continued in Torres Strait, and a small trade in dugong oil between
those islands continued until at least 1976, with additional dugong fishing taking
place at Mornington Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria. Nevertheless, the main
period of dugong harvesting had ended.
Indigenous hunting of dugongs
In addition to the commercial fishing of dugongs described above, other harvests
of dugongs have taken place since European settlement, including hunting of
dugongs by Indigenous people (Holmes, 1933; Tilghman, 1933). Some details
of the methods of dugong hunting by Indigenous communities on the east coast
of the Cape York Peninsula have been provided by Smith (1987a, 1987b).
Indigenous hunting of dugongs pre-dates European settlement in Queensland;
that activity also continued throughout the period of European settlement and
after 1969, when the commercial harvest of dugongs was prohibited. Indigenous
hunting of dugongs is recorded in documentary sources since at least 1893, when
Saville-Kent (1893) cited the ethnographic observations of dugong hunting in
the western Torres Strait Islands made by Professor A. C. Haddon. Haddon (1901,
pp148, 151-3) provided additional details of the methods used by Indigenous
dugong hunters from Mabuiag to capture two animals during an earlier hunt,
in October 1888, which exploited extensive fishing grounds at Orman's Reef