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his lease to Crowther, who continued the operation (Walsh, 1987, pp30-2;
QNPWS, 1999a, p5). After its extraction from the island, the guano was dried,
broken down and collected into sheds before being loaded onto barges, and a
system of tramways, sheds and moorings for the barges was constructed. The
impact of guano mining on the island was severe; a layer more than 2.5 metres
thick was removed from the surface of the island. More than a century later, in
1971, the Secretary of the GBRC stated that the vegetation of the island had
still not recovered from intensive disturbance as a result of guano mining, and
up to half the area of the cay may have been eroded following the removal of
vegetation remained. Heatwole (1984, p39) also found that the environment
of Lady Elliot Island had been significantly disturbed by guano mining: most of
the vegetation and surface material had been removed by the industry and 'old
diggings, tramways, washing mounds and wells' were still detectable. Indeed,
Heatwole (1984, p41) concluded, 'Lady Elliot Island's prime ecological value is
as a reminder of how destructive uncontrolled human activities can be to a coral
cay, and of how prolonged those effects can be'.
After the operation at Lady Elliot Island ceased in 1873, a break apparently
occurred in guano mining. However, a decade of further, intensive guano mining
took place from 1890-1900. During that period, several other islands were mined
in the Capricorn-Bunker Group, and mining also commenced at Raine Island.
Previously, during his visit to Raine Island in 1844, Jukes (1847, p266) had
commented on the enormous numbers of birds on the island, which produced 'a
vast deposit of guano little inferior in quality and value to the famous Peruvian
variety'. In 1865, Crowther was issued with a licence to remove guano from
Raine Island for seven years; his lease was subsequently transferred to the Anglo-
Australian Guano Company and it was renewed in 1871 (Golding, 1979, pp80,
82). Some uncertainty exists about whether guano mining occurred at Raine
Island during the period between the issue of that licence and the commercial
operation that commenced in 1890; Loch (1984, p183) claimed that, although
leases for guano mining were granted for Raine Island as early as 1862, the island
was not mined at that time because of doubts about the commercial viability of
the guano deposits.
While the activities of the earlier period are uncertain, many documentary
sources indicate that intensive guano mining took place at Raine Island from
1890-1892. The operations, carried out by J. T. Arundel and Company, under
the management of Albert Ellis, employed a large indentured labour force - of
approximately 100 Chinese and Malay workers - and ten European supervisors
(Lawrence and Cornelius, 1993, p5). The huts, tramway, locomotive and jetty were
installed at that time in order to transport 'tens of thousands of tons of phosphate'
from the island to the ships (Hopley, 1988, pp34-5; Loch, 1994, p183). By 1892,
however, the mining ceased and the huts, tramway and jetty were removed from
the island. A depression, created by the open cast mining, remained in the centre
of the island, which is still visible and appears on modern maps (Limpus, 1978,
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