The impacts of coral mining - The Great Barrier Reef: An Environmental History - page 165

Furthermore, oral history informants revealed that coral mining occurred at
Snapper Island - a location for which no evidence of a coral licence was found.
Therefore, coral mining may have occurred more extensively than this account
indicates. Oral sources also provided additional details of the process of coral
mining, the infrastructure used in the industry and the impacts that remain in
the landscap e. 1 A lthough it is difficult to reconstruct the ecological impact of an
activity that has long ceased in the Great Barrier Reef, particularly in the context
of multiple impacts and environmental changes, it is nonetheless likely that some
coral reef areas were substantially transformed by coral mining and they now exist
in a highly degraded condition. Other coral reef areas experienced less intensive,
yet nevertheless significant, modifications.
Coral mining in the Great Barrier Reef, 1900-1940
Before coral mining for the manufacture of agricultural and industrial lime
commenced in the Great Barrier Reef, around 1900, lime burning was already
an established practice; the earliest recorded instances of Europeans using shells
or coral gathered from the Great Barrier Reef to produce lime date from the
1840s. Lime for the construction of the navigation beacon at Raine Island had
been obtained in 1844 by burning Tridacna and Hippopus shells; and in 1847, at
the time of settlement of Port Curtis (now Gladstone), an abundance of shells
for lime-burning was reported in the locality (Lawrence and Cornelius, 1993, p4;
Fitzgerald, 1982, p94). Lime was used to make mortar, but burnt coral was also used
as a building material in its own right. In 1864, G. Bowen (1864, p116) informed
the Royal Geographical Society of London that the creation of a new settlement
at Port Albany, Cape York, was facilitated by the presence there of 'large beds of
coral, of the best description for making lime'. Eden (1872) reported collecting
coral to burn for lime from reefs near Cardwell, and in an early description of
Queensland, A. J. Boyd (1882, p28) stated: 'The corals bordering our coasts also
supply inexhaustible deposits of lime'. By 1900, the church at Fitzroy Island had
been built by the Yarrabah Aboriginal Mission using coral taken from the fringing
reef at the island (Figure 11.1). The use of coral as a building material, therefore,
appears to have been an established practice and much larger structures were also
constructed using burnt coral, such as the church at Darnley Islan d. 2 A part from
wood, coral was the most readily available building material for the construction
of buildings on islands with fringing reefs, and it could be easily worked.
Coral mining took place in order to manufacture agricultural lime for the sugar
cane farms on the adjacent coastal land; coral was mined from accessible coral reefs
and cays and burnt as a cheap and chemically pure source of lime (Spencer and
Meade, 1945, p132; King, 1965, pp104, 108; Kerr, 1995, pp92-4). Investigations
by agricultural scientists from the QBSES in the early 1900s had demonstrated
that the soils of the northern coastal sugar producing districts were very acidic as
a result of lime deficiency. By applying lime, it was possible to correct the acidic
condition of the soil, and the lime also contained a rich source of calcium, an