Other impacts on coral reefs - The Great Barrier Reef: An Environmental History - page 190

and seabird populations of the island. One report by a National Parks Ranger,
describing the condition of the island before the Second World War, stated that:
One section of Fairfax Island was thickly timbered with Pisonia umbellifera ,
Pandanus pendunculatus , and Casuarina (Oak); […] bird life is very plentiful
on this island and during the time of his visit the brown gannet were nesting
there in thousands; and […] the island is also the nesting place of the mutton
bird during the nesting seaso n. 10
Yet when the Queensland Government Ichthyologist, Mr T. C. Marshall,
visited Fairfax Island shortly after 1945, he commented that the gannet rookery
there 'was not one tenth its pre-war size when you could hardly move among the
thousands of nests without stepping upon one of them', and he attributed the
decline of the bird population to naval bombing practices during the war . 11
In October 1953, another report, by C. Roff, described the effects of bombing
practice at Fairfax Island. Roff stated that:
Large numbers of the brown gannet, Sula leucogaster , are breeding on the
island […]. Birds continue to sit on nests whilst aircraft roar overhead and
rockets explode. […] The gannets still extensively use the island although it
has been used as a target area since 1943, and in some instances, apparently
during the war years, was actually bombed and shelled. (This is evidenced,
in the aerial photograph attached, by the old craters on the right end of the
larger of the two islands) . 12
Although Roff did not observe evidence of disturbance to the sea-bird populations,
his report refers to changes to the morphology of the islands: the craters formed
as a result of the bombing and shelling. The disturbance caused to the islands by
bombing and shelling - and evidence of the repeated breaching of Fairfax Reef -
has been acknowledged by Hopley (1982, pp341-2).
Another account of the impacts of bombing at Fairfax Island contains
additional evidence of the formation of large bomb craters and the destruction
of vegetation; that report of April 1954, by Mr D. Jolly, contained the following
description:
As the result of the bombing and shelling of the National Park by the Navy,
there are some large shell craters at the eastern portion of the island in which
an elephant could be buried. Fortunately this area is treeless. On the western
portion of the west island are some bomb craters near and among the trees.
After the attack on the island by the Navy the trees were almost stripped of
leaves . 13
Further bombing of Fairfax Island occurred in August and September 1963,
and notification of further bombing and shelling exercises was issued to mariners