Introduction - The Great Barrier Reef: An Environmental History - page 11

been recorded reliably in documentary sources. Therefore, my research focuses
on broad-scale, discrete, observable, physical changes in the Great Barrier Reef
and neglects many other changes that may have occurred. Nonetheless, there can
be little doubt that those human impacts that dominate this narrative constitute
environmental changes; those activities represent the use of resources, and the
modification of habitats, on an unprecedented scale in the Great Barrier Reef.
In addition to the limitations imposed by the scope of my research, several
other limitations also require some explanation. My study was constrained by
difficulties in obtaining suitable oral history evidence, particularly in recruiting
informants who could recall visiting the Great Barrier Reef prior to the Second
World War. Informants were most easily recruited in northern Queensland
(particularly in the Cairns and Townsville areas), where the Great Barrier Reef
lies in closer proximity to the mainland. The greater concentration of tourism
activities in the Cairns, Townsville and Whitsunday areas also biased the
geographical coverage of oral history evidence, for more informants encountered
the Great Barrier Reef in those areas than elsewhere. Several periods of dedicated
fieldwork were undertaken - including visits specifically to under-represented
locations in central and southern Queensland - and telephone interviewing was
also used, in an attempt to recruit informants from locations for which the oral
history record was sparse.
Another limitation of my research is the uneven geographical coverage of
the documentary sources describing the Great Barrier Reef. In particular, the
Capricorn-Bunker Group of the Great Barrier Reef is comparatively well-
documented in historical topics, leaflets, films and Queensland Government
reports and records, reflecting the earlier popularity of the Capricorn-Bunker
Group for tourism, scientific research and naturalism in comparison with the
more remote, northern parts of the Great Barrier Reef. The relative scarcity
of documents describing the northern region hindered the cross-referencing of
sources for this area, as there were locations for which oral histories could not
be supported by documentary sources and vice versa. However, the variability
in geographical coverage of documentary materials underlines the fact that
European access to, and uses of, the Great Barrier Reef varied markedly along
the coast of Queensland; as a result, different parts of the Great Barrier Reef
inevitably have different environmental histories.
My research also faced limitations relating to the use of archival materials.
McLoughlin (1999, 2000) described some of the difficulties in using archival
materials in environmental research, and I encountered similar problems in
my research. For example, the sequence of archival files of the Queensland
Department of Harbours and Marine (QDHM) relating to coral mining in
the Great Barrier Reef begins and ends abruptly, with some obvious omissions;
it is likely that other, similar files were lost when the departmental offices in
Brisbane were inundated during the Australia Day floods of 27 January 1974.
The administration of the Great Barrier Reef prior to the formation of the
GBRMP was complex, involving six different Commonwealth and Queensland