Mary Watson

Mary Beatrice Watson (17 January 1860 – 1881), was an Australian folk heroine in Queensland. She died aged 21 on a small island of the northern Great Barrier Reef with her son and a servant, after escaping an attack on Lizard Island, where she had settled with her fisherman husband not long before. Watson's story was subsequently retold in numerous newspaper and folk accounts, including heroic poems, usually with little attention given to the Aboriginal and Chinese aspect of the events.

Early life Mary Watson was born at Fiddler's Green outside St Newlyn East near Truro, Cornwall, England on 17 January 1860. The daughter of Mary Phillips and Thomas Oxnam migrated to the colony of Queensland with her family in 1877.

Lizard Island

Robert Watson took her with him to set up a fishing station on Lizard Island, which was otherwise uninhabited. In September 1880, he left Watson, then aged 21, and their four-month old son behind with two Chinese servants known as Ah Sam and Ah Leung,

She was 21 years old and had been married less than eighteen months when she died of thirst on No. 5 Island in the Howick Group now called Watson’s Island north of Cape Flattery in Far North Queensland, Australia, in 1881. She, with her four-month-old baby, Ferrier, and a wounded Chinese workman, Ah Sam, had drifted for eight days and some forty miles in a cut-down ship's water tank, used for boiling sea slugs, after mainland Aboriginal people had attacked her absent husband's bêche de mer station on Lizard Island. Her diary describing their last days was found with their remains in 1882, and Watson became an emblem of pioneer heroism for many Queenslanders.

Attack A few weeks later a party of mainland Aboriginal Guugu Yimithirr (or Dingaal

Remains found

The remains of Watson and her baby were found some months later among the mangroves on No. 5 Howick Island, still in the iron tank, but it has since been estimated as up to 150 victims, innocent of any crime. Police trashed Aboriginal camps and managed to elicit several false confessions to her murder.

Australian painter Alan Oldfield's series of paintings The Story of Mrs Watson, 1881, begun in 1986 and exploring the spiritual dimensions of the events, are now in the permanent collection of the Cairns Art Gallery.

Author Suzanne Falkiner undertook extensive research and collaborated with Oldfield to publish Lizard Island: The Journey of Mary Watson in 2001. Falkiner interviewed Aboriginal people and members of the Chinese community to obtain oral histories of events. Gordon Charlie an elder of the Dingaal people, suggested that the Aboriginal men were not trying to kill Mary, but drive her away from their ceremonial site. Archaeological and anthropological findings have shown that the house was built on ceremonial ground, with ceremonial stone rings found nearby.

The Queensland Museum holds the iron tank, the paddles, and Watson's bible. The John Oxley Library holds her two diaries (her regular diary on Lizard Island and the one she wrote during the voyage in the tank). The diaries are considered a treasure of the State Library of Queensland featured on the John Oxley Library blog.

Mrs Watson's Cottage is a heritage-listed house ruin at Lizard Island National Park, Shire of Cook, Queensland, Australia.

Footnotes