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Fletcher Thomas Fletcher is acknowledged to be the first commercial orchardist, 1889, in the Ballandean district. Fleurbaix Named after a World War I battle in France, 18 July, 1916 Flinders Matthew Flinders came out to Australia with Governor Hunter as a midshipman, 1795. With his friend Dr Bass he explored the coastline south of Sydney, proving that Van Diemen's Land was an island. Then, at his own suggestion, and now a Lieutenant, he was sent north to explore Glass House Bay and Hervey's Bay. One of the features he marked on his chart was a High Peak. Later explorers and settlers referred to that as Flinder's Peak. He revisited England in 1800 and on the way back chartered the southern coastline of the Australian continent. Between 22 July, 1802, and 10 June, 1803, he circumnavigated the continent in a dangerously unfit vessel which after years of service as the Xenophon had been renamed the Investigator. He it was who suggested the name Australia for the continent he had sailed around. But it took some time for the name to be adopted because it met with opposition from the influential Sir Joseph Banks in England and because his return to England was inadvertently delayed. He was a passenger on the Porpoise when it was wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef, and returned to Sydney in an open boat to mount a rescue operation for the other survivors. The Cumberland which was made available to him was barely seaworthy and by the time they got to Mauritius in the Indian Ocean on their way back to England he had to call in for repairs. Britain and France were at war so, as a British naval captain, he was interned by the French on Mauritius Island and had to stay there for six and a half years. His health deteriorated, and he lived only long enough after he got home to put his manuscript through the press. He actually died on the very day in 1814 that the book was publsihed, but he was inconscious and never saw it. Flinders View
gets its name from the visibility of Flinder's Peak from
the area. Forest Hill Many names have come from descriptions of natural features written onto their maps by early explorers. Forest Hill is one of these. It was Alan Cunningham who on his 1829 journey marked a 'forest hill' on his chart. This gave rise to the name of the town which later grew up there. Forestdale Gazetted in June 1987, the name was chosen by the developers for their estate some six years earlier. Fortitude Valley With all the fervor of an evangelist, the Red Dr. John Dunmore Land spent 1846 to 1848 recruiting migrants for Moreton Bay. He worked in competition with the official migration scheme, but his chartered vessel, the Fortitude, arrived a month after the Land and Emigration Commissioner's Artemesia. Although led to believe that they would be given land on arrival, Lang's migrants were denied this. When they came ashore they had nowhere to go and many were almost destitute. They were allowed to form a shanty town out on the slopes of what is now Gregory Terrace and Water Street near the notorious fringe settlement of York's Hollow, close to where the Exhibition Grounds are now. The name Fortitude valley came from that early village of Fortitude migrants. Fraser Island Captain James Fraser, who had been wrecked in Torres Strait in 1830, had his vessel, the Stirling Castle, wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef in 1836. He suffered from a stomach ulcer and nerves, so his wife, Eliza, left her three children in the care of the local minister at Stromness in the Orkneys to sail with her husband. This bossy, handsome, dark-haired, thirty-seven year old woman was on board then when the ship ran aground and broke up. While her husband panicked, she, although heavily pregnant, remained calm and level-headed in the crisis. With the ill-disciplined crew, they took to the open boats - a pinnace and a long boat. Mrs Fraser gave birth in the boat, but the baby died. They rowed for twenty-eight days, the last seven without food or water. One boatload went off on their own. The Frasers came ashore on what is now called after them, Fraser Island. They were stripped by the natives, the men taken away by the men and Eliza taken away by the women. She was forced to be a wet nurse, but was given only scraps of food. She was given the most menial of tasks and suffered badly from insect bites. In the fifth week of her enslavement as she saw her husband trying to drag a heavy log he was speared before her eyes. She was rescued with the help of a runaway convict who was living with the natives. When she arrived in Sydney she was treated as a celebrity and given money to help her through her difficult financial position. But while there she married Captain Alexander John Greene of the Mediterranean Packet. Back in England, people were also invited to subscribe funds to help the woman who was supposed to be a destitute widow. It caused a scandal when it was discovered that she had remarried and was not destitute. She migrated with Greene to New Zealand. She died in Melbourne in 1858, said to have been killed in a carriage accident. Among the indigenous Badtjala people the island was called K'Gari after Princess K'gari the spirit who, in legend, helped make this part of the world and loved it so much that she asked to be allowed to stay there. James Cook thought it was part of the mainland and hence described it as Great Sandy Peninsula, but when Captain William Lawreance Edwardson, in the Snapper, proved that it was an island it became known as Great Sandy Island until its name change in 1842. Place Names of South East Queensland home page
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