Wilsons Promontory - Culture and History

The Geology
'The Prom' is comprised of granite which has weathered in places to form the large and interesting rocky outcrops which are sprinkled about the park. Once an island, the accumulation of drifting sand in the sheltered water that separates the island from the mainland is thought to have connected about 100,000 years ago. The promontory is in fact one of the highest points on a batholith (a huge igneous rock deposit) which is 300-km long and, at times, 50-km wide and which links Tasmania to the rest of Australia. Around 15 000 years ago rising sea levels submerged the corridor thus isolating Tasmania as a separate entity.

The History
Wilsons Promontory was known as 'Wamoon' or 'Wamoom' by the Aboriginal peoples who collected shellfish there over 6000 years ago. Middens along the western coast testify to their seafood diet. The Dreamtime stories of Lo-An, Bullum-Boukan, and the Port Albert Frog all make mention of the area.

George Bass sited the promontory on January 2, 1798 from a small whaleboat while on an excursion from Port Jackson. Some sources suggest that Bass named the area in honour of his friend - a London merchant named Thomas Wilson. Others indicate that Wilson was a friend of Matthew Flinders. Another story is that Bass originally called it 'Furneaux's Land' and that the name change was made by Governor Hunter. In any case, Bass returned with reports of plentiful supplies and safe anchorage, as well as 9000 seal pelts and several tons of oil. This initiated a sealing rush which only petered out in the 1830s as the number of animals dwindled. Sealers Cove, on the eastern coast, can still be visited today.

Whaling was also practised from Refuge Cove until that resource also became too scarce for commercial viability in the 1840s. Other industries included quarrying and timber-cutting ceased in the 1850s after another excess of resource destruction, although the mill reopened in the 1880s due to regrowth, which was again depleted by 1906. Tin was discovered near Corner Inlet in the 1870s. However, it was not mined until World War I stimulated demand and it ceased in 1925 with the opening of the Mount Hunter mine.

After visits by naturalists and botanists in 1884, campaigning for governmental protection of the site began competing with cattle interests and settlement plans. As a result The Prom became a national park at the turn of the century. A chalet for tourists and naturalists was built in the 1920s and a training camp for commandos was constructed at Tidal River during the Second World War. The remnants of the latter site were used as the basis for the present visitors' centre. The Yanakie Isthmus, a sandy bar connecting the promontory to the mainland, was added to the park in the 1960s on condition that the seasonal grazing which began in 1852 be allowed to continue. As a result the park now covers 49 000 hectares. It includes thirteen offshore islands and marine reserves around the coast. Cattle enclosures can still be seen near the entrance. Running east to west across the isthmus are two huge sets of dunes known as Big Hummock and The Nobbies which are used as a lookout for the cattle during mustering.

Wilsons Promontory is well-known for its wildlife. There are six or seven hundred species of flora in the rainforests, dry sclerophyll forests, grasslands, heaths, sheltered gullies and along the marine littoral, including tea-trees, banksia, she-oaks now rare in Victoria, pink swamp-heath, silky hakea, saw banksia, yellow stringybark, blue gum, mountain ash, coastal acacia, spinifex and many beautiful wildflowers. Before the logging and a severe bushfire in 1951, which affected the area's animal and plant life, trees 60 metres high and over 7 metres in circumference grew on The Prom.

The fauna includes koalas, which can be found in the trees around the Tidal River camp ground, along the Lilly Pilly Gully walk and around Sealers Cove, grey kangaroos and emus on the Yanakie Isthmus, wallabies at Tidal River, as well as rat kangaroos, New Holland field mice, an unusual burrowing yabbie, wombats, possums, bandicoots, and, on the islands, hog deer, which are now endangered in their native Asian habitats. Birds include crimson rosellas, yellow-winged honeyeaters, wattlebirds, yellow-tailed black cockatoos, lorikeets, silver gulls, oystercatchers, dotterels, white-breasted sea eagles on the coast and the grey thrush. The promontory functions as a feeding ground for international migratory birds and includes endangered species such as the ground and orange-bellied parrots. Thirty shipwreck sites have also been conserved, including that of the Clonmel (see entry on Port Albert).