A Queensland historian has uncovered a colonial “historical mystery” that has baffled historians, journalists, authors and researchers for 160 years. The mystery that kept Authors writing is that of 13-year-old Barbara Crawford Thompson’s dramatic struggle to survive on an island inhabited by head-hunting cannibals during the 1840s.
Her story was hushed up by both Australian officials and her family after Captain Owen Stanley and men from the British survey ship HMS “Rattlesnake” rescued her in Evans Bay, near the tip of Cape York, Australia. After her return to society, Barbara went largely unnoticed and for the next 160 years little was known of her history, except for her time on Prince of Wales Island. [Murralagh Island] living like a tribal native.
Very little was written about her childhood or about her family and her trip to Australia, and finding information about how she came to be abandoned also proved almost impossible. “Wildflower” author The Barbara Crawford Thompson Story finally took a break [23 years] to do an in-depth study of Barbara Crawford’s past. What she found during her research has amazed not only the author but also those associated with the writing of the book.
The book created a modern history in October 2007 when it was found in Perth. [Western Australi] Library for a descendant of the eldest of the three missing girls [Mary Crawford] who explained that the two older girls had indeed been hired as maids in March 1843 and had gone to Albany [WA] where they married and had twenty-three children between them. This finding proved to the author that his heroine had also been hired as a domestic worker and had not absconded as previously believed.
The book gained wonderful notoriety when it was discovered by the BBC’s Ray Mears Goes Walkabout Show in November 2007, just three months before the book was published.