Peel Island (Queensland)

The island is only accessible by watercraft. Dugongs, turtles, dolphins, jellyfish, and sharks are known to inhabit the waters around the island. Horseshoe Bay, with its sandy beach, is popular with boating visitors, and a common overnight anchorage for sailors and sea kayakers. The island is known for its natural environment, with bird and animal life largely undisturbed by pollution. The isolation and limited access to Peel Island has meant that many of the original lazaret buildings still stand in original condition to this day.

Peel Island is situated in the southern half of Moreton Bay on the east coast of Australia, approximately from Brisbane, Queensland, and from the town of Cleveland. The island lies between Cleveland Point and Dunwich on North Stradbroke Island and is fringed with mudflats, seagrass, coral reefs and mangroves. The island covers an area of approximately , and extends for north to south and east to west. Horseshoe Bay, running in an unbroken arc along the southern side of the island, provides clean, sheltered waters for swimming. The northern tip is known as Cucumber Point. The Harry Atkinson Artificial Reef has been constructed to the north of Peel Island, off of Amity Banks. It was established in 1975. More closer in the west is another artificial reef, known as West Peel Artificial Reef. Peel Island has been part of a declared fish habitat zone since 1971.

Peel Island operated as a lazaret from 1907 to 1959. is important to Queensland history because of its social and political significance in terms of state health policy, serving as a reminder of the conditions in which people lived and worked on the island.

The lazaret (lazaretto, leper colony or leprosaria) in Queensland was established to isolate those infected with leprosy. The influx of migrants to Queensland after free settlement brought leprosy, or Hansen's disease, to Australia. Hansen's disease has had a history of forced patient isolation from society, and Queensland's Leprosy Act of 1892 was an example of legislation intended to isolate leprosy patients from the mainland. Before Peel Island was used as a lazaret in 1907, it was used for a number of other purposes by colonial and Queensland governments, as well as being occupied by Aboriginal people. Archaeological studies show evidence of Indigenous occupancy through the presence of several midden sites. Into the 1800s, Peel Island, as well as North Stradbroke Island, was used as a quarantine station by the New South Wales colonial government which "housed persons considered unsuitable for mainstream society". Subsequently, the quarantine station developed into an inebriates' asylum, and then later a lazaret in 1907. Peel Island was used for multiple purposes at any given time by the government, but was specifically chosen over North Stradbroke Island to permanently establish the lazaret. There have been several accounts of patients being trawled behind a charter ship, isolated on a dinghy en route to the island. Because the lazaret was designed around the principle of isolation, each patient was housed in a separate hut, then grouped into three compounds according to gender, race and severity of illness. For many years it was prohibited to remove the bodies of patients who had died on the island, making it necessary for them to be buried there.

Boredom was a real issue for patients on Peel Island. Whilst staff could freely leave the island, patients were confined there – often for many years – without a release date. Patients, mostly men, would often go fishing or do some gardening to pass the days. In 1925, the island's first multi purpose medical facility was built, and the first hospital building followed in 1937. It was not until 20 years after the opening of the lazaret on Peel Island that the first medical treatment building (a surgery) was erected, and electricity was not available on the island until 1948 – 17 years after it was available on the mainland. A subsequent list was published in 1921 during his 18th year at the lazaret. In 1937, after the disease had slowly attacked his limbs and optic nerves, Noel Laddie Agnew died on Peel Island at the age of 41. Her memoir, The Lost Years: A Story of Leprosy, documents her experiences as a sufferer of Hansen's disease, and details her period on the island between 1956 and mid 1958. She was the only patient to have written a personal account about her experiences, which includes descriptions of her time on the island and the difficult daily living conditions there, as well as her experiences from her personal life and encounters off of the island. Her account describes her relationship with the nursing and medical staff on the island. The memoir mentions the Queensland government's non payment of a pension to women sufferers of Hansen's, while male patients did receive it. During this time, many medical professionals believed that a good diet and a stress free lifestyle was more likely to send the disease into remission. In January 1947, Peel Island patients were treated with the first of several sulfone derivative drugs, which were developed in the United States. The Queensland Health Department’s decision to allay public fears about the disease by isolating patients backfired, leading the public to believe the disease was worse than it actually was. Rosemary Opala described the island as "folklore" where "the mystery, however, gothic fiction|gothic, is so much more romantic and aesthetically satisfying." By this time, many of the original prejudices about Hansen's disease had been overcome, and fear surrounding the disease had somewhat vanished. Today, several drugs are available that counteract symptoms of Hansen's disease such as nerve damage, deformity, disability and further transmission. Researchers are also working on vaccines to prevent the disease, as well as early detection.

In 1993, Peel Island was recognised for its outstanding cultural heritage, and was consequently placed on the Queensland Heritage Register and the former Register of the National Estate. In December 2007, Peel Island was declared as Teerk Roo Ra (Place of Many Shells) National Park and Conservation Park.