Qualla: Brampton Island

Brampton Island: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John Dalton, CC BY-SA 3.0. At low tide, you can walk off Brampton Island. A sand spit reaches across the shallows toward neighbouring Carlisle Island, and for a few hours twice a day the sea pulls back to let you cross between two peaks rising from the Cumberland Group. For decades, holidaymakers came here for exactly that kind of magic - a Queensland island resort with its own airstrip and a fleet of cruise boats. Today the resort is a ruin, the villas standing silent under Brampton Peak while the national park takes the island back, tree by tree.

Read more: Brampton Island on Qualla

Image: John Dalton | CC BY-SA 3.0

Brampton Island: Ngaro Waters

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John Dalton, CC BY-SA 3.0. Long before any resort brochure called it paradise, these waters belonged to the Ngaro people, the Traditional Owners whose seafaring culture ranged across the Whitsunday and Cumberland islands. They navigated this maze of peaks and passages in bark canoes, fishing and moving bet...

Read more: Brampton Island on Qualla

Image: John Dalton | CC BY-SA 3.0

Brampton Island: The Resort That Flew

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Nickj assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0. European settlement began in 1916, when Joseph Busuttin and his family arrived. In December 1933 two of the Busuttin sons opened the island to tourists, welcoming passengers off the P&O ship Canberra. The resort came into its own under the McLean family, who bought the island in ...

Read more: Brampton Island on Qualla

Image: No machine-readable author provided. Nickj assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 3.0

Brampton Island: A Murder Solved by Science

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit user riftreef, [1], CC BY 2.5. Not every story here is a holiday memory. On 1 September 1983, a young British resort worker named Celia Douty was murdered at Dinghy Bay. The case went cold for eighteen years - until 2001, when it became the first murder in Australia solved using DNA profiling, a landmark momen...

Read more: Brampton Island on Qualla

Image: user riftreef, [1] | CC BY 2.5

Brampton Island: Paradise, Abandoned

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Nickj assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0. The resort changed hands again and again - Trans Australia Airlines bought and upgraded it in 1985, Qantas inherited and then sold it to P&O in 1997, and Voyages took it over in 2004. In November 2010 the owners announced a grand redevelopment and closed the doors on 24 January 2...

Read more: Brampton Island on Qualla

Image: No machine-readable author provided. Nickj assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 3.0