| Quail Island | |
| Pushpin Map: | Australia Victoria |
| Pushpin Relief: | 1 |
| Pushpin Map Caption: | Location in Victoria |
| Location: | Southern Victoria, Australia |
| Total Islands: | 1 |
| Area Ha: | 1000 |
Quail Island is the third-largest island in Australia's Western Port, after Phillip Island and French Island. The island was listed on the Register of the National Estate, and its wetlands are listed on the Ramsar Convention.[1]
Quail Island is about in area,[2] though earlier news reports claimed that it was much larger, up to .[3] Quail Island is connected to the mainland at low tide. North of the island, a tidal creek connects Watson Inlet and Rutherford Inlet. The island itself is uninhabited, the entirety of it being gazetted as Quail Island Nature Conservation Reserve, and in January 2016 as the North Western Port Nature Conservation Reserve. Mangrove surrounds the island, and on its western shore there is a wide salt marsh. There is an undisturbed topography area of Cranbourne sands, and behind the mangroves there are sandy spits and beaches. The island's eastern coastline is offshore from Warneet, from which it may be accessed by boat.[4] There are two seasonal dams located in the centre, one of which was about long.
Fauna on the island include the southern brown bandicoot, Caspian tern, ruddy turnstone, red fox, and European rabbit. In 2008, a pregnant feral pig was illegally released onto the island, possibly by a hunter; the population grew to about 12–16 pigs by 2018. The pigs caused significant environmental damage, as they preyed on local fauna and their wallowing disturbed the salt marshes. In 2019, Parks Victoria, funded by the Victorian government and the Australian Government's National Landcare Program, escalated efforts to remove all the pigs from the island[5] through poison baiting and shooting. No pigs had been spotted on the island one year later. The island was also once host to a significant, but ill-fated, population of koalas.
Since the 1860s, Quail Island was used for grazing. A bridge was built to the mainland around this time -- possibly in response to an 1865 article in The Argus recounting a near-death by a housekeeper of Quail Island station:[6]
Throughout the 1880s, several people suggested that Quail Island be used for "turning out partridges and other game," for military purposes, and, in 1909, as a labour site for unemployed men, though none of these proposals happened. Near the turn of the 20th century, then-chief inspector of fisheries and game Frederick Lewis asked the Land Department to turn the island into a preserve, calling it a refuge for wildlife and citing the variety of fauna on the island: "silver gulls, kangaroos, magpies, opossums, plover, bronze-winged pigeons, quail, wallabies and black swans." On 13 March 1928, due to Lewis's urging, the island was declared a sanctuary. The West Australian wrote in 1933 that the island had thus become the world's only native such settlement "where animals are permitted to thrive undisturbed in their natural sanctuary."
Lewis took a particular interest in koalas and their potential extinction. In 1930, 165 koalas were transferred to Quail Island from French Island, where the animals had been introduced several decades prior. However, many koalas reportedly died in a 1936 fire, believed to be set by a farmer, and in later years contradictory accounts were released about the animals' well-being.[7] A particularly sensational report by writer and photographer Ronald Monro recounted a scene of near-bare trees and near-starving koalas:
This account was seized upon by naturalists, but authorities including Lewis argued that the koalas were, in fact, healthy. In 1944, a film of Quail Island's dismal conditions was shown in a Melbourne theatre. Herbert Hyland, then the Chief Secretary of Victoria, denounced the film, calling it misleading, and the government even made efforts to suppress and censor the film so that people outside Australia would not see it. The authorities finally conceded, and in 1944, 1,308 living koalas were captured and taken off Quail Island. The island's koala population never reached its 1930s peak again.