Sweers Island
Coordinates: 17°06′04″S 139°37′10″E / 17.101131°S 139.619398°E
Sweers Island is an island in the South Wellesley Islands in the Gulf of Carpentaria, Queensland, Australia. It is within the Shire of Mornington.
Sweers Island is approximately 8 kilometres long. It is located 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) east of Bentick Island (the largest island in the South Wellesley Islands) and 70 kilometres (43 mi) north from Burketown on the Queensland mainland.
The island was named by explorer Matthew Flinders on 16 November 1802 after Salomon Sweers, a council member of the East India Company at Batavia who was one of those who instructed Abel Tasman to explore the Gulf of Carpentaria in 1644. Flinders was circumnavigating the Australian continent in the sloop HMS Investigator to map the coastline and establish if Australia was a single island or whether there were two or more islands (the Gulf of Carpentaria and the Great Australian Bight were suspected to be the entrances to straits between the islands).
Robert Towns established Burketown in 1865 as a base for his extensive holdings in the Gulf Country. Burketown's development was limited due to the extent of tropical diseases suffered by its inhabitants. When a ship "Margaret and Mary" arrived in Burketown from Sydney carrying a fever (possibly typhoid), the majority of those on board died at Burketown. In the belief that Burketown was inherently unhealthy, William Landsborough evacuated most of the survivors to Sweers Island for 18 months, with only a further two people dying. Towns and Co then traded wool, tallow, hides and skins between Sweers Island and Batavia in October 1868.
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