Watson, Mary, 1860-1881

Mary Watson, nee Phillips, was born on 17 January 1860 at Fiddler's Green, Newlyn, in Cornwall, the natural daughter of Mary Phillips and Thomas Oxnam. The family emigrated to Australia in 1877, living first at Maryborough. When the family moved to Rockhampton, Mary decided to go to Brisbane in answer to an advertisement for the position of a governess to the two children of a Mr Bouel. Bouel owned a hotel in Cooktown and Mary was also asked to play the piano at Bouel's hotel. There she met Robert Watson, who, with his partner Percy Fuller, ran a beche-de mer fishing business at Lizard Island on the Barrier Reef, 35 kilometres from the mainland.

After marrying Bob Watson on 30 May 1880, Mary accompanied her husband to Lizard Island along with Fuller, a Mr. Green, two Chinese workmen, Ah Leong and Ah Sam, and South Sea Islander labourers. Her younger sister Carrie also stayed with the Watsons at Lizard Island for a few months. From January 1881 Mary Watson kept a diary in which she recorded in short entries the day's events and weather conditions, the varying fortunes of her husband's fishing business and her attempts to fashion some sort of life in her new environment.

When pregnant, Mary Watson returned to Cooktown on 25 March 1881 where she lived in a rented cottage. On 3 June 1881 she gave birth to a son and named the boy Thomas Ferrier. Mary returned to Lizard Island with her baby on 29 June 1881.

Due to poor fishing around Lizard Island, Bob Watson and Percy Fuller decided to try out new fishing grounds 200 km to the north, leaving Lizard Island on 1 September 1881. Reluctant to leave the island with her baby, Mary stayed on with her two Chinese servants Ah Leong and Ah Sam.

On 29 September, four weeks after Watson and Fuller had left, Aborigines, who had in the past also regularly visited the island, attacked the farm and killed Ah Leong. The Aborigines returned on 1 October and wounded Ah Sam with seven spears. The next day Mary, her baby and Ah Sam left Lizard Island in a cut-down ship's tank that had been used to boil beche-de-mer. Mary left her diary in the hut but continued to write daily entries in another notebook.

They drifted and paddled in the tank for four days. Finally they pulled the tank up among the mangroves on No. 5 Island in the Howick Group. They were unable to find any water on the island and five days later, on 10 October 1881, with Ah Sam already dying, Mary made her last entry in her makeshift journal: "No water. Nearly dead with thirst." The bodies of Mary Watson, her son Ferrier and Ah Sam were not discovered until 22 January 1882 when the beche-de-mer schooner Kate Kearney put into No. 5 Island of the Howick Group. The bodies were taken back to Cooktown and a week later a public funeral was held for all three. In 1886 public subscription provided funds to erect a memorial to Mary Watson in the main street of Cooktown.