Fraser Island now officially K’gari

K’gari has been formally reinstated as the name of a Queensland island in a ceremony attended by the state’s leader and traditional owners.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk yesterday joined the Butchulla Aboriginal Corporation on the world’s largest sand island, formerly known as Fraser Island.

K’gari, the white spirit who was sent down from the sky to help make the land and the seas, was officially welcomed home by generations of Butchulla people and guests.

‘‘It was through disrespect to the Butchulla people that her name, K’gari – the home of the Butchulla people – was taken away,’’ the corporation’s chairperson, Gayle Minniecon, said.

‘‘Thankfully, it is now through respect to the Butchulla people that K’gari, her name, has been reclaimed. Our oral history, our creation story, will now be told and learnt as it should be.’’

In 1836, after the ship her husband captained was wrecked on the reef, Eliza Fraser and several

sailors landed by leaking lifeboat on the island. Butchulla people fed the shipwrecked visitors and attempted to integrate them into the community, assigning them food preparation and other tasks and trying to treat their sunburn.

Captain Fraser did not survive and is variously described as dying from disease, malnutrition or wounds from being speared.

Some of the other sailors made it to the colony and sent a rescue party for Mrs Fraser.

When Mrs Fraser arrived in the colony, she told authorities that she had been tortured and

kept as a slave, writing an account – debunked by other survivors – that depicted Aboriginal people as barbaric, cannibalistic savages.

Over the following decades, the colony massacred Butchulla people, rounded up survivors and forced them onto missions.

Mrs Fraser parlayed her misadventures into a lucrative speaking career, embellishing and changing her story multiple times after she remarried and returned to the United Kingdom.

Palaszczuk said as Queensland moved towards treaty with Abor