page_title: Joskeleigh Cemetery
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Joskeleigh Cemetery / History
caption_attribution_description: English: South Sea Islanders clearing land at Farnborough Yeppoon 1895
context_page_description: Joskeleigh Cemetery is a heritage-listed cemetery at Joskeleigh Road, Joskeleigh, Shire of Livingstone, Queensland, Australia. It was built from 1890s to 1900s. It is also known as Sandhills Historical South Sea Islander Cemetery. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992.
context_section_description: The use of the area that became the Joskeleigh Cemetery was established on privately owned land at Sandhills/Joskeleigh by the late 1890s/early 1900s by the local South Sea Islander community. By 1983 there were fifth-generation descendants of the original cane workers brought to the Rockhampton district in the late 19th century living in the Joskeleigh area.
  In the period 1863–1904, South Sea Islanders were the principal labour force in Queensland's sugar industry, and until about 1880 also worked in the pastoral and maritime industries. Approximately 50,000 Islanders took up indentures to work in Queensland in this period, many signing up more than once. Following federation of the Australian colonies in 1901 and the resultant triumph of the "White Australia" movement, the new Australian Government passed the Pacific Island Labourers Act of 1901, which proclaimed that the recruiting of South Sea Islands labour was to cease from 1904 and that as many Islanders as possible were to be repatriated by 1907. Between 1904 and 1908, 7,068 Islanders were repatriated and another 194 were deported in 1914. However, between 2,000 and 2,500 Islanders were exempt from repatriation and acquired Australian citizenship. In the late 1990s their descendants number around 15,000.
  In Queensland, Islanders were introduced firstly as labour in the cotton industry and on pastoral properties, and later to work on the sugar plantations along the coast. Clearing the land before planting the sugar cane. In the Rockhampton area, extensive sugar plantations were established in the Yeppoon, Farnborough, Cawarral, and Joskeleigh districts. Sugar was first tried at the Sand hills by Mr Joske (after whom Joskeleigh is named) but the land was too arid. The Yeppoon Sugar Plantation employed up to 180 South Sea Islander workers, both men and women.
  When forcible repatriation of Islanders was introduced by the Commonwealth Government in the early 1900s, the Islander population around Rockhampton comprised 79 island born, 47 Queensland born, and 8 married women not liable to deportation. No children were to be sent back, and of the island born all but 23 had lived in Queensland for more than 20 years and so could claim exemption from deportation. Of these 23, five were married to women who did not come from their own island, and so were permitted to remain, and the other 18 were able to stay because they were mostly earning their own living on land they either owned or leased.
  The majority of Islanders who chose to stay in Central Queensland settled in the Keppel Sands (originally Sandhills) area at Joskeleigh, which has a beach frontage of several kilometres and is the nearest ocean beach to Rockhampton. By 1914 the population was estimated at 200. The Joskeleigh School was established in 1915, and by the 1930s the population had peaked at around 250-300. The community estimates that the Islander population had a 10% intermarriage rate with an Aboriginal tribe which lived in the area until the 1930s, when the last of these Indigenous people were forcibly removed to reserves.
  The Islander community first rented land from Bill Cuff, the Sandhills storekeeper, for a nominal 2/6 per year, and on this they built thatched huts of blady grass in the traditional manner, with Tea Tree Bark and traditionally made rope from the wild hibiscus bark. The Islanders soon became self-sufficient by growing crops and market gardens to provide food and an income for their families. Their families grew up there and soon began buying their own blocks of land south of Mr Cuff's who first invited the South Sea Islanders to the Sandhills. He originally worked at the Yeppoon Sugar Plantation Sugar Mill at Farnborough. When the mill ceased to operate in 1904 he invited some of the Islanders who worked on the plantation to work for him on his newly purchased acreage. Another land owner, Alexander Charles Huth sold them some of his land. They worked for him in his gardens and with their earnings paid for their land.
  Traditional skills in fishing, net-making, medicine, horticulture and
caption: Kanakas working in Farnborough, 1895
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