Great Keppel Island Who's Who
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Distinguished and Famous people from Great Keppel Island
🌟 James Cook
James Cook sailed through the Keppel group aboard Endeavour in May 1770, recording the names Keppel Bay and the Keppel Islands in his journal. His connection with Great Keppel Island is maritime: he passed through its island group, but did not land on the island itself. The voyage was far from a leisurely cruise. Shallow water forced Cook to anchor and send boats ahead to find a safe passage; at one anchorage, he recorded less than two feet of water beneath the ship. His account also contains a wonderfully ordinary disappointment amid the navigation: despite anchoring in the bay, they caught no fish.
⚓ Lizzie O’Neil, later Leeke, and Ralph Leeke
Lizzie O’Neil and her first husband Michael held a grazing lease on Great Keppel Island from 1918. After Michael’s death, she married fisherman Ralph Leeke in 1924. The surviving Leeke’s Homestead preserves a tangible connection with that pastoral period, before tourism reshaped the island’s economy. This history followed the forced removal of Woppaburra people in the early twentieth century, and should be understood within that wider story of dispossession. The Leekes belong to one later chapter of an island whose human history extends much further back.
