Great Keppel Island

Great Keppel Island Who's Who

PUBLIC PROFILE

Theona Combos

Local Resident

Theona

As a fitness coach at Curves in Jamison, I help women with strength, endurance, flexibility and overall fitness. This is what we need to avoid Dementia and aged care for as long as possible. I fundraise for Dementia research and assist young Aussie scientists with their PhDs in the hope that one of them will find the greatly needed cure.

Dementia Demolition Squad. That's what we want to do - demolish dementia from our world. We organise and manage community events to fundraise for a cure. As authorised fundraisers for Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA) we sponsor PhD scientists each year, assisting them in their research to find the cure.

Connect through my public pages

Personal website Facebook X / Twitter LinkedIn

Public information provided by this member.

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.

Is there someone we have missed? Would you like to honor a distinguished resident from Great Keppel Island? We welcome the public to sponsor individuals by creating your own permanent article in the Great Keppel Island Hall of Fame

Great Keppel Island

Queensland

Community, Business and Visitor Guide