Eliza Anne Fraser (c.1798 – 1858) was a Scottish woman who was aboard a ship that wrecked at an island off the coast of Queensland, Australia, on 22 May 1836, and who claimed she was taken in by the Badtjala (Butchella) people. She later wrote of her experience and claimed to have been captured by Aboriginal people. Fraser Island is named after her; it is also known by the Aboriginal names of K'Gari and Gari. Life She was the wife of Captain James Fraser, master of the Stirling Castle. There were 18 people aboard the ship and a cargo mainly of spirits, which may have been involved in the accident. They struck a reef hundreds of kilometres north of K'gari. They then launched a longboat and a pinnace, the latter of which landed on the northern side of Waddy Point on K'gari. The 11 survivors split up into two groups, Eliza and her husband in the second group, and attempted to trek south, surviving on pandanus and berries until they reached Hook Point. Eliza later claimed she was captured by the Badtjala; her husband either died from starvation or from his injuries. Many other survivors of the same ship wreck later disputed Eliza's claims of capture and ill treatment. Other white people had previously been taken in by the Badtjala people and had been treated extremely well. Descendants of the Badtjala people were told through Indigenous oral history that Eliza was viewed as a mad woman and mentally unwell. Eliza Fraser's claim eventually led to the massacre and dispossession of the island's tribe. Eliza was found by John Graham, an escaped Irish convict who had lived for six years with the natives of Wide Bay and had mastered their language. Whether John Graham acted alone in rescuing Eliza is a matter of some conjecture. For many years her rescuer was thought to have been another escaped convict, David Bracewell (though sometimes reported as Bracefell or Bracefield). Bracewell became the rescuer in later accounts, enhanced by the fictional tale that Bracewell had led Eliza overland to the outskirts of present-day Brisbane where, rather than as promised, seeking his pardon in return for his assistance, she threatened to betray him for having taken advantage of her. Official records show, to the contrary, that it was the convict John Graham who walked with her from Fig Tree Point, a corroboree ground near Lake