Shoalwater Bay is a large bay on the Capricorn Coast of Central Queensland, Australia 100 km north of the coastal town of Yeppoon and 628 km north-north-west of the state capital, Brisbane. Since 1966, the land surrounding Shoalwater Bay has been under the ownership of the Australian Defence Force, for the purpose of military training exercises. Shoalwater Bay is also a noted dugong habitat and is part of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. The bay is bounded by the Torilla Peninsula to the west and the Warginburra Peninsula and Leicester and Townshend islands to the east. History Pre-colonial The traditional inhabitants of Shoalwater Bay are the Darumbal people.The Darumbal (Tarumbul, Tharoombool) language region includes the city of Rockhampton extending south towards Raglan Creek and north towards the Styx River and inland along the Broad Sound Ranges. Specific tribes that lived and in some cases continue to live in the area include the Cookeeburra (green-headed ant people of the Warginburra Peninsula), the Risteburra (the sandfly people of Raspberry Creek), the Cooinmurburra (the plains people of Torilla) and the Woppaburra (the people of the islands in the region). Colonial The first recorded European to sight Shoalwater Bay was British navigator James Cook on 28 May 1770. Cook referred to the entire region, from Cape Palmerston (south of Mackay) to Cape Townshend, including Shoalwater Bay, as the "Bay of Inlets", a name which is no longer in use. Cook bestowed the name "Shoalwater Bay" on the southeasternmost of these bays, a reference to the number of sandbars in the bay. Following Cook, Matthew Flinders conducted further exploration of Shoalwater Bay in 1802, landing on Akens Island (a small island on the western side of Shoalwater Bay) and exploring the head of the bay. Flinders described the land as such: The hills are stony, but some of them are clothed with grass and wood, and the pine grows in the gullies between them. The low land is sandy or stony, but covered with wood & herbage. Fresh water stands in ponds at the foot of the hills. European colonisation of the land in Shoalwater Bay region commenced in 1858. By the early 1860s, it had been divided into four pastoral stations: Tilpal, Raspberry Creek, The Peninsula and Torilla. The process of colonisation was violent with the killings of settlers and the massacres of local Aboriginal people being recorded frequently until the mid 1870s.