NATURALISTS, TURTLES AND EARLY TOURISM

In the mid 1920s, encouraged by the proselytising of Banfield, the Reef had increasingly gained a popular image as a fascinating, exotic realm. Following his lead, and with a growing interest in GBRC Reef research as extensively reported in the popular press, a number of individuals began organising small trips to a few of the easily accessible locations – under the banner of ‘naturalist expeditions’ – which grew into the beginnings of a tourist industry. Those early efforts are not well documented but possibly the first was conducted by E. F. Pollock, a councillor of the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales, which sponsored the trip, to the Capricorn and Bunker island groups in the southern part of the Reef in November and December of 1925. Pollock gathered together a party of active members of naturalist societies – including Anthony Musgrave and Gilbert Whitley of the Australian Museum – to travel to various locations in a chartered vessel, both observing and holidaying for several weeks, a venture that he repeated on at least five more occasions.