From hustle and bustle to Low Isles caretakers

TOURISM

Howard Salkow

Senior Journalist

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Low Isles' newest caretakers, Sean Shields and Emma Green. Image: Supplied.

From the hustle and bustle of the business world, partners Sean Shields and Emma Green have traded their traditional careers for semi-seclusion and embarked on a two-year contract as Low Isles caretakers.

But, this is no walk in the park and after being on the island for a week, it did not take long to discover what the job entails.

The caretakers are involved in everything from maintaining buildings and infrastructure including the solar power system and sewerage treatment system, liaising with tourist operators, cleaning toilets, managing weeds and grounds works, and counting bird populations like the pied imperial pigeons.”

They get going around 6.30-7.00am and a key task is to prepare the island for the day ahead, and ensure the island is ready for the tour operators and their guests. They open the museum and the other sheds and check on the infrastructure.

At lunchtime they head to the area where the boats are and chat to the operators. And when the boats leave, they close down the island.

New caretakers begin at Low Isles. ImageL GBRMPA.

Sean, formerly a project manager with West Australian company, Adept Project Delivery, is clearly adept to handling most things. “But,” he says, “my major fight is with the weeds. We want to ensure the island is tidy and pulling weeds is all part of it.”

The couple are looking at getting a boat, but until such time says Emma, they receive their supplies from the tour operators.

“We must say that when we introduced ourselves to the operators before heading to the island, we were well received and welcomed,” said Emma.

Low Isles is a Commonwealth-owned island, managed by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. The caretakers live and work on the island full-time.

The caretakers play an important role in protecting the values of the Great Barrier Reef, including the Commonwealth Heritage Listed light station.

Volunteers from the Low Isles Preservation Society also provide assistance on the island.

Marine Park Authority Assistant Director Reef Conservation Actions, Dr Mark Read, said the caretakers played an important role in protecting, preserving and educating the values of the island.

“The caretakers live in paradise on a tropical island surrounded by the Great Barrier Reef — but maintaining an island is hard work and remote island living means limiting electricity and water use which may not suit everyone,” he said.

Low Isles Light, also known as Low Islets Light or Low Island Light, is an active lighthouse located on Low Island, a coral cay which together with Woody Island forms the Low Isles group, about 13 kilometres (8.1 mi) northeast of Port Douglas.

The island is situated on the western edge of the main shipping channel into the harbour of Port Douglas, and it marks the entrance to the channel. Built in 1878, it was the first lighthouse in Far North Queensland and more specifically the first to light the Inner Passage of the Great Barrier Reef.

Its construction is typical to Queensland lighthouses of the time, timber frame clad with galvanized iron, and it is the fourth lighthouse of this type constructed in Queensland, though it is the first of them to use portholes.

The lighthouse was recommended in February 1876 but construction of the lighthouse and cottages, by W. P. Clark, started more than a year later. The structures were ready and the light was lit in late 1878. The original oil wick light was upgraded to kerosene in 1923, to electricity in 1963 and finally converted to solar power in 1993, when the station was de-manned.

The size of the island mandated a rather compact circular pattern of structures. Other than the lighthouse, none of the original structures survived, the keeper residences being rebuilt in the 1960s. One of the residences now serves as a research station. The station is owned and managed by the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service. The site can be visited but the tower is closed.

There are 150 different species of hard corals in the waters surrounding Low Isles, although these are dominated by 15 species of soft corals. Living amongst the corals is a large variety of fish, molluscs, sea cucumbers and other animals. Colourful blue, green and purple parrotfish are a common sight as well as angelfish, damselfish, clownfish, trevally, sweetlip and moon wrasse, just to name a few. In addition, the island has a prolific turtle population with underwater sightings common to snorkellers. 

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