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Fingal Head is a small fishing village come holiday resort which lies just one kilometre south of New South Wales border, 874 km from Sydney. It consists of a narrow spit of land that lies between the Tweed River estuary and the ocean. In fact, the northern tip of Fingal Head forms the south head of the river mouth. Access is via Fingal Rd which heads off the highway at the south-eastern edge of Tweed Heads, just before you cross the bridge over the Tweed River.

The traditional inhabitants of the area were the Minjungbal people who settled more or less permanently due to the plentiful supply of food and water. They met with other tribes on an annual basis at Bunya Mountain (north of what is now Brisbane) to hold corroborees. The impact of white settlement was such that they had virtually died out by the end of the 19th century.

Captain James Cook sailed up the Gold Coast in 1770. He was nearly shipwrecked on Cudgen Headland and thus chose the expressive names of Mount Warning and Point Danger for two local landmarks.

John Oxley encountered the estuary in 1823 while scouting out a suitable spot for a penal colony. His party took shelter during a storm in the lea of the 10-acre islet off Fingal Head. Two men from his party investigated the island where they found turtles and an unidentified wreck. Thus Oxley called it Turtle Island and named the river after a waterway in northern England. In 1828 Captain Rous surveyed the river, travelling about 36 km upstream. His charts describe the islet as 'Cook's Isle' by which name it is still known.

A military post existed briefly (1828-29) at Point Danger on the other side of the Tweed River estuary. It was set up to intercept escapees from the new penal settlement at Moreton Bay.

Timbergetters worked the riverbanks for cedar from about 1844. Logs were floated along the creeks and the river to the estuary although the bar rendered shipping hazardous until a breakwater was built in 1902. 25 men and three women were recorded as living on the Tweed in 1846.

The first permanent settlement emerged at near the estuary in what is now Tweed Heads South. Here the cedar-getters rendezvoused with the schooners that brought supplies and took the logs off to Sydney . The first European birth occurred in 1851.

I used Monica Larsen's remarkably beautiful kit 'Heritage' here at SBE http://store.scrapbook-elements.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&manufacturers_id=94&products_id=12102

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