Five Islands: The History Hiding Offshore
If you stand anywhere along the Wollongong or Port Kembla coastlines and look out toward the horizon, your eyes will inevitably land on the same dramatic silhouettes cutting through the Pacific blue: the Five Islands. They are a permanent fixture of our regional landscape, visible from lookouts, backyards, and beaches alike. Yet, despite being a daily backdrop for thousands of locals, very few people know the raw, layered history hiding just a few kilometres offshore.
On the latest installment of the Current Conversations Podcast, host Kurtis Ocean paddled out for a fascinating, deep-dive chat with returning producer Gabe. In this feature episode, titled "Five Islands: The History Hiding Offshore," the boys unpack everything from ancient Dreamtime narratives and colonial mysteries to a highly isolated family experiment and thriving wildlife ecologies that exist right under our noses.
Castaways and Shark Oil: The Isolation of Big Island
The largest landmass in the cluster is Big Island (historically dubbed Rabbit Island), a 16-hectare expanse that holds some of the most surreal human interest stories on the South Coast. It is almost impossible for modern locals to conceptualise, but families actually lived, worked, and raised children on this exposed outcrop.
The most famous chapter belongs to the Perkins family, who built a makeshift home on the island in 1867 and stayed until 1872. Operating in absolute physical isolation, they raised a family with zero electricity, no fresh water infrastructure, and no ferry services. Every single item required for daily survival had to be rowed across the volatile, treacherous coastal waters that separate the island from the mainland.
To sustain themselves, the Perkins family grazed cattle, kept goats, and introduced rabbits. They also established a highly unusual commercial trade by hunting sharks. This wasn't for sport; they systematically processed shark livers to harvest shark oil, which held massive commercial value on the mainland as a medicinal treatment for respiratory illnesses, wounds, and digestive complaints.
While the Perkins family ultimately abandoned the grueling experiment after five years, their legacy endures. Port Kembla Beach was actually known as Perkins Beach for a long portion of our regional history. Today, if you know where to look, the foundations and structural remnants of their farming occupation are still physically visible on the island's sheltered western side.
Tiny Boats and Colonial Shadows: Mapping out the Islets
The European charting of the Five Islands is a dramatic saga of maritime grit, driven by iconic figures whose names are permanently etched into our local topography. In April 1770, Captain James Cook sailed past our coastline aboard the HMS Endeavour. He famously mapped and named Red Point—the headland near Port Kembla and Hill 60—after the distinct reddish tone of the cliffs. Remarkably, historians believe Cook was so far offshore that he didn't even realise Big Island was separate, mapping the merged landforms as a single feature.
The true layout was unraveled in the 1790s when the legendary duo of George Bass and Matthew Flinders turned up. Navigating the wild South Coast currents in the Tom Thumb II—a tiny, open rowing boat measuring a ridiculous 2.5 metres in length—they meticulously mapped out the islands.
The individual islets bear the marks of this voyage:
Flinders Islet (Toothbrush Island): Named after the iconic Matthew Flinders, this northernmost outcrop earned its quirky colloquial name because its silhouette visually resembles an old school toothbrush. It was originally known by its beautiful Indigenous name, Cobbyr.
Bass Islet (Pig Island): Named after naval surgeon turned explorer George Bass, this island holds local folklore tales of pigs that miraculously survived sea floodings by washing ashore, establishing a feral population that survived for years. Its traditional name is Munang Gang.
Martin Islet: The smallest, steepest, and rockiest of the central cluster. In a brilliant twist of history, it was named after William Martin, a 15-year-old teenage servant and cabin boy traveling with Bass and Flinders. While Martin never achieved the global fame of his masters, his name lives on as potentially the youngest person in Australian history to have a geographical island named after him.
The fates of these explorers add a gritty shadow to the maps. Flinders tragically passed away in England at just 40 years old, on the exact day his landmark book A Voyage to Terra Australis was published. His long-lost grave was only recently rediscovered beneath a London railway station layout in 2019. Meanwhile, Bass’s story ends in complete mystery. After leaving Sydney for Chile, he vanished entirely, with compelling historical rumors suggesting he was captured by Spanish authorities for smuggling contraband and forced to live out his final days chained inside a South American salt mine.
The Five Sisters: An Enduring Dreamtime Landscape
Long before European sails ever silhouetted against the Pacific, the Five Islands held deep spiritual and geographical significance for the Dharawal people, specifically the local Wadi Wadi clan. In fact, the very name of our city, Wollongong, is widely believed to be derived from the traditional Dharawal word Woolyungah, which directly translates to "five islands".
The beautiful, enduring origin story ties the islands directly to the Illawarra escarpment. According to Dreamtime tradition, the islands were once five daughters of a mighty spirit named Oola-boola-woo, who ruled over the fierce West Winds. After the daughters repeatedly defied his warnings and slipped away on unauthorized ocean adventures, their father cast them out into the sea, where they transformed into stone pillars.
The sixth and youngest daughter, Kira, stayed loyal to her father on the mainland. She laid down along the escarpment and transformed into the majestic peak we know today as Mount Keira. Today, if you stand on the sands of Fisherman's Beach or look out from the Hill 60 Lookout, you can see a perfect visual alignment of this timeless story: the five petrified sisters stranded out at sea, forever watched over by Mount Keira rising directly behind the mainland.
The Yin and Yang of Port Kembla: A Conservation Success Story
In 1969, the islands were officially declared the Five Islands Nature Reserve, a highly protected 26-hectare sanctuary managed by the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service. Today, public landing is strictly prohibited without specialized scientific permits, creating a truly unique ecological phenomenon.
The islands represent a striking "Yin and Yang" landscape. Just a stone's throw from the heavy industrial infrastructure of the Port Kembla steelworks thrives one of the richest, most volatile wildlife ecosystems in New South Wales.
The reserve has become an absolute haven for coastal recovery:
The Bachelor's Pad: Martin Islet has earned this scientific nickname because it plays host to one of the most significant fur seal haul-out colonies on the Australian East Coast. It is a unique social learning environment made up almost entirely of male seals, where younger pups rest alongside massive, experienced bulls. During the peak winter months of June to August, more than 100 seals can be spotted lazing on the rocky platforms.
Penguin City: Hidden beneath the dense island vegetation is a massive, thriving population of Little Penguins. For generations, hundreds of these magical creatures have followed a strict routine—spending their days fishing at sea and scrambling ashore under the cover of darkness to return to their burrows.
The Ghostly Shearwaters: Thousands of wedge-tailed shearwaters and crested turns (the ones with the distinct black mohawks) nest across the reserve. At night, the shearwaters emit a bizarre, wailing call that early local fishermen famously described as "ghostly sounds" haunting the open water.
The biggest threat to this paradise isn't industrial pollution or predators, but rather an introduced weed called Kikuyu grass. The dense, invasive grass completely smothers native flora and forms a thick carpet that prevents penguins and shearwaters from digging out their nesting burrows. Dedicated teams of local volunteers regularly boat out to meticulously eradicate the weed, ensuring our offshore neighbors can continue to thrive.
Catch the Conversations Offshore
If you want to view the islands for yourself, pack a pair of binoculars and head up to the clifftops of Hill 60 on a crisp, clear winter morning to spot the seals sunning themselves on the lower platforms. To listen to the full, unfiltered conversation—including Gabe's wild rumors about William Martin, or to hear the actual, spine-chilling wail of a wedge-tailed shearwater—tune into the latest episode, “Five Islands: The History Hiding Offshore".