A search is getting underway on Fraser Island this week that will use ground penetrating radar (GPR) technology to help uncover century-old Aboriginal burial grounds linked to the Bogimbah Creek mission.
Soil scientist Peter Davies from the University of the Sunshine Coast says his research team will use GPR to assist elders from the Butchulla community and the Queensland Parks and Wildife Service in their bid to determine the exact location of the burial sites.
"We're really looking forward to providing assistance to the K'Gari (Fraser Island) community in such a worthwhile and important project, and to shed some light on a fairly notorious part of the island's history," Mr Davies said.
"Coastal geologist and geophysicist Dr Allen Gontz from Boston will also be working with us on the project. He's helped the Massachusetts state police to locate clandestine graves in criminal investigations in the United States."
The Bogimbah Creek mission was established on the west coast of Fraser Island in 1897, but appalling conditions lead to the deaths of over 100 Aboriginal people, from illness and malnutrition.
The mission was abandoned in 1904, but the locations of the burial sites were never marked and have been lost to history.
"We will work with them using the GPR, to develop 3D images of what lies below the ground surface," Mr Davies said.
"The GPR is the ideal instrument to locate disturbed ground, human remains and artefacts and has been previously used in locating Indigenous burial sites up to 20,000 years old."
Butchulla Community responds
Earlier this year, representatives from the Fraser Island World Heritage Area Indigenous Advisory Committee approached Mr Davies to ask for assistance in locating the burial grounds.
Butchulla elder and co-chair of the committee, Sandra Page says if the burial ground is found it will be "very significant".
"It's important for the decedents of the Butchulla people that were in the Bogimbah Mission - to those people it would be very important to know some of their ancestors have been located," Ms Page said.
However, she says any identification would be difficult due to the lack of records kept on Aboriginal people at the time.
"The burial grounds hold a dark place in the island's history," she said.
"The mission was put there after they rounded up the Butchulla people who lived on the island and also some of the people that lived on the mainland.
"They took them there to have them all in one place, like other missions in Queensland and Australia, but the Bogimbah Mission is known as one of the worse ones.
"There wasn't much food that the Butchulla people could find for themselves, they were use to hunting and fishing for themselves, but on the mission that stopped and it wasn't a very nice place; from what I've heard it was a pretty poor place to live and people perished."
Eager to see whether the scientists find the burial grounds, Ms Page says any discovery should be treated with respect.
"We would like to see the site put together in a proper sense and to give those people a respectful send-off," she said.
"To go back and pay our respects to those people who are buried there.
"We don't know of any names, or any connections to some of the Butchulla people today but we are hoping that can be confirmed."