This presentation will reveal the little-known story of Billy Winn, the escaped convict from Norfolk Island Penal Settlement, who, after terrifying, gruesome and deadly experiences, managed to become a demi-god to the Torres Strait Islanders at Australia’s northern frontier.
Living on Badu Island in the Coral Sea, between Australia and New Guinea, this wild white man became a cannibal, a head-hunter, a warlord, and a brilliant agriculturalist. A farmer and a soldier before he was a convict, ‘Wini’, as the whites called him, or ‘Wongai’, as he was known to the native Islanders, was able to teach the natives how to expand and develop their farm produce, and how to wage war with ruthless and merciless determination.
You will learn of the dreadful surprise awaiting shipwrecked castaways who struggled ashore on the islands of the Torres Strait, and you will hear of Wini’s determination to make a teenage Scottish girl his Island Queen, so he could breed white princes to run his Coral Sea Kingdom. But the establishment of a government semi-military outpost at Somerset, near Cape York, would bring Wongai’s 28-year reign to a surprising conclusion.
The lecture will comprise a 2-hour presentation illustrated by copious PowerPoint slides.
