North Stradbroke Island is a beautiful island off the Queensland coast near Brisbane. Straddie, as it is locally known, was named in honour of the son of the first Earl of Stradbroke, H.J. Rous, captain of the first ship of war to enter Moreton Bay (1827), conveying Governor Darling to the Moreton Bay convict settlement.

The carpet snake (rainbow serpent), Kabool, is a powerful traditional symbol for Stradbroke Island’s indigenous people, who have lived here since the Pleistocene Age.  James Cook named Point Lookout, the Island’s eastern-most point, in 1770, but first recorded contact with Europeans was in 1803, when a party from Matthew Flinders’ cutter Hope came ashore to find water.

The Museum was founded in 1987 to present Island history.