The Wire

Queensland’s Palm Island has been viewed as some kind of hell-hole of racial dysfunction ever since the tragic death in custody of Cameron Doomadgee in 2004. But is it – or is it just a community still trying to shake off its past? Palm Island was originally set up early last century as a kind of penitentiary for indigenous troublemakers, and author Jo Watson argues that the events happening now can only be understood in the light of that past. She has written a history of the island … ‘Palm Island through a long lens’.