Rainbow Beach - Did You Know?

* The earliest inhabitants, the local Aborigines, were camping on Inskip Point, which they called Carah, up to 10,000 years ago.

* On 18 May, 1770 Captain Cook sailed past and named both Carlo Sand Blow and Double Island Point.

* The first Europeans to settle in the area in the early 1900s when timber cutters. There numbers were sufficient for a school to be established for their children. The need to ship the timber to Maryborough resulted in a lighthouse being built at Double Island Point and lighthouse keeper being employed to keep watch over the entrance to the Great Sandy Straits.

*  Zircon, ilmenite and rutile were mined on Inskip Point between 1965 and 1971 by Queensland Titanium Mines. They developed simple accommodation and access roads to the area.

* In 1967 a tourist ferry service was started between Tin Can Bay and the southern reaches of Fraser Island.

* Development of the area is so recent that Tin Can Bay wasn't officially gazetted until 1969 and that was only because of the local sand mining industry. It was around that time that the government built a road to Rainbow Beach.

* Sand mining in the area was relatively short-lived. It ceased in 1976.

Info copied directly from the Aussie Towns website