She was called "Tarzan Terrie" and Australia's "Girl Robinson Crusoe" after living alone on a remote island in the Great Barrier Reef in the 1960s.
Key points:
- Terrie Ridgway swapped bartending to become an island recluse as a teen
- Her lifestyle lost its charm when media intruded
- She married a captain and lives on the Sunshine Coast, where she rescues flying foxes
The world was fascinated with the then 19-year-old Terrie Ridgway, whose story made headlines across the globe.
American newspapers of the day ran headlines declaring: "Gay Nature girl gambols Down Under" describing the teenager as a "bikini-clad nature nymph".
The stories described her living in a hut near the beach in her "leopard-skin mini-bikini".
"To eat she stalks wild fowls, dives for seafood and grows vegetables in the island's rich soils," the report said.
"I came here to think and study fish — it's everything I've ever wanted to do," she said in one article.
But as quickly as Ms Ridgway found fame, she disappeared.
What became of the adventurous teenager is now the subject of research by two Australian academics.
Dr Deb Anderson from Monash University and Associate Professor Kerrie Foxwell-Norton from Griffith University will spend 12 months documenting female "reef revolutionaries" like Ms Ridgway.
This week, they won a $20,000 John Oxley Library Fellowship from the State Library of Queensland to find out the fate of Ms Ridgway and other pioneering female conservationists in Queensland.
From a barmaid to marine biology books
For the first time in more than 50 years, Ms Ridgway has told what really happened when she gave up her typist job in Brisbane in the early 60s to live on North West Island, 75 kilometres off the coast of Gladstone in central Queensland.
"I was very young and very adventurous, so I just got on a train and headed north," she said.
She got a job as a barmaid on Heron Island, a resort that was also home to a marine research station owned by the University of Queensland.
Ms Ridgway became an accomplished diver and developed a fascination with marine biology after befriending the researchers working on the island.
"The first time I put a mask and snorkel on I was gone, that was it for me," she said.
"Between working incredible hours as a barmaid, I used to go out with all the researchers diving and collecting ocean samples.
"They would leave a window open in the research station for me at night, so that when I finished my shift at around 2:00am, I'd clamber through the window and read and devour information about the reef."
How the island adventure started
Getting exhausted by long shifts behind the bar and long nights studying, she decided to quit in 1966.
"I moved to North West Island, which was nearby, into this beautiful little shack near the beach with my diving gear and my books, my paints and a 12v battery and a light," she said.
"It was just the most wonderful time.
"I went diving and I painted, I was trying to draw all the fish on the reef.
"All my wages had gone into buying reference books so I could identify what I was looking at.
"I made a little veggie garden and once a week I'd score a feral chook for the pot, which was really tough eating."
I ended up marrying a 'pirate'
It was idyllic but short-lived.
Six month later, a journalist from Yeppoon heard stories about the "Girl Robinson Crusoe" and paid a visit to the island.
"I woke up one morning with this ghastly human being leaning over me in my sleeping bag taking photographs," she said.
The subsequent story ended her island life.
"Every nut ball who read the story decided to come and visit and be my friend," she said.
"There was a gunny sack of letters waiting for me on Heron Island, including marriage proposals from across the world.
"I had to go — there was no way I was staying there, they'd just destroyed it.
Stopping long enough to grab her snorkelling gear, clothes and a few books, she jumped aboard an 87-foot two-masted schooner, the Dante Deo, skippered and crewed by American scientists researching the reef.
"The captain was a six-foot-two, blue-eyed American with a beard and looking every inch the pirate," she said.
"I sailed off into the sunset with the pirate, who I ended up marrying."
'I'll probably never return'
After leaving North West Island, Ms Ridgway spent many years working on research projects across the Pacific and the Indian Oceans, including working for the Smithsonian and getting shipwrecked numerous times.
She is now in her early 70s and has been living on a property at Cooroy in the Sunshine Coast hinterland for 30 years.
Still passionate about the environment and wildlife, Ms Ridgway devotes her time to saving Flying Foxes.
"I'm worried about the future of the planet," she said.
She has never been back to North West Island and probably never will.
"I imagine the change would break my heart," she said.
"I saw a lot of the world's magnificent wild places without leaving a trace but they are no longer wild and magnificent."
Despite her despair about the state of the environment, Ms Ridgway said she felt incredibly satisfied with her life.
"I followed by star, I never deviated, I am who I was always meant to be, I've stuck to my guns."
Dr Foxwell-Norton said the John Oxley Library Fellowship would allow her to research the story of Queensland's island girl and untold stories of environmental conservation on the reef.
"This scholarship is about finding out and investigating these stories of women who have been influential and who have cared for the reef," Dr Foxwell-Norton said.
"It really does matter how we remember these important nature superstars in Australia.
"We are so excited to discover what stories we will find and to tell those stories of women and their contribution to Queensland."
The stories will form a catalogue for the State Library and in the longer term possibly a book.
The fellowship is one of a number announced by the State Library this week, collectively worth $60,000.
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2020-06-11 19:47:00Z
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