SIMO’s story begins in 1978 when the organisation was formed to help stop a proposed bridge that threatened to join Stradbroke to the mainland and unleash widespread development. The bridge was not built. However, SIMO has found many other pressing environmental reasons to defend the island. SIMO’s main objective is to preserve Stradbroke’s character – natural and built. We encourage government regulators to carry out their statutory obligations, especially with regard to the management of reserves and beaches, the regulation of sand mining, the protection of wildlife and the sustainable use of the island’s aquifer. SIMO is a member group of the Queensland Conservation Council. The following issues form the core of SIMO’s work. Regulation of sand mining Sand mining has been a major presence on NSI since the late 1940s. It has affected large areas of the island and caused irreparable changes to the environment. SIMO has stakeholder status in the ongoing processes associated with regulating sand mining. SIMO has been talking to the mining companies, Environmental Protection Agency, Mines and Energy and Natural Resources and Water since the 1980s concerning mining practices. We feel that we had some influence in the past in ensuring that a percentage of grass trees were saved and returned to the landscape after mining, that topsoil was saved and native seeds collected to be used in rehabilitation. We also had open and fruitful discussions. But things have changed. SIMO is dismayed that the mining companies have shifted to a hardline attitude towards landform and rehabilitation, with environmental imperatives playing second fiddle to economic concerns. Just as worrying has been Consolidated Rutile Limited’s proposal to take sand from the island, in addition to the minerals it extracts, for sale as construction material. Sand mining has played a large role in the life of Stradbroke since the 1950s, with economic and social as well as environmental consequences. Generations have grown up with parents and siblings working for a mining company. While today they are increasingly less important to the island's economy, the mining companies continue to have a presence and will do so until mines close and the companies complete rehabilitation of mining leases to be returned for national park. Protection of the aquifer When Redland Shire Council installed a borefield on NSI and began pumping water in 1990 to supply 70 per cent of the Redlands, it did not consider it necessary to conduct an Environmental Impact Study. The mayor of the day even declared the capacity of the island’s aquifer to be ‘unlimited’. SIMO has worked hard to ensure that people became aware that the aquifer is not unlimited but is – just like a conventional dam – fed solely by rainfall. Over the long dry period from the mid-1990s, the island’s rainfall decreased along with the rest of South-East Queensland; and the inevitable consequence was a decline in the groundwater mound that lies under the island. In 2007 the State government announced it would take an additional 22 megalitres per annum from NSI. This alarmed SIMO and other island groups. A protest was mounted. The government decided not to take the extra water; it installed more monitoring bores to return essential data about the aquifer; and instituted a Water Resource Plan (amendment to the Logan Basin WRP). Based on extensive data and monitoring, the WRP sets the management principles for using the water resource for ten years, when it is reviewed. SIMO is on the Community Representative Panel that informs the WRP process. (See: Water Fact Sheet) Extending national park on North Stradbroke Island In 1992, the government of the day was all ready to gazette 16,000 hectares of NSI national park. But this came to naught. Blue Lake National Park, 512 ha, gazetted in 1962, remains the only national park on NSI. No one doubts the environmental, cultural and heritage values of much of NSI, or the necessity to protect flora and fauna. In June 2010 the State government announced new national park to cover 80 per cent of the island by 2027, with 50 per cent to be declared in 2011. SIMO advocates that all expired mining leases should not be renewed. It is vital to preserve the last tracts of ancient dunes, some of which are in the Enterprise mine path, as well as all other pristine old growth areas remaining on Stradbroke. Land that has been mined cannot be returned to it original condition. The national park will be jointly managed by the Traditional Owners. (See: National Parks Fact Sheet) Keeping the community informed SIMO publishes up to four Newsletters a year which can be downloaded from the website (see: SIMO Newsletters). SIMO also publishes Fact Sheets on island environmental issues (see: SIMO Fact Sheets). North Stradboke Island book, published by SIMO and revised in 2004, is a detailed introduction to the island's natural and social environments and cultural heritage (see: SIMO Books). SIMO's educational role SIMO has an important educational objective. Over the years, SIMO has spoken to and workshopped with primary, seconday and tertiary students in order to inform, educate and raise awareness of issues affecting the island and to generate public support for our work. SIMO published North Stradbroke Island as an educational initiative; the revised edition (2004) can be ordered from this website (see: SIMO Books). SIMO committee The committee meets every month at Point Lookout, and SIMO holds an Annual General Meeting, open to the public, each year. Jan Aldenhoven First came to Stradbroke Island as a child of about nine for a family holiday from Victoria. The island seemed like a magical place, with surfing dolphins, sandy bush tracks and turquoise water. Jan and her partner Glen settled on the island in 2000. Jan has a BSc in Botany and Zoology, Honours in freshwater ecology and PhD in marine biology. With Glen she has travelled extensively for their wildlife film-making business. Keen bushwalker and diver. Passionate about understanding the island’s ecology and how best to ensure its wise management into the future. 
 Jackie Cooper Co-edits UME, an international architectural magazine, with Haig Beck; they also write books about architecture and design. Moved to Point Lookout in 2000. Declared NSI the world’s first Slow Island in 2004, hoping to draw attention to the attacks on Stradbroke’s laid-back, natural character from mainland infrastructure, over-development and exploitative forms of tourism. Enjoys bushwalking, but is saddened by the fact that locals and visitors are denied access to much of the interior of the island (52 per cent of the island is locked up in mining leases).
 Ellie Durbidge Has lived on North Stradbroke Island since the late 1940s. Her parents instilled in her a love of the bush and the outdoors. Her father experienced the joys of a pristine Stradbroke in the 1920s. Ellie has worked to preserve the island's unique qualities through the best possible management of its natural resources. She is a foundation member of SIMO, an organisation formed in 1978 to fight the proposal to build a bridge to North Stradbroke Island. She also is a foundation member of the North Stradbroke Island Historical Museum (which won the 2009 Radio National Marvellous Regional Musuems award). She has been involved in several publications covering both the island's social and natural history.
 Susan Martin I was born in the West of Queensland, where I grew up. My mother taught me about the Australian bush: its plants, the wonderful Eucalypt family, trees that survive droughts and fires, animals and the special places where they need to exist within a harsh climate, bush birds; and she impressed on me the importance of water, caring for the land and, most of all, understanding the land and our place in it. She didn't talk about the environment, she just knew the bush and she loved it always.
Our family came to North Stradbroke Island because of my mother's interest in it. Strange, because we didn't often see the sea. She had wanted to see the island because one of her father's stockmen, when he became too old to ride his horse and to weather the freezing western winters, asked to go to a warm place, in the sun. He had no family; Mum's family was his and they were, of course, very fond of him. My grandfather made the arrangements for the old fellow to go to the Benevolent Asylum at Dunwich. There was nowhere else for care in those early days of a young State. Mum was still at school at the time and she asked him to write to her to tell her if he was happy and warm in his new home, so far away from them. The letter was waiting for her when she came home from boarding school and it gave a brief but glowing account of life in a beautiful place beside a beautiful bay. Always my mother keep in her mind a desire to see this island, this special place, and after many hard years of bush life, in her older age, she finally brought her family here for a holiday. That was 1971. We continued coming every year to the present day and my husband and I now have retired to the Point. Our children have spent their childhood holidays here, surfing, exploring and playing. They will return always.  Fran Quinn Had a happy childhood between Brisbane and the beach at Miami, where her keen fisherman father enlisted his four children in relays when the tailor were biting so he didn’t lose his place in the line of beach fisherman. When he caught a fish, one of the kids would take it up to Mum at the house for filleting, and another child would supply him with a pilchard from the kreel. At night, though, the moonlight crabs were a bit scary. Teenage Fran actually preferred sunbaking to fishing.
She remembers in the early 1960s her father driving up the gravelly circular road and parking at Main Beach on Stradbroke Island, with his surf rod on top of the car. The family also had a fishing holiday when she was 12, staying in the residence attached to the Dunwich Post Office, and swimming every day in the Dunwich enclosure until one day at low tide a shark was found inside the enclosure. Primary school teaching; marriage to Tom (whom she'd met on the beach at Miami years before); two daughters; and part-time study to complete her BEd, followed. She never went back to teaching because she discovered that life with kids in suburbia was a lot of fun. The family started with a bare shale yard, but when they left 20 years later, it had frogs, lawn, roses, large above-ground vegie gardens, blue-tongue lizards, butterflies, gum trees in which they fed lorikets, and a possum who moved into the bird nesting box put out for rosellas. It was husband Tom who spotted the auction notice for the Tramican Street blocks. As a keen surfer, he knew that with Point Lookout’s headlands, even when the wind changed there was still a chance of surf. So began 26 years of Stradbroke week-ending, and SIMO membership. Like other committee members’ spouses, who’ve been pressed into SIMO service at times, husband Tom’s legal skills have been very useful to SIMO. 
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