Five Australians and a New Zealander were released from hantavirus quarantine in Western Australia today after six weeks at the Perth facility. They had travelled on the MV Hondius cruise ship linked to the hantavirus outbreak. Their release prompts reflection on what quarantine means for those who experience it, a question illuminated by history.
Mary Quarantine Chapman: A Name Etched by Quarantine
Mary Quarantine Chapman is, to the best of knowledge, the only Australian named after being detained to limit infectious disease. Her parents, John and Jane Chapman, were among 466 passengers aboard the sailing ship Samuel Plimsoll, arriving from England in June 1879. The ship’s doctor reported numerous typhus fever cases and several deaths at sea. All immigrants were ordered ashore at Sydney’s North Head Quarantine Station. Mary was born there the day after they disembarked.
Some passengers remained at North Head for three months, creating an intense closed community that bred rumours about preferential treatment and resentment at lengthy detention. The ship’s surgeon was too ill to continue, so a shore-based quarantine doctor, 24-year-old Charles Lacey, was appointed. Within a month, Lacey was accused of sexual impropriety with two teenage Irish immigrants. In the moralistic Victorian era, an official inquiry stained the women’s reputations but cleared the doctor. Lacey later became a respected local doctor in Kiama. The Chapman family, among the healthy, were detained for only four weeks. Mary was not christened until after release. Her unique middle name lived on until she died in 1957.
Quarantine in the Heyday: Sickness and Lifelong Suffering
From the 1830s to the 1930s, Australian quarantine was an elaborate, rigorously enforced system. All travellers arrived by ship. Health officers checked each arrival to limit deadly maladies coming ashore. When sickness broke out, ill people were quarantined in a hospital on board, and the ship flew a yellow flag. On arrival, both healthy and sick were brought ashore. This was quarantine as an intense communal experience.
Sick arrivals were transferred to quarantine hospitals at a time when medical understanding of infection was vastly different. Diseases such as smallpox, bubonic plague, scarlet fever, measles, and influenza were often fatal. With limited treatment, many died or took months to convalesce. Smallpox notoriously scarred victims’ faces; measles, influenza, and plague could cause long-term lung injuries. Release from quarantine might be just the beginning of a lifetime of suffering.
For some, quarantine became a final resting place. Infected corpses were buried on site, too risky to release into community cemeteries. Mourners often had to battle bureaucracy to visit loved ones’ graves.
Ann's Story: Loss and Memory
Ann Fuller survived quarantine in 1839, but her husband William died of typhus fever en route from Ireland aboard the ship North Briton. Their two-year-old daughter Charlotte died at North Head. Ann was released with six surviving children and lived until 1868, but her monument in Kiama Cemetery keeps their traumatic story alive. Some detainees erected their own monuments at North Head, such as the 341 passengers from the ship Constitution, quarantined for smallpox in 1855. Half a century later, survivors and their families gathered at the quarantine station for a “merry” reunion.
When Quarantine Failed: The Ruby Princess and Hot Beans
Australia’s rigorous attempts to contain infectious diseases from arriving ships occasionally broke down. The Ruby Princess docked in Sydney in 2020 with COVID on board, leading to clusters as passengers dispersed. Almost a century earlier, in 1929, the ocean liner RMMS Aorangi arrived in Sydney with smallpox aboard. The disease went undiagnosed until passengers had travelled home across the country, even as far as Perth. Desperate contact tracing was not always successful, especially with false addresses. Most were rounded up into delayed quarantine. Several influential travellers were furious.
Nobody died from smallpox in 1929, but a group of young Australians who arrived on RMMS Aorangi brought an Arizona-born donkey named Frijoles Calientes (Hot Beans). Subject to animal quarantine laws, he was temporarily impounded at Taronga Park Zoo. Since zoo animals could not be released, Hot Beans was transferred to Perth Zoo, where he lived out his pampered life.
Quarantine: A Blip or a Lifetime Mark
For some arrivals, quarantine is just a temporary disruption. Once released, they return to everyday life and we hear no more. But for others, quarantine leaves physical or psychological marks, captured in diaries or monuments. Just occasionally, as Mary Quarantine Chapman found, quarantine can shape your very identity.
