Creature record / 1890
8 June 1890. A beach near Sandy Cape, at the northern tip of Great Sandy Island in Queensland. Selina Lovell, the sole teacher at the local provisional school, stood within five feet of a creature she would call half fish, half tortoise. A glossy, slate-grey dome of a body. A long neck. A saurian face. A tail of twelve feet, silver shading to white. She watched it for half an hour. Then it swept round seaward. Local Aboriginal people knew it as the moha-moha. A naturalist gave it a Latin name. A famous cryptozoologist called her a liar. No specimen was ever produced.
Selina Frances Nanette Louise Lovell was born in London in 1827 and arrived in Australia in 1863. From 1880 she was the sole teacher at the Sandy Cape provisional school, at the northern tip of Great Sandy Island. Today the island is K'gari, or Fraser Island. She was also a collector, sending specimens to the Queensland Museum and to Colonial Botanist F. M. Bailey, who named three plants after her.