This true story came from the ship's log of the HMS Rattlesnake under the command of Captain Owen Stanley... who was searching for the Kennedy expedition... sailing the Coral Seas searching for men in the peninsula ranges, and Barbara Thompson was captive on Murralug; Billy Winn, an escaped convict from Norfolk Island, had, through a reign of terror and treachery, cowed the most fearful of all peoples - the Coral Sea headhunters. He had taken power on Badu as the feared demi-god Wongai. Hearing that a white woman was to be found on Murralug, he gathered the Badu headhunters to raid Murralug... However Barbara, after being held on Murralug for five years, succeeded in escaping from the Murralug people and Wongai, and incredibly, was rescued by Captain Owen Stanley and taken back to Sydney.

- Beverley Eley, from her biography Ion Idriess.