Archaeology indicates that the certain ancestors of the Worimi people inhabited the island for an otherwise apparently indeterminate period of two-thousand years, and whatever name those people may have had for the island itself remains unknown. It lay within the territory of the Garrawerrigal branch (nurra) of the Woromi.[3] "Garrawerrigal" meant "the people of the sea", from garoowa=sea.[4]Niritba was "the home of the mutton bird" in their language.[5]
Broughton Island was seen by James Cook commanding HM Bark Endeavour on 11 May 1770: he mistook it for a headland and called it Black Head.[6] After its insularity was discovered, it was renamed Broughton Islands, and so appears on the 1852 Admiralty chart, Australia, East Coast. Broken Bay to Sugarloaf Point, from a running surveybyCaptn. J. Lort Stokes, H.M.S. Acheron, 1851.[7] Providence Bay also appears for the first time on this chart.
Nearby Port Stephens was surveyed by Commander William BroughtoninHMS Providence in August 1795.[8][9] Stokes appears to have named the island and bay after Broughton and his ship, perhaps on the advice of his friend, Phillip Parker King, who was then residing at Tahlee in Port Stephens and had surveyed the coast in a private capacity.[7][10]
The island was used between 1905 and 1907 in regards to testing of biological controls on feral rabbits, by French-based Polish biologist Jean Danysz (1860–1928).
Broughton Island has been part of the Myall Lakes National Park since it was declared in 1972. Wedge-tailed shearwaters, known locally as "muttonbirds", nest on the island, as well as Australian little penguins, close to the northern limit of their range. In November 2009, the National Parks and Wildlife Service declared the island free from rabbits and rats.[11]
^W.J. Enright, "The Kattang (Kutthung) or Worimi: An Aboriginal Tribe", Mankind, vol. 1, no. 4 March 1932. R.V.S. Wright, "Broughton Island, NSW: recent prehistoric use of an offshore ocean island", Australian Archaeology, no.3, October 1975, p.18-23. Boris Sokoloff, The Worimi: hunter gatherers at Port Stephens, [Raymond Terrace, N.S.W.], Raymond Terrace and District Historical Society, 1980. John Armstrong, Yacaaba and Tomaree: A History of Port Stephens, Port Stephens (N.S.W.), Port Stephens Council, rev. ed., 1996.
^W.J. Enright, "The language, weapons and manufactures of the aborigines of Port Stephens", Journal and proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, volume XXXIV, 1900, pp.103-118, pp.104 and 111.
^Desiree Sutherland, Garoowa Coastal Sea Country Report, Port Stephens Great Lakes Marine Park, 2011, p.23."Archived copy"(PDF). Archived from the original(PDF) on 28 February 2014. Retrieved 22 January 2014.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
^James Cook, The Voyage of The Endeavour, 1768-1771, edited by J. C. Beaglehole, Cambridge, Hakluyt Society, 1968, pp.12-14, 314.
^
Andrew David (ed.), William Robert Broughton's Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific 1795-1798, Introduction by Barry M. Gough, Hakluyt Society 3rd series, no.22, London, Ashgate, 2010, Introduction, p.v. ISBN0-904180-97-2.
^Journal of Captain John Lort Stokes, HMS Acheron, on the surveying voyage from Plymouth to New Zealand, 1848 to 1851, transcribed by Sheila Natusch, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, MRF/113. Robert J. King, "Putting Broughton Islands on the Map, 1770-1851", [1]; also in Journal of Australian Naval History, vol.9, no.1, March 2012, pp.122-6.
