Bathurst Bay is the name of a 19th-century peninsula settlement that is now a tourist attraction on Cape York in northern Queensland, Australia, near the Great Barrier Reef. The British first settled Bathurst Bay sometime in the early-19th Century. The settlement had few tradable goods because of its climate and terrain. The site became important in the mid- to late-19th Century as an anchorage for the pearling fleet, which was discovering valuable oyster pearls. By the 1890s, the pearling fleet was the only reason for continued settlement.