British crown colony (1859?1901)
The
Colony of Queensland
was a colony of the
British Empire
from 1859 to 1901, when it became a State in the federal
Commonwealth of Australia
on 1 January 1901. At its greatest extent, the colony included the present-day
State of Queensland
, the
Territory of Papua
and the
Coral Sea Islands Territory
.
History
[
edit
]
Nineteenth century
[
edit
]
In 1823,
John Oxley
sailed north from Sydney to inspect
Port Curtis
(now
Gladstone
) and
Moreton Bay
as possible sites for a penal colony. At Moreton Bay, he found the
Brisbane River
whose existence Cook had predicted, and proceeded to explore the lower part of it. In September 1824, he returned with soldiers and established a temporary settlement on the
Redcliffe Peninsula
. On 2 December 1824, the
Moreton Bay penal settlement
was transferred to the Brisbane River where the
Central Business District (CBD)
of
Brisbane
now stands. The settlement was initially called
Edenglassie
, a
portmanteau
of the Scottish towns
Edinburgh
and
Glasgow
.
[
citation needed
]
Major
Edmund Lockyer
discovered outcrops of coal along the banks of the upper
Brisbane River
in 1825.
[1]
In 1839,
transportation
of
convicts
ceased, culminating in the closure of the Brisbane penal settlement. In 1842, the free settlement was permitted.
[
citation needed
]
In the same year
Andrew Petrie
reported favourable grazing conditions and decent forests to the north of Brisbane, which led shortly to the arrival of settlers to Fraser Island and the Cooloola coast region.
[2]
In 1847, the
Port of Maryborough
was opened as a wool port.
[3]
The first immigrant ship to arrive in Moreton Bay was the
Artemisia
in 1848.
[
citation needed
]
In 1857, Queensland's
first lighthouse
was built at
Cape Moreton
.
[
citation needed
]
Frontier war
[
edit
]
Fighting between Aboriginal people and settlers in colonial Queensland was more bloody than in any other colonial state in Australia, perhaps partly due to Queensland having a larger pre-contact indigenous population than any other colony in Australia, accounting for over one third, and in some estimates close to forty percent, of the entire pre-contact population of the continent.
[
citation needed
]
It is estimated that some 1,500 European settlers, including women and children ? and their Chinese, Aboriginal, and Melanesian allies ? died in frontier skirmishes with Aboriginals in Queensland during the nineteenth century. The casualties among the Aboriginal fighters suffered in these battles with settlers and native police (frequently described by contemporary political leaders and newspapers as "warfare", "a kind of warfare", "guerrilla-like warfare", and at times as a "war of extermination") is estimated to have exceeded 30,000.
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
Others have suggested there were more Aboriginal casualties.
[8]
The
"Native Police Force"
(sometimes "Native Mounted Police Force"), recruited and deployed by the Queensland government, was a key unit in the war between the new arrivals and the aboriginal fighters.
[9]
The three largest battles between new arrivals and Aborigines in Australian colonial history all took place in Queensland. On 27 October 1857 Martha Fraser's
Hornet Bank
station on the
Dawson River
, in
central Queensland
took the lives of 11 Europeans.
[10]
The tent camp of the embryo station of
Cullin-La-Ringo
near Springsure was attacked by Aborigines on 17 October 1861, killing 19 people including the grazier
Horatio Wills
.
[11]
Following the wreck of the brig
Maria
at Bramble Reef near the
Whitsunday Islands
, on 26 February a total of 14 European survivors were massacred by local Aborigines.
[12]
The
Battle of One Tree Hill
also took place in the 1840s.
[
citation needed
]
Colony of Queensland
[
edit
]
In 1851, a public meeting was held to consider
Queensland's separation
from New South Wales. On 6 June 1859,
Queen Victoria
signed Letters Patent to form the colony of Queensland. A proclamation was read by
George Bowen
on 10 December 1859
[13]
whereupon Queensland was formally separated from New South Wales. Bowen became the first Governor of Queensland and
Robert Herbert
became the first
Premier of Queensland
.
Queensland was the only Australian colony that commenced immediately with its own parliament, instead of first spending time as a
Crown Colony
(i.e. having a Governor appointed by
The Crown
). By this time, Western Australia was the only Australian colony without a responsible government.
Ipswich
and
Rockhampton
became towns in 1860, with Maryborough and
Warwick
becoming towns the following year.
In 1861, rescue parties for
Burke and Wills
, which failed to find them, did some exploratory work of their own, in central and north-western Queensland. Notably among these was
Frederick Walker
who originally worked for the native police.
[14]
Brisbane was linked by electric telegraph to Sydney in 1861; however, the first operating telegraph line in Queensland was from Brisbane to Ipswich in the same year.
[15]
Gold rush
[
edit
]
Although smaller than the gold rushes of Victoria and New South Wales, Queensland had its own series of gold rushes in the later half of the nineteenth century. In 1858, gold was discovered at
Canoona
, causing the short-lived
Canoona gold rush
.
[16]
In 1867, gold was discovered in
Gympie
.
Richard Daintree
's explorations in North Queensland lead to several goldfields being developed in the late 1860s.
[17]
In 1872, William Hann discovers gold on the
Palmer River
, southwest of Cooktown.
Chinese
settlers began to arrive in the goldfields, by 1877 there were 17,000 Chinese on Queensland gold fields. In that year restrictions on Chinese immigration were passed.
Other events
[
edit
]
1862 saw Queensland's western boundary changed from longitude 141° E to 138°E. In 1863, the first
Chief Justice
, Sir
James Cockle
was appointed. 1864 was an
annus horribilis
for Queensland. In March of that year, major flooding of the
Brisbane River
inundated the centre of town, in April, fires devastated the west side of
Queen Street
, which was the main shopping district and in December, another fire, which was Brisbane's worst ever, wiped out the rest of Queen Street and adjoining streets.
[
citation needed
]
1865 saw the first steam trains in Queensland, travelling (from
Ipswich
to Bigge's Camp, which is now known as
Grandchester
).
Townsville
gazetted as a town in the same year. In 1867, the Queensland Constitution was consolidated from existing legislation under the
Constitution Act 1867
. Sugar production was by then becoming a major industry. In 1867, six mills produced 168 tons of cane sugar, by 1870 there were 28 mills with a production of 2,854 tons. The production of sugar started around Brisbane, but spread to
Mackay
and
Cairns
, and by 1888 the annual output of sugar was 60,000 tons.
[
citation needed
]
1871 saw
George Phipps, 2nd Marquess of Normanby
become the Governor of Queensland. The first record of a rugby match played in Queensland occurred in 1876. In 1877,
Arthur Edward Kennedy
became the Governor of Queensland. The first meat processed in the state occurred at Queensport along the Brisbane River in 1881.
[18]
In 1883, Queensland Premier Sir
Thomas McIlwraith
annexes
Papua
(later repudiated by British government). On 2 June the decision to form a
rugby union
association was made at the Exchange hotel in Brisbane.
[19]
The same year Queensland's population passed the 250,000 mark. In 1887, the Brisbane-
Wallangarra
railway line was opened, and in 1888 there was a 483-mile (777 km) line opened between Brisbane and
Charleville
. There were other lines that were nearly complete from Rockhampton to
Longreach
, and others being constructed around Maryborough, Mackay, and Townsville. By 1888, there were more than 5 million cattle in Queensland.
1891 saw the
Great Shearers' Strike
at
Barcaldine
leads to formation of the
Australian Labor Party
. The issue in the strike was whether employers were entitled to use non-union labour. There were troops and police called in, some sheds were fired, and there were mass riots. There was a second shearers strike in 1894. Union sponsored candidates won sixteen seats at the Queensland elections in 1893. The
1893 Brisbane flood
caused much destruction including destroying the
Victoria Bridge
. The land where the
Brisbane Cricket Ground
now sits was first used as a cricket ground in 1895, with the first cricket match played there in December 1896. In 1897, Native (Aboriginal) Police force disbanded.
In 1899, the world's first Labor Party Government, with Premier
Anderson Dawson
as the leader, was elected into power only to last one week. In July 1899 Queensland offered to send a force of 250 mounted infantry to help Britain in the
Second Boer War
(Second Anglo-Boer War). Also in that year, gold production at
Charters Towers
peaked.
[20]
The first natural gas find in Queensland and Australia was at
Roma
in 1900 as a team was drilling a water well.
[21]
The
Mahina Cyclone of 1899
strikes Cape York Peninsula, destroying a pearling fleet in
Princess Charlotte Bay
. The cyclone claimed the lives of around 400 people, making it Queensland's worst maritime disaster.
Immigration
[
edit
]
During the 1890s many workers known as the
Kanakas
were brought to Queensland from neighbouring Pacific Island nations to work in the sugar cane fields. Some of whom had been kidnapped under a process known as
Blackbirding
. When Australia was federated in 1901, the
White Australia policy
came into effect, whereby all foreign workers in Australia were deported under the Pacific Island Labourers Act of 1901.
[22]
At this time between 7,000 and 10,000 Pacific Islanders were living in Queensland. Most of them had been deported by 1908, by which time there were only 1500?2500 remaining.
Exploration
[
edit
]
In 1606, the Dutch navigator
Willem Janszoon
landed near the site of the modern-day town of
Weipa
on the western shore of Cape York. His arrival was the first recorded encounter between European and Australian Aboriginal people.
[23]
In 1614,
Luis Vaez de Torres
, a Spanish explorer may have sighted the Queensland coast at the tip of Cape York. In that year, he had sailed the
Torres Strait
, the body of water now named after him.
In 1768, the French explorer
Louis Antoine de Bougainville
sailed west from the
New Hebrides
islands, getting to within a hundred miles of the Queensland coast. He did not reach the coast because he did not find a passage through the coral reefs, and turned back.
Lieutenant James Cook
wrote that he claimed the east coast for
King George III
of Great Britain on 22 August 1770 when standing on
Possession Island
off the west coast of
Cape York Peninsula
, naming eastern Australia "New South Wales".
[24]
This included the present Queensland. Cook charted the Australian east coast in his ship
HM Barque "Endeavour"
, naming
Stradbroke
and Morton (now
Moreton Island
) islands, the
Glass House Mountains
, Double Island Point, Wide Bay,
Hervey Bay
and the Great Sandy Cape, now called
Fraser Island
. His second landfall in Australia was at Round Hill Head, 500 km north of
Brisbane
. The
Endeavour
was grounded on a coral reef near Cape Tribulation, on 11 June 1770 where he was delayed for almost seven weeks while they repaired the ship. This occurred where
Cooktown
now lies, on the Endeavour River, both places named after the incident. On 22 August the
Endeavour
reached the northern tip of Queensland, which Cook named the
Cape York Peninsula
after the
Duke of York
.
In 1799, in the
Norfolk
,
Matthew Flinders
spent six weeks exploring the Queensland coast as far north as Hervey Bay. In 1802 he explored the coast again. On a later trip to England, his ship
HMS Porpoise
and the accompanying
Cato
ran aground on a coral reef off the Queensland coast. Flinders set off for Sydney in an open
cutter
, at a distance of 750 miles (1,210 km), where the Governor sent ships back to rescue the crew from Wreck Reef.
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
"History"
. New Hope Coal. Archived from
the original
on 6 July 2011
. Retrieved
27 June
2011
.
- ^
"Cooloola Recreation Area, Great Sandy National Park: Nature, culture and history"
. Department of National Parks, Sport and Racing. 15 January 2015.
Archived
from the original on 24 September 2015
. Retrieved
9 October
2015
.
- ^
Kidd, David (2002).
"Port of Maryborough"
. Archived from the original on 7 February 2005
. Retrieved
27 March
2022
.
{{
cite web
}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (
link
)
- ^
Ørsted-Jensen, Robert:
Frontier History Revisited: ? Colonial Queensland and the 'History War
, Brisbane 2011
- ^
Evans, Raymond:
The country has another past: Queensland and the History Wars
, in
‘Passionate Histories: Myth, memory and Indigenous Australia’
Aboriginal History Monograph 21, September 2010 (Edited by Frances Peters-Little,
Ann Curthoys
and John Docker).
- ^
Queenslander 1 May 1880 & Brisbane Courier, 8 May 1880, p.2e-f, editorial;
The Way We Civilise; Black and White; The Native Police
: ? A series of articles and letters Reprinted from the ‘Queenslander’ (Brisbane, December 1880)
- ^
Rusden: History of Australia Vol 3 pp.146?56 & 235
- ^
Ørsted?Jensen, Robert; Evans, Raymond (20 April 2019). "
'I Cannot Say the Numbers that Were Killed': Assessing Violent Mortality on the Queensland Frontier".
SSRN
2467836
.
- ^
"Welcome to Frontier"
. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Archived from
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on 18 July 2006
. Retrieved
4 August
2010
.
- ^
Australia.
"Stories of the Dreaming ? Australian Museum"
. Dreamtime.net.au. Archived from
the original
on 8 February 2009
. Retrieved
4 August
2010
.
; NSWV&P re 26 October 1857; MBC 14 November 1857. Book: Reid, Gordon: A Nest of Hornets: The Massacre of the Fraser family at Hornet Bank Station, Central Queensland, 1857, and related events, Melbourne 1982.
- ^
Queensland State Archive re 11 November 1861 ? COL/R2/61/893; 12 November 1861 ? COL/R2/61/894; 30 October 1861 ? COL/A22/61/2790; Rockhampton Bulletin 29 October 1861; Brisbane Courier 5 November 1861, p2d. Brisbane Courier 9 November 1861, p2c-d; Brisbane Courier 11 November 1861, p2g-3a; Brisbane Courier 9 December 1861, p3c-d Book: Reid, Gordon: A Nest of Hornets: The Massacre of the Fraser family at Hornet Bank Station, Central Queensland, 1857, and related events, Melbourne 1982.
- ^
Sydney Morning Herald 7 March 1872; Sydney Morning Herald 11 March 1872; Port Denison Times 28 Mar 1872; Brisbane Courier 4/4/72; Queensland State Archive COL/A172/72/1812; Queenslander 6 April 1872, p9; Sydney Morning Herald 2 February 1874, p3e-f.
- ^
"Q150 Timeline"
. Queensland Treasury.
Archived
from the original on 3 September 2011
. Retrieved
28 October
2011
.
- ^
"Central Queensland History Wiki ? People ? FrederickWalker"
. Cqhistory.com. 2 July 2006. Archived from
the original
on 8 July 2011
. Retrieved
4 August
2010
.
- ^
Dunn, Col (1985).
The History of Electricity in Queensland
. Bundaberg: Col Dunn. p. 14.
ISBN
0-9589229-0-X
.
- ^
"Central Queensland History Wiki ? Places ? CanoonaGoldFields"
. Cqhistory.com. 16 July 2006. Archived from
the original
on 8 July 2011
. Retrieved
4 August
2010
.
- ^
G. C. Bolton, '
Daintree, Richard (1832?1878)
Archived
8 December 2015 at the
Wayback Machine
'. Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. 1972. Retrieved 9 October 2015.
- ^
P. Fynes-Clinton.
"The Beef Industry in Queensland"
(PDF)
. Retrieved
20 June
2014
.
- ^
[1]
Archived
18 October 2005 at the
Wayback Machine
- ^
"World History"
. Charters Towers Regional Council. Archived from
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on 6 April 2011
. Retrieved
24 June
2011
.
- ^
The Oil and Gas Year Australia
. Wildcat Publishing. 2009. p. 18.
ISBN
978-1-906975-08-1
.
- ^
"Documenting Democracy"
. Foundingdocs.gov.au. Archived from
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on 26 October 2009
. Retrieved
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.
- ^
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.
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. Retrieved
20 April
2019
.
- ^
European discovery and the colonisation of Australia culture.gov.au
http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/australianhistory/
Archived
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