History of Queensland


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The history of Queensland spans thousands of years, encompassing both a lengthy indigenous presence in the state, as well as the eventful times of post-European settlement. Estimated to have been settled by Indigenous Australians approximately 40 000 years ago, the north-eastern Australian region was explored by Dutch, Portuguese and French navigators before being encountered by Captain James Cook in 1770.

The state has witnessed frontier warfare between European settlers and Indigenous inhabitants, as well as the employment of cheap Kanaka labour sourced from the South Pacific. Likewise, it has experienced dynamic growth and progress since its separation from New South Wales in 1859, currently being the fastest-growing state in Australia.

Contents

Indigenous people

The first Aboriginal Australians arrived around 40 000 years ago by boat or land bridge across Torres Strait, presumably from Southeast Asia. The ethnically separate Torres Strait Islanders are Melanesian, and arrived some time later.

European exploration and settlement

Exploration

In 1605, the Dutch navigator Jansz landed near the site of the modern-day town of Weipa on the western shore of Cape York.

It is possible that the Spanish or Portuguese explorer Luis Váez de Torres saw the Queensland coast at the tip of Cape York in 1614, when he sailed through the Torres Strait which was 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.

Captain Cook (his naval rank was actually Lieutenant and became a Captain after his return to England) sailed past the Queensland coast in 1770. He sailed past and named Stradbroke and Morton (now Moreton Island) islands, the Glasshouse 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. His ship, the Endeavour was grounded on a coral reef which was part of the Great Barrier Reef near Cape Tribulation, on June 11, 1770. [1] The trip was delayed for almost seven weeks while they repaired the ship. This occurred where Cooktown now lies, on the Endeavour River, both places obviously named after the incident. On 22 August the Endeavour reached the 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 the 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.

19th Century

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 at Redcliffe. On December 2, the settlement was transferred to 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. In 1839 transportation of convicts ceased, culminatng in the closure of the Brisbane penal settlement. In 1842 free settlement was permitted.

In 1847, the Port of Maryborough was opened as a wool port [2].

Frontier war

Fighting between Aborigines and settlers in colonial Queensland was more bloody than any other state and colony in Australia, likely due to Queensland having a larger pre-contact indigenous population than other colonies in Australia. It is estimated that during the nineteenth century, at least a 1.000 white settlers and their allies (Chinese and Aboriginal and Melanesian Assistants) and no less than 10,000 Aborigines were killed in the skirmishes and what contemporaries frequently termed 'guerrilla-like warfare' and a 'war of extermination'.[1] A Queensland government paid force, the so-called 'Native Police Force' (sometimes 'Native Mounted Police Force'), was a key instrument in the dispossession and oppression of indigenous people. [3] On 27 October 1857 11 Europeans were killed at Martha Fraser's Hornet Bank station on the Dawson River, in central Queensland. [4]

Colony of Queensland

Queensland was the only Australian colony which commenced with its own parliament instead of first spending time as a Crown Colony.

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 [5] Brisbane was linked by electric telegraph to Sydney in 1861.

Gold rush

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 [6] In 1867, gold was discovered in Gympie. 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.

  • 1862 Queensland's western boundary changed from longitude 141° E to 138°E
  • 1863 First Chief Justice appointed (Sir James Cockle)
  • 1864 Was an annus horribilis for Queensland:
    • In March, major flooding of the Brisbane River inundated the centre of town
    • In April, fires devastated the west side of Queen Street (the main shopping centre)
    • In December, another fire (Brisbane's worst) wiped out the rest of Queen Street and adjoining streets
  • 1865 First steam trains in Queensland (from Ipswich to Bigge's Camp (now Grandchester)).
  • 1867
    • Queensland Constitution consolidated from existing legislation (Constitution Act 1867)
    • Sugar production was 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.
  • 1871 George Phipps, 2nd Marquess of Normanby becomes Governor of Queensland.
  • 1876 The first record of a rugby match played in Queensland.
  • 1877 Arthur Edward Kennedy becomes Governor of Queensland
  • 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. [7] 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 which 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 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 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.
  • 1897 Native (Aboriginal) Police force disbanded.
  • 1899 World's first Labor Party Government (Premier Anderson Dawson lasted one week)

In July 1899 Queensland offered to send a force of 250 mounted infantry to help Britain in the Second Boer War.

Immigration

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 [8]. At this time there were between 7,000 and 10,000 Pacific Islanders living in Queensland. Most of them had been deported by 1908, by which time there were only 1500-2500 remaining.

20th Century

Map of Queensland in 1916

Federation to Second World War

Second World War

April 1942. US military police outside the Central Hotel, Brisbane. Later that year there was violence between Australians and US MPs in the Battle of Brisbane. The pipe on which they are resting their feet carried sea water, for use in fighting fires in the event of air raids.

During World War II, many Queenslanders volunteered for the Australian Imperial Force, the Royal Australian Air Force and the Royal Australian Navy.

Following the outbreak of war with Japan, Queensland soon became a virtual frontline, as fears of invasion grew. Several cities and places in Northern Queensland were bombed by the Japanese during their air attacks on Australia. These included Horn Island, Townsville Cairns and Mossman. There was a massive build up of Australian and United States forces in the state, and the Allied Supreme Commander in the South West Pacific Area, General Douglas MacArthur, established his headquarters in Brisbane. Tens of thousands of Queenslanders were conscripted into Militia (reserve) units.

On 14 May 1943 the Australian Hospital Ship Centaur was sunk off Stradbroke Island, by a torpedo from a Japanese Navy submarine.

Later in the war, the 3rd Division, a Militia unit made of predominantly Queensland personnel, took part in the Bougainville campaign.

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Post War

1980s

In 1982, Eddie Mabo began action in the High Court to claim ownership of land in the Torres Strait on behalf of the indigenous inhabitants, following the Queensland Amendment Act which was passed that year. In 1985, the Queensland government tried to end proceedings in the High Court by passing the Queensland Coast Islands Declaratory Act, which claimed that Queensland had total control of the Torres Strait Islands after they had been annexed in 1879. This act was held as contrary to the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 by the High Court in 1988. The well known Mabo v Queensland (No 2) (1992) decision was handed down in 1992 which recognised native title.

1990s

The 1990s saw Queensland undergo rapid population growth, largely as the result of interstate migration. Internal migrants were attracted to Queensland's buoyant economy, and the opportunity for young families to more easily purchase homes than market conditions would allow in Sydney. Queensland's population growth during the 1990s was largely concentrated in South East Queensland.

By the late 1990s, Queenslands rapid population growth was placing pressure on South East Queensland's infrastructure, including within Brisbane. Major planning of road, rail, electricity and water infrastructure was undertaken to cope with the growing population, with many of these projects being built during the following decade.

2000s

See also

Search Wikisource Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Queensland portal

References

  1. ^ Queenslander May 1 1880 & Brisbane Courier, May 8, 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
  2. ^ Jonathan Richards (20 May 2004). "Background". Queensland State Archives - 1972 Cabinet Documents. http://www.archives.qld.gov.au/1972cabdocs/background.asp. Retrieved 2008-03-13. 
  • Rienits, Rex & Thea (1969). A Pictorial History of Australia. Hamlyn Publishing Group. ISBN 0-600-03125-X. 

Further information

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