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McDowall Street, Roma

Queensland State Archives posted a photo:

Roma is a town and locality in the Maranoa Region, Queensland. The town was incorporated in 1867 and is named after Lady Diamantina Bowen (née di Roma), the wife of Sir George Bowen, the Governor of Australia at the time. It is the centre of a rich pastoral and wheat-growing district.

In 1863 Samuel Symons Bassett brought Queensland’s vine cutting to Roma and established the Romaville Winery and a century later Roma was the site of Australia’s first oil and gas discoveries. Captain Starlight, a cattle rustler, was tried and acquitted in the Roma Courthouse in February 1873. No successful conviction for cattle rustling has been made in Roma.

Description source:
Wikipedia

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Digital Image ID 112

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Grey Street, Hughenden

Queensland State Archives posted a photo:

Hughenden is a classic Queensland outback town. It owes its existence to the railway line and the surrounding cattle grazing land. Ernest Henry, who settled in the area in 1863, named his property Hughenden Station after the English home of his maternal grandfather, Hughenden Manor in Buckinghamshire. When the town was surveyed in 1877 it took the name of the station.

Its primary appeal is based on its position on the edge of Australia’s ancient inland sea which existed between 95 and 120 million years ago and left a rich supply of fossils in the area. The most important fossil discovery has been that of a Muttaburrasaurus which is displayed prominently in the Flinders Discovery Centre. The skeleton, found in 1962, was the first entire fossil to be found in Australia.

Description source:
Aussie Towns

View the original image at Queensland State Archives:
Digital Image ID 4398

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Goats in Main street – Hughenden

Queensland State Archives posted a photo:

Hughenden is a town and locality in the Shire of Flinders, Queensland. It is situated on the banks of the Flinders River and was named after Hughenden Manor in Buckinghamshire, England, the home of former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. The name comes from a pastoral run name used in 1862 by Robert Gray and Ernest Henry, both of whom had a family connection with Hughenden Manor.

A post office opened in 1878 and a state school opened in 1884. The region around Hughenden is a major center for the grazing of sheep and cattle. The main feed is annual grasses known as Flinders grass, which grow rapidly on the fertile grey or brown cracking clay soils after rain between November and March. However, because the rainfall is extremely erratic droughts and floods are normal and stock number fluctuate greatly. The runoff from the Flinders River

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Flinders Street, Townsville

Queensland State Archives posted a photo:

Townsville is a city on the north-eastern coast of Queensland. It is in the dry tropics region of Queensland, adjacent to the central section of the Great Barrier Reef. James Cook visited the Towsnville region on his first voyage to Australia in 1770, but did not actually land there.

In 1819, Captain Phillip Parker King and botanist Alan Cunningham were the first Europeans to record a local landing. In 1846, James Morrill was shipwrecked from the Peruvian, living in the Townsville area among the Bindal people for 17 years before being found by white men and returned to Brisbane.

The Burdekin River’s seasonal flooding made the establishment of a seaport north of the river essential to the nascent inland cattle industry. The first party of settlers, led by W. A. Ross, arrived in Cleveland Bay from Woodstock Station on 5 November 1864. In 1866 Robert Towns visited

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Brolga Street, Quilpie

Queensland State Archives posted a photo:

Quilpie is a town and locality situated in the Channel Country of South West Queensland. The economy of the area is based on the grazing and mining industries. The area has one of the largest deposits of boulder opal in the world, and also has extensive deposits of gas and oil.

Quilpie was gazetted as a town in 1917 owing to the railway that was laid down from Brisbane. It takes its name from the Indigenous Australian word for stone curlew, quilpeta. The first post office was opened in 1921. Two years later the telephone reached Quilpie and in 1927 the first court house in the town was established.

Description source:
Wikipedia

View the original image at Queensland State Archives:
Digital Image ID 5280

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