Category: Queensland State Archives’ Photostream About Fortitude Valley

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Richmond is a town and locality in western Queensland. The explorer Ludwig Leichhardt camped at the site that would become the town of Richmond on 13 March 1862. The town was originally known as Richmond Downs after the nearby pastoral run, which in turn was named in 1864 because two of the leaseholders Walter Hays and Arthur Bundock came from the Richmond River in New South Wales.

In 1880, gold was found at Woolgar to the north and Richmond became an important stagecoach stop en route to Woolgar. The town was surveyed on 9 December 1882 by surveyor Joseph Hargreaves with town lots sold from April 1883.

Traditionally, the two biggest industries in Richmon are sheep and cattle farming, however tourism is an increasingly important aspect of the local economy. In addition to being a major transit stop on the Flinders Highway, recent paleontological discoveries have

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Boulia is a remote outback town and locality in Central West Queensland. It lies on the Burke River, which was named after the explorer Robert O’Hara Burke who passed through the area with the Burke and Wills expedition in 1860.

Extensive grazing of beef cattle is the predominant industry. Boulia is at the heart of the Channel Country of western Queensland where, during rain events, channels running between the rivers and creeks of the region fill with water and spread that water over expansive areas. When it does rain heavily, the Mitchell grass plains respond magnificently and result in the Channel country around Boulia being among the finest beef producing country in Australia.

The area is best known for sightings of the Min Min lights, mysterious shimmering lights that appear at night. The lights are said to be caused by atmospheric refraction that occurs when cold air

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Cunnamulla (Aboriginal meaning “long stretch of water”) is a small town that lies on the Warrego River in South West Queensland. Major industries of the area are wool, pig and kangaroo hunting, and the hospitality industry.

The original indigenous inhabitants of the area were the Kunja. The area’s first European explorer was Thomas Mitchell who passed through the region in 1846. A settlement arose here because there was a reliable waterhole where two major stock routes intersected.

The town itself came into being in the late 19th century as a coach stop for Cobb and Co coaches. A railway to the town was completed in 1899. Cunnamulla Post Office opened on 1 March 1868.

Description source:
Wikipedia

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Digital Image ID 5299

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Barcaldine is a rural town 520 km west of Rockhampton, best known as the ‘birthplace’ of the Australian labour movement. By the late 1880s Barcaldine became a centre of activity in western Queensland for the organisation of shearers and rural labourers. Pastoralist, concerned about this growing assertiveness, formed the Pastoral Employers’ Association in Barcaldine in 1889, and reduced rates of pay for shearers.

The response was a firming of union membership, and by 1891 hundreds of shearers and rural workers were camped around Barcaldine waiting for work and threatening to take action in non-union workers were brought in. Mass meetings were held under a ghost gum, the Tree of Knowledge, now commemorated at the birthplace of organised labor, trades union and the Australian Labor party.

Description source:
Queensland Places

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Digital Image ID 17218

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Aramac is a small town and locality in the Barcaldine Region, Queensland. It is situated on Aramac Creek, which flows into the Thomson River 60 kilometers west of town. The predominant industry is grazing. The town water for Aramac is supplied from two bores connecting into the Great Artesian Basin.

In the 1850s, pastoralist and future Premier of Queensland Robert Ramsey Mackenzie travelled through the area, which was on the traditional lands of the Iningai. He blazed a tree with the inscription ‘R R Mac’, which was later corrupted into the name of the town. William Landsborough also explored the area in 1859. Pastoral occupation began in 1862 on the Bowen Downs station on Reedy Creek, north of Aramac, and the Aramac Station (1863).

Aramac was initially a major outback town. However, the railway line ran through Barcaldine to the south, taking away the trade. In 1914,

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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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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

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Digital Image ID 4398

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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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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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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

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Digital Image ID 5280

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