Walkabout Queensland Centenary Issue Volume 25. N0. 6 June 1959

Description

This month Queensland will celebrate the centenary of separation from New South Wales and the beginning of re- sponsible government. Therefore, it seems fitting that Walk- about should make camp this month in “the sunshine State”. We hope not only Queensland readers will find this Special Centenary Issue of interest. A centenary, as such, is no doubt not very important: a mere matter of the calendar —an occasion, one might say. But it does offer as good a time as any to salute our pioneers, acknowledge our endowments, see the history of a town or area in some sort of perspective. And, less usually, it can be viewed as a time for some economic stock-taking. Readers unacquainted with the history and geography of Queensland will not find it difficult to imagine the problems and gauge the achieve- ments of the pioneers. The prospector James Nash (see “The Gold That Saved A State”) is a fair sample of the courage and resourcefulness needed if a man was to “win out”. And, of course, the pioneer pastoralists (many were pastoralist-explorers) such as the Leslies on the Darling Downs, had even greater problems and responsibilities— flood and bushfire, drought and labour, educat- ing their children and marketing the hard- earned products of their labours. Queensland is a huge chunk of Australia. Its history has most of the elements running through Australian history generally, from the Moreton Bay convict settlement right through the squatting age, the land ownership question, the establishment of a tropical cash crop (sugar), the gold and tin-mining rushes at Gympie, Coen, Cloncurry, Charters Towers, Herberton, For- sayth, the Palmer and a host of others—right through to the establishment of secondary industries and the modern bonanza mining fields such as Mount Isa, Mary Kathleen and Weipa. Queensland has„ electrified Australia’s imagination with these three stars in the North” alone. Copper, lead, uranium, aluminium—millions of pounds to be won, millions to be spent in the winning on water sup- plies, roads and railways, harbours and hydro-electricity. Great irrigation works such as the Tinaroo Falls scheme on the Atherton Tableland, the most modern sugar bulk-handling terminal in the world at Mackay, the most popular holiday resort in Australia on the Gold Coast, the fascination of the Great Barrier Reef that brings tourists from around the world—these and other developments are the pattern of modern Queensland. Go North, young man!” is not just a variation on a saying. It is be- coming more and more a call to which Australians—and the older, retired folk as well as younger men—are responding. For there are few visitors who, having been to Queensland, do not wish to return again either to settle or retire or to spend another holiday in the sunshine of the tropics.