A HISTORY OF QUEENSLAND

A History of Queensland is an exciting new account of Queensland’s past, stretching from the time of earliest human habitation up to the present. It is a remarkable story of the state’s Aboriginal history, the convict years, free settlement and more recent urban and rural growth. It takes the reader through the tumultuous frontier and Federation periods, the world wars, the Cold War, the controversial Bjelke‐Petersen era and into the new millennium. It reveals Queensland as sprawling, harsh and diverse; a place of conflict, forged by bitter struggles of race, class, and gender, and intense political and environmental dispute. It is a colourful, surprising and at times disturbing saga, a perplexing and diverting mixture of ferocity, endurance and optimism in this unique Australian state.

RAYMOND EVANS is Adjunct Professor with the Centre for Public Culture and Ideas, School of Arts, Media and Culture at Griffith University, and Honorary Reader with the Australian Studies Centre and the School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics at the University of Queensland.

A History of Queensland

RAYMOND EVANS

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Cambridge University Press
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Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521876926

© Raymond Evans 2007

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2007

Printed in China by Everbest

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

National Library of Australia Cataloguing in Publication data

Evans, Raymond.
A History of Queensland.
Bibliography.
Includes index.
For tertiary students.
ISBN-13 978-0-521-87692-6 hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-87692-3 hardback
ISBN-13 978-0-521-54539-6 paperback
ISBN-10 0-521-54539-0 paperback
1. Queensland – History – Textbooks. I. Title.
994.3

ISBN-13 978-0-521-87692-6 hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-87692-3 hardback

ISBN-13 978-0-521-54539-6 paperback
ISBN-10 0-521-54539-0 paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of
URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.

For Bill Thorpe,
my colleague and friend

O when I sail from Brisbane,
I’ll search each stranging way
To find the flaming visions
That home‐blind eyes betray.
Paul Grano, `Quest'

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

MAPS

PLATES

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The intrepid historian will find bits of Queensland scattered serendipitously across the globe. I have discovered that trail in so many unexpected places over the years – miscellaneous folios at the London School of Economics, missionary files at the London School of African and Oriental Studies, feminist collections at Fawcett House or obscure manuscripts and cuttings books at Rhodes House, Oxford. Queensland, in all its peculiar manifestations, is also there in the great official tomes at the Public Records Office, Kew, and in the diverting pamphlet collections of the Royal Commonwealth Society. Its unmistakable traces are detectable in Scotland and Ireland, in Europe and across the United States. Wherever I have researched I have invariably found librarians, archivists and other keepers of rare books, journals and documents to be obliging and helpful guides and facilitators. Closer to home, at the Mitchell and La Trobe libraries, the various repositories of the Australian Archives and the Archives of Business and Labour in Canberra, staff members have been welcoming, engaging and kind. In Queensland itself, I have worked extensively over the years at the State Archives, the Oxley and Fryer libraries and the thesis collections at the School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics at the University of Queensland and the School of Arts, Media and Culture at Griffith University. I have sampled repositories at James Cook University Library, Griffith University Library, the holdings of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland and in the homes of private collectors. History students of mine have often brought crucial sources to my attention. My warm thanks to all these willing institutions and people.

   A concise history can only reveal and reflect upon a tiny portion of the wide substratum of data that supports it. The writer skates comfortably across thick ice, but skates very quickly. Events pass by in a blur or are, of necessity, simply passed over. The result runs the distinct risk of displeasing just about everyone – particularly the specialists. For the account cannot at any point be comprehensive or too extensively considered. There is no time for that. It cannot pretend to be definitive. It merely represents one historian’s chosen journey, finding his or her own way rapidly through complex and precarious landscapes. And there are many such ways. Most of all I have sought to avoid in this study a chronological checklist of one predictable thing after another. That well‐beaten track may be followed elsewhere. Rather, I hope to have made the journey an evocative, impressionistic and consequential one, while infusing hefty thematic considerations with fugitive movement. I hope it will serve to whet readers’ appetites for more knowledge and information, and to disarm those who still may believe there is little of interest to know. For Queensland’s is a massive and compelling story, crammed here into a small book, about a place typified waggishly by one British Colonial Office official as ‘a little colony half the size of Europe.’

   In one respect, I can truly say that this volume is all my own work. It was largely composed in retirement during 2004–05. Yet it is also based on decades of interaction with talented and scholarly persons and with research gathered under the privilege of tertiary employment: study leave, funded overseas trips and the odd government grant. The Department of History at the University of Queensland – a department now subsumed and mutated – generously supported my scholarship across several decades. Individual colleagues, too numerous to list, were both challenging and enlightening. Kay Saunders, in particular, was partner‐in‐crime in numerous publishing ventures and often selflessly helped in gathering and compiling data that has been of vital significance here. For some two decades now, I have also been a part of a loose alliance of Queensland historians that dubs itself ‘The Koala Club’ – an allusion, I believe, to persistence in the teeth of extinguishment. Among these members, Bill Thorpe, in particular, has long been a steady and encouraging influence. His fortitude, intelligence and commitment have always provided humbling inspiration. Several others have offered sterling support during the writing process, often giving reassurance and sometimes reading drafts: Joanne Watson, Ross Laurie, Jeff Rickertt, Dirk Moses, Timothy Bottoms, Georgina Murray, Anna Haebich, Tony Roberts, Mark Copland, Jonathan Richards, Adrian Whineray, Carole Ferrier, Murray Johnson, Denver Beanland, Jacqui Donegan and Clive Moore. Joanne Scott was particularly supportive at a crucial stage of production, when everything seemed to be coming unstuck. I should also like to pay especial tribute to the numerous contemporary writers of historical theses on Queensland, many of which remain unpublished. The enormous corpus of new work produced by these industrious and intellectually intrepid people over the past three decades has, more than any other single factor, transformed the way that domestic history is locally perceived and understood. The breadth of interpretation – once so crabbed and fixated – has been prodigiously expanded by all this dedicated scholarship. The staff of Cambridge University Press, particularly Kim Armitage, Karen Hildebrandt and Kate Indigo, have been dependable, responsive guides throughout the production of this volume. Susan Keogh has been an editor nonpareil and a true joy to work with. More than anyone else, however, my partner, Jahara Rhiannon deserves my greatest thanks for all the unstinting effort she has expended upon the typing and production of this manuscript; for all the care she provided when my health gave out during the writing of it; and for all the abundant emotional support she has offered throughout: Queensland for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

   I hope, finally, in this rather dismal time of dumbing down and numbing down, that this analysis may help to enliven critical debate on the structured narrative of our shared history, expand cultural awareness and perhaps shed a few more blindfolds.

Raymond Evans

March 2007

NOTE ON CURRENCY

There were 12 pennies (d) in 1 shilling (s) and 20 shillings in £1. When Australia converted to decimal currency in 1966, £1 was equal to $2.

CHRONOLOGY