Borders
Historical and geographic factors shape territorial borders, and geography and human activity define regions within them. Like the narrative that delivers its outline, my history of The North starts from Sydney and shifts Northward as the settlers fan out from their foothold in New South Wales.
When Queensland separated from New South Wales in 1859, the location chosen for the original convict settlement influenced the new colony's borders. Thirty-six years earlier, John Oxley was assigned to investigate three possibilities for a new penal station, but he found an excuse to avoid the most northerly.
Matthew Flinders stumbled across Port Bowen (modern-day Port Clinton) by accident as he sought out things James Cook missed thirty-two years earlier. He thought the peninsula between Broad Sound and Shoalwater Bay had potential. Around twenty years later, Philip Parker King was less impressed, which may have had more to do with the damage caused to the Mermaid when she ran aground at the entrance. Oxley didn't worry about it at all.
His investigations of Port Curtis and Moreton Bay resulted in a settlement at Brisbane and Queensland's current borders. Things might have been different if Oxley hadn't encountered two castaway timber-getters on Bribie Island. Thomas Pamphlett and Finnegan pointed him towards the Brisbane River; the rest is history. However, like most of his peers, Mr Oxley wasn't particularly adept at finding Australian river estuaries from the seaward side. So the convict station settlement might have been at modern-day Gladstone, which was, briefly, the capital of a new colony in 1847.
A settlement further north would almost certainly have delivered different borders for the northern colony when it eventually separated from New South Wales. And, within the current boundaries, Queensland has regions in ways the other states don't.
In New South Wales and Victora, communications networks fan outwards from Sydney and Melbourne. New South Wales has no significant ports outside the stretch of coast from the Hunter to the Illawarra, and Victoria's main ports cluster around Port Philip and its environs. Tasmania splits between south and north, then between north and northwest. South Australia and Western Australia's populations are concentrated in one corner, around the capital and a favourable climate for agriculture. The Pilbara's vast mines may be tilting things slightly in Western Australia, but a fly-in, fly-out workforce lives elsewhere.
And Queensland?
Thanks to the interaction of physical geography and history, the state has three horizontal regions: The South, The Centre and The North, each with its sub-regions. And then, of course, there's The Cape, which is something else altogether. Queensland's railway history might seem an unlikely lens to focus on regional identities. However, it provides an ideal lead-in identifying a boundary between The North and the rest of the state; it also dovetails nicely with considering the regions within The North.
Linkis to add:
Matthew Flinders
Port Bowen
Broad Sound
Shoalwater Bay
Port Curtis
Moreton Bay
Bribie Island
John Finnegan
Brisbane River
Gladstone
The Hunter
the Illawarra
Port Philip
The Pilbara
