Gladstone
Located between the Calliope and Boyne Rivers on the shores of Port Curtis on the Central Queensland coast, 435 kilometres north-northwest of Brisbane and 119 kilometres southeast of Rockhampton in Bayali country, Gladstone is the administrative centre for the Gladstone Region and Queensland's largest multi-commodity shipping port.
After James Cook's Endeavour passed along this section of the coast at night, in August 1802, Matthew Flinders became the first known European to sight Port Curtis, which he named after Admiral Roger Curtis, the commander-in-chief at the Cape of Good Hope.
In November 1823, John Oxley investigated the harbour and surrounding countryside as a possible site for a new convict settlement before turning his attention to Moreton Bay, which became the site for the settlement that was subsequently relocated to a better site on the Brisbane River.
Although Oxley had dismissed Port Curtis as an unsuitable site, the headland at Barney Point was the short-lived administrative centre of the new colony of North Australia — by the time Colonel George Barney was sworn in as the new colony's Lieutenant-Governor on 30 January 1847 a change of government in London had already revoked the relevant legislation.
A more permanent arrangement followed six years later when the pastoral occupation of the hinterland resulted in calls for a port to service the newly established properties. Francis MacCabe surveyed the site for a town on the harbour's shores under the protection of several detachments of Native Mounted Police, and Maurice O'Connell became the government resident in 1854; an influx of free settlers established the town named after Chancellor of the Exchequer and future Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone.
Relative isolation from the hinterland, an inadequate water supply and a lack of suitable farming land meant the new settlement developed slowly until 1893, when a meatworks was established at Parsons Point. The region's boom years followed sixty years later when Queensland Alumina Limited built an alumina refinery on the old meatworks site, and the city began an era of industrial development. The Boyne Island aluminium smelter opened in August 1982; a liquified natural gas (LNG) plant on Curtis Island opened in 2016. In the meantime, railway lines to the Central Queensland coalfields enabled the port to expand significantly. It is now
Queensland's largest multi-commodity port with the world's fourth-largest coal-export terminal.
Missing links:
Calliope River
Boyne River
Port Curtis
Gladstone Region
Endeavour
Cape of Good Hope.
Brisbane River.
Barney Point
North Australia
Colonel George Barney
Francis MacCabe
Native Mounted Police
Parsons Point
Queensland Alumina Limited
