Broad Sound
Around one hundred kilometres northwest of Rockhampton, Broad Sound extends for around fifty kilometres from its southern end — around twenty-five kilometres northeast of Marlborough — to a twenty-kilometre line drawn roughly from Clairview across to Allandale Island and the Torilla Peninsula — its widest point. The sound's tidal range — about 10 metres — is the largest on Australia's eastern coastline. That width prompted James Cook to mark the inlet as Broad Sound on his 1770 chart; the tidal variation and timber resources on the sound's eastern shore impressed Matthew Flinders when he brought HMS Investigator into the bay in 1802.
Despite Flinders' favourable description, the only significant settlement on the Sound's shores was the port of St Lawrence, midway between Rockhampton and Mackay on St Lawrence Creek. This port developed as a port for the sparsely settled hinterland, with a meatworks (1893) and export facilities that became redundant when the North Coast Railway reached the town in 1919.
Broad Sound has a low-lying coastline with extensive tracts of mangroves and mudflats exposed at low tide punctuated by the mangrove-lined estuaries of Herbert and St Lawrence Creeks and the Sty.x River
Missing links:
Allandale Island
St Lawrence Creek
Herbert Creek
