Townsville
Located 1150 kilometres north-northwest of Brisbane on the shores of Cleveland Bay in Wulgurukaba and Bindal country. Townsville is the largest settlement in the North and its unofficial capital. As such, the city hosts many administrative offices whose jurisdictions cover Queensland's northern half.
The red rock monolith the Wulgurukaba people called Cutheringa (Castle Hill) overlooks a flat landscape that accommodated significant growth over the last part of the 20th century.
The city's population grew from 51,143 in 1961 to 68,591 (1971), 80,365 in 1976, and 164,008 thirty years later. While those figures were inflated by the 2008 amalgamation of Townsville and Thuringowa City, the city's urban sprawl only began to spread into Thuringowa in the mid-1970s.
After James Cook named Cape Cleveland and 'Magnetical' (Magnetic) Island when he passed the area in 1770, Phillip Parker King charted Cleveland Bay in 1819. George Elphinstone Dalrymple conducted a closer survey in 1861 as the new Queensland government sought a port for the new Kennedy pastoral district.
Although the government followed Dalrymple's advice and established the port at Bowen, 170 kilometres to the south, a combination of distance, freight costs and wet season flooding in the Burdekin River made a new port somewhere between Bowen and Cardwell desirable.
That came in 1862 when a new partnership between John Melton Black and Robert Towns established a boiling-down works to handle unwanted livestock at the mouth of Ross Creek, which was adequate for light coastal vessels. Black marked out a route from the upper Burdekin to the coast, and the fledgling settlement was surveyed, with town lots and market gardens established by 1864.
Two years later, the boiling down works were operational. Townsville was gazetted as a port of entry with monthly steamer services to Bowen, its own local government and newspaper (Cleveland Bay Herald, later replaced by the Cleveland Bay Express).
Following gold discoveries on the Cape River (1867), Ravenswood (1868) and Charters Towers (1872), Townsville, rather than Bowen, became the port for the gold fields and the region's pastoral industry.
After local interests and the miners in the hinterland agitated for a railway, work on the Great Northern Railway began in 1875. The line to Charters Towers opened in 1882, with a branch to Ravenswood (1884) and extensions to Hughenden (1887) and Cloncurry (1908).
At the same time, a program of works developed an outer harbour with breakwaters largely formed from stones quarried from the lower slopes of Melton Hill.
Townsville was already a significant port by the 1880s, with export meatworks at Alligator Creek (1890, replacing an earlier boiling down works) and Ross River (1891) and a narrow gauge tramway to Ayr funded by the areas' respective local governments. A rail link to Brisbane did not eventuate until 1923.
Meanwhile, the city developed a sizeable industrial workforce with a reputation for radicalism. Industrial turmoil persisted from the 1890s through the First World War, as Townsville acquired a reputation as the capital of the Red North.
Townsville served as a strategic base during World War Two, with the airport at Garbutt adjoined by a sprawling complex of hangars, workshops and landing strips across the city's western suburbs. Parts of modern-day Dalrymple Road, Nathan Street and Ross River Road run along wartime airstrips.
Townsville continued to grow through the postwar period. The opening of the port's bulk sugar terminal (1958, holding 10% of Australia's annual sugar production) and the copper refinery at Stuart (1959) consolidated its place as The North's major commercial and industrial centre.
Significant developments in tertiary education saw Townsville University College open at Pimlico (1960, later James Cook University of North Queensland on the new Douglas campus, 1970). A Teachers' College opened at Douglas in 1969.
Meanwhile, the construction of Lavarack Barracks saw the city become home to a substantial portion of the Australian Army.
The domestic airport opened in 1939, shared the runways used by the city's RAAF base and served as a destination for international flights (1980 to 1994). While international tourism has never developed to the same extent as it has in Cairns and the Whitsundays, domestic and regional tourism plays a significant role in the local economy thanks to Jupiters Hotel and Casino and the emergence of the North Queensland Cowboys as a force in the National Rugby League.
Links to add:
Alligator Creek
Ayr
Burdekin River
Cape Cleveland
Cape River
Cardwell
Charters Towers
Cleveland Bay
Cleveland Bay Express
Cleveland Bay Herald
Cloncurry
Dalrymple Road
Douglas
Garbutt
Great Northern Railway
Hughenden
James Cook University
John Melton Black
Jupiters Hotel and Casino
Kennedy Pastoral District
Lavarack Barracks
Magnetic Island
Melton Hill
Nathan Street
North Queensland Cowboys
Ravenswood
Robert Towns
Ross Creek
Ross River
Ross River Road
Stuart
Thuringowa
Townsville Teachers' College
Townsville University College
Wulgurukaba
