Smithfield
Located fourteen kilometres northwest of the Cairns CBD on the Captain Cook Highway in Irukandji country, twenty-first century Smithfield takes its name from one of the Cairns region's earliest named localities.
Smithfield's original site on the banks of the Barron River was established in November 1876 as one of several centres vying to dominate the trade between the Hodgkinson goldfield and the coast after explorer and prospector William "Bill" Smith cut a track across the Lamb Range to Trinity Bay.
The short-lived original settlement achieved considerable notoriety during its two-and-a-half-year existence. While it was reputedly "the wickedest town in Australia", it was actually "no better—and no worse—than any other of the wild, rip-roaring mining towns that sprang up like mushrooms after rain" in The North's gold-mining days. (Clem Lack, The town that was drowned, p. 233).
Smith's tenure as Smithfield's uncrowned king ended on Boxing Day 1877. Heavily in debt and unable to settle his accounts, he shot local storekeeper Robert Craig and then turned the gun on himself.
By then, both Cairns and Smithfield were headed for oblivion as Port Douglas dominated the Hodgkinson trade. Smithfield was described as being practically deserted by the end of 1877.
While Cairns managed to survive and prosper after tin was found on the Tablelands, Smithfield's original site at the end of today's Redford Road was abandoned after devastating flooding during a cyclone in March 1879.
Still, the name persisted as the locality on the Cook Highway, where the Kennedy Highway's Kuranda Range Road branches off the road to Port Douglas and Mossman. It also remained the name of the survey parish, north of the Barron River to Palm Cove. In the postwar years, the area was part of Redlynch, but in the early 1980s, maps showed both Smithfield and Smithfield Heights.
Today, Smithfield is a suburb of Cairns, the business and trade centre for the city's 'Northern Beaches' and the location for James Cook University's Cairns campus.
Smithfield's Skyrail Drive tourist facilities include the Skyrail Rainforest Cableway's lower terminal and Tjapukai Aboriginal Cultural Park (closed in January 2021). The Australian Armour and Artillery Museum at 2 Skyrail Drive claims to have the Southern Hemisphere's most extensive collection of armoured vehicles and artillery.
Links to add:
Australian Armour and Artillery Museum
Barron River
Captain Cook Highway
Irukandji
James Cook University
Lamb Range
Mossman
Northern Beaches
Palm Cove
Redford Road
Redlynch
Robert Craig
Skyrail Drive
Skyrail Rainforest Cableway
Smithfield Heights
Tjapukai Aboriginal Cultural Park
Trinity Bay.
William "Bill" Smith
