Gordonvale
Located on the Mulgrave River, twenty-three kilometres south of the Cairns CDB on Yidinji country, Gordonvale is the southern end of metropolitan Cairns, overlooked by the 922-metre Walsh's Pyramid (Djarragun) at the northern end of the Bellenden Ker Range.
European settlers began to arrive after William Saunders Alley and Richard Blackwell cut a road through the area to Trinity Inlet so they could haul out cedar logs in 1877.
Since miners and packers used their road en route to Herberton's tin fields, Alley and Blackwell established the Riverstone Hotel to service the passing trade.
Farmers on the Mulgrave River flats grew maize, bananas and sugar, with sugar becoming the dominant crop after the short-lived Pyramid plantation established the district's first sugar mill in 1883.
While the Pyramid Mill only operated for two seasons, the Mulgrave Central Mill Company was formed in 1893 and began constructing a new mill two years later. Mulgrave Central Mill opened in 1897, along with the Cairns to Mulgrave tramway.
Alley originally called the settlement Plain Camp, but the name changed to Mulgrave in 1890. The surveyors who laid out the township to serve the Mulgrave Mill renamed it after Queensland Premier Sir Hugh Muir Nelson.
Confusion with an older settlement named Nelson in New South Wales saw the town renamed in January 1914. after butcher, dairyman and grazier John Gordon, who arrived in the area in the 1880s and served as an early director of the Mulgrave mill.
Gordonvale later became the junction of the Gillies Highway, running down from the Atherton Tableland and the Bruce Highway, which runs along the coast.
A disastrously unsuccessful attempt to control or eliminate the native Frenchi beetle (Lepidiota frenchi) and the greyback cane beetle (Dermolepida albohirtum) from Queensland's cane fields saw cane toads (Bufo marinus) introduced from Hawaii and released at Gordonvale in 1935.
During World War II, approximately three thousand American paratroopers were stationed in Gordonvale before deployment in New Guinea.
Gordonvale served as the administrative centre for Mulgrave Shire (1902-1995) before amalgamation with the Cairns City Council ((1995), which was subsequently expanded to create the Cairns Regional Council in 2008.
The closure of the Hambledon Mill in nearby Edmonton In 1991 strengthened the town's agricultural base. However, housing subdivisions have continued to sprawl across former cane fields between Gordonvale's northern outskirts and Cairns.
Links to add:
Bellenden Ker Range
Cairns City Council
Cairns Regional Council
Cairns to Mulgrave tramway
Cane toad (Bufo marinus)
Edmonton
Frenchi beetle (Lepidiota frenchi)
Greyback cane beetle (Dermolepida albohirtum)
Hambledon Mill
Herberton
John Gordon
Mulgrave
Mulgrave Central Mill
Mulgrave River
Mulgrave Shire
Plain Camp
Pyramid Mill
Richard Blackwell
Riverstone Hotel
Trinity Inlet
Walsh's Pyramid (Djarragun)
William Saunders Alley
