Andrew Ball
As the leader of the party who identified the mouth of Ross Creek as a suitable location for a port in 1864, Andrew Ball is acknowledged as Townsville's founder Ball was managing Woodstock Station for Robert Towns and John Melton Black, who also owned the Jarvisfield cattle run and sheep stations at Fanning Downs and Victoria Downs, when Black asked him to find a suitable site at Cleveland Bay to land supplies bound for the four stations and export their produce.
On April 1864, Ball, Mark Watt Reid and two Aboriginal stockmen found the mouth of the Ross River and selected a site for a wharf on the river's other outlet at the foot of the pink granite monolith the Wulgurukaba people called Cutheringa. Since the location reminded Ball of the Isle of Man's capital, he called the place Castletown, while Cutheringa became Castle Hill. A government survey team changed the settlement's name to Townsville in honour of Robert Towns the following year.
