Calliope
Situated on the southern edge of Bayali country 19 kilometres south of Gladstone and 98 kilometres southeast of Rockhampton between the Bruce Highway and the Dawson Highway, Calliope takes its name from the river New South Wales Governor Sir Charles Augustus Fitzroy named after the sixth-rate frigate that transported him from Sydney to Port Curtis in April 1854. Settlers moved into the area — the new Port Curtis pastoral district — shortly afterwards.
Although gold had earlier been discovered elsewhere before Queensland separated from New South Wales, the town developed as Queensland's first officially proclaimed goldfield in 1863. By 1864, when the post office opened, the population had reached eight hundred and, for a while, Calliope prospered, with its own locasl government division, although the division's offices were in Gladstone. However, by that stage most of the gold had been found and by 1885 there were only twenty miners left in the district.
Still, the town continued as a service centre for the area's cattle properties and acquired a rail link to Gladstone copper was discovered at Many Peaks, sixty kilometres south of Calliope, in 1896. A second railwasy line, carrying coal from Moura to Gladstone, arrived in 1968. Calliope subsequently experienced a minor boom as a commuter suburb for Gladstone's industrial workers and a base for fly/drive in/out workers in the hinterland's coalfields.
