Goldsborough
Located on the Mulgrave River south of the Gillies Highway in Dulabed Malanbarra Yidinji Country, Goldsborough is the most recent incarnation of the mining settlement on Toohey Creek known as Lower Camp and Fanning Town — named by Warden Mowbray after police magistrate Major Matthew Patrick Boyle Fanning — and later renamed by Warden Morgan, the Land Ranger at Port Douglas around 1880.
Fanning Town/Lower Camp was the second of the two settlements developed during the rush that followed W. Diecke's discovery of gold in the Mulgrave River's tributaries — Toohey and Butcher Creeks. Top Camp on Butcher Creek, roughly west of Babinda, was upstream and shorter-lived. While the goldfield yielded 3894 ounces between 1879 and 1886, when the gold was worked out by the early 1890s, storekeepers in the settlements moved to Gordonvale, while many of the miners turned their hands to cane farming on the Mulgrave's middle reaches. Upstream, once valuable stands of red cedar (Toona ciliata) were worked out, there was little to hold the remaining population.
