Nebo
Situated around eighty kilometres southwest of Mackay on the Peak Downs Highway at the northern end of Baradha country, the township of Nebo was the former Nebo Shire's administrative centre until 2008, when the Shire was amalgamated with Belyando and Broadsound Shires to form the Isaac Region.
After Ludwig Leichhardt passed west of the area on his journey between the Darling Downs and Port Essington in 1845, William Landsborough named Nebo Creek, reputedly taking the name from the Hebrew rendition of the Babylonian god Nabu's name. His name for a prominent nearby mountain—Fort Cooper— became the official moniker when the first graziers arrived in the 1860s. A hotel opened at the point where the stock route from Rockhampton crossed Nebo Creek in 1862; a Native Mounter Police barracks, which remained in operation until 1878, arrived around the same time. A township was surveyed three years later.
By that time, Fort Cooper already had a post office and went on to acquire a Court of Petty Sessions (29 January 1866), a Police Station (February 1867), a Small Debts Court (31 December 1867), and a Provisional School (29 June 1874).
Although it was never a large population centre, Fort Cooper served as the centre for a significant grazing district. A minor gold rush to Mount Britton, thirty kilometres north of the township (1881) saw the earlier settlement eclipsed when the Nebo local government division was severed from the St Lawrence Division in 1883. Mount Britton boasted a population of 1500 at that point, but by 1890, mining had petered out. At that point, Fort Cooper became the division's administrative centre and retained that status through the official name change to Nebo in 1923 until the 2008 amalgamation.
