Lavarack Barracks
Lavarack Barracks, named after the Australian Army's former chief of General Staff, Lieutenant General Sir John Lavarack, who served as Governor of Queensland from 1946 to 1957, is located in the Townsville suburb of Murray. At the time of writing, it is home to the Army's 3rd Brigade and 11th Brigade. Elements of the 3rd Brigade based at the Barracks include the Combat Signals Regiment, the 3rd Combat Services Support Battalion, the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Battalions of the Royal Australian Regiment, and the 2nd Cavalry Regiment. It is arguably Australia's most significant military base.
When events in Southeast Asia, including the Malaysian Confrontation and the Vietnam War, prompted the Australian Government to review the country's defence capabilities in the early 1960s and recommend a new military base in Australia's north, Townsville emerged as the favoured location. The decision to construct the new base among Mount Stuart's northern foothills at an anticipated cost of $26 million was announced on 26 November 1964. Prime Minister Harold Holt officially opened Lavarack Barracks on 29 July 1966.
The barracks' eight-thousand-hectare site at the foot of Mt. Stuart, initially owned by the Queensland Meat Export Company, was acquired under the Compulsory Land Acquisition Act. To house the troops' families, another one hundred and twenty hectares of Commonwealth Government land west of Gulliver became the new suburbs of Vincent (east of Nathan Street) and Heatley (west of Nathan Street), with around seven hundred new homes constructed in the area.
