Hughenden
Located in Yirandhali country on the banks of the Flinders River, around three hundred and twenty-five kilometres southwest of Townsville, Hughenden is the administrative centre of Flinders Shire. The Flinders River, an average annual rainfall of about 485 mm and the annual Flinders grass provides good pasture on the basaltic plains, making Hughenden a major grazing centre for sheep and cattle. However, stock numbers fluctuate significantly due to erratic rainfall, droughts and floods. Runoff from the Flinders River is too inconsistent to provide a sustainable basis for irrigation.
The first Europeans to visit the area were parties searching for the Burke and Wills expedition led by Frederick Walker (1861) and William Landsborough (1862). After both leaders reported favourably on the district's pastoral prospects, pastoralists followed, including Ernest Henry and his cousin Robert Gray. Henry took up five pastoral runs and named one after Hughenden Manor in Buckinghamshire, the home of former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, who bought the property after their grandfather, John Norris, died.
The initial settlement at the junction of Station Creek and the Flinders River was a Native Mounted Police barracks established by Sub-Inspector Harry Finch in 1870. Near the barracks, William Mark's hotel became the centre of a township surveyed in August 1877 named after Henry's station homestead. After the first town allotments were offered for purchase, a post office opened in July 1878, and a Provisional School followed two years later.
Hughenden became the administrative centre when a new local government division separated from the Doonmunya division in 1882. When the Great Northern Railway Line reached the town in 1887, it was a municipality separate from the shire. The town had Anglican and Catholic churches, a local newspaper, and a Pastoral, Agricultural, and Industrial Association that ran five-day annual shows with a two-day race carnival and ball.
Although the 1891 shearers' strike, a recurrence of industrial unrest in 1894 and outbreaks of cattle tick and typhoid produced a downturn in the 1890s, the decade saw artesian water tapped for the first time at Lammermoor, south-east of the town. After the town secured its water supply via a bore in 1904, Hughenden gained a reputation for locally grown citrus and vegetables and good water for travelling stock.
Despite fires that destroyed stores, hotels and the council chambers, floods and a 1947 tornado, Hughenden continued to serve as the regional service and shopping centre through the first half of the 20th century, with a steady population growth, a movie theatre (the Olympia, 1923) and a local electricity supply (1928).
Links to add:
Flinders River
Flinders Shire
Flinders grass
Burke and Wills expedition
Frederick Walker
William Landsborough
Ernest Henry
Robert Gray
Station Creek
Native Mounted Police
Sub-Inspector Harry Finch
William Mark
Doonmunya division
891 shearers' strike
cattle tick
typhoid
artesian water
Lammermoor
