EARLY DAYS
IN
NORTH QUEENSLAND

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Edward Palmer
From photo, by “Tosca,” Brisbane.

EARLY DAYS
IN
NORTH QUEENSLAND


BY
THE LATE
EDWARD PALMER

SYDNEY
ANGUS & ROBERTSON
MELBOURNE: ANGUS, ROBERTSON & SHENSTONE
1903

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TO THE NORTH-WEST.

—“Loranthus.”

Cloncurry, 1897.

W. C. Penfold & Co., Printers, Sydney.

PREFACE.

The writer came to Queensland two years before separation, and shortly afterwards took part in the work of outside settlement, or pioneering, looking for new country to settle on with stock. Going from Bowen out west towards the head of the Flinders River in 1864, he continued his connection with this outside life until his death in 1899. Many of the original explorers and pioneers were known to him personally; of these but few remain. This little work is merely a statement of facts and incidents connected with the work of frontier life, and the progress of pastoral occupation in the early days. It lays no claim to any literary style. Whatever faults are found in it, the indulgence usually accorded to a novice is requested. It has been a pleasant task collecting the information from many of the early settlers in order to place on record a few of the names and incidents connected with the foundation of the pastoral industry in the far north, an industry which was the forerunner of all other settlement there, and still is the main source of the State’s export trade.

NOTE BY MR. G. PHILLIPS, C.E.

The author of this book, the late Edward Palmer, was himself one of that brave band of pioneer squatters who in the early sixties swept across North Queensland with their flocks and herds, settling, as if by magic, great tracts of hitherto unoccupied country, and thereby opening several new ports on the east coast and on the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria, to the commerce of the world. In writing of these stirring times in the history of Queensland, Mr. Palmer has dealt with a subject for which he was peculiarly qualified as an active participant therein.

Very few of those energetic and indomitable men are now left—veritable giants they were—great because they attempted great things, and though few of them achieved financial success for themselves individually, they added by their self-denying labours a rich province to Queensland, which has become the home of thousands, and will yet furnish homes for ten of thousands under conditions of settlement and occupation adapted to the physical and climatic characteristics of North Queensland.

Mr. Palmer was a native of Wollongong, in New South Wales, and came to Queensland in 1857. He took up and formed his well-known station, Conobie, on the western bank of the Cloncurry River, situated about midway between Normanton and Cloncurry, in 1864, first with sheep, but subsequently, like most of the Gulf squatters, he substituted cattle therefor, which by the year 1893 had grown into a magnificent herd.

Mr. Palmer also took part in the political life of Queensland, representing his district, then known as the Burke, but afterwards as Carpentaria, until the general election of 1893, when he retired in favour of Mr. G. Phillips, C.E., who held the seat for three years.

In the financial crisis of 1893 and subsequent years when the value of cattle stations in North Queensland owing to the ravages of ticks and the want of extraneous markets, gradually dwindled almost to the vanishing point, Mr. Palmer was a great sufferer, and he was compelled to leave his old home at Conobie, which was bound to him by every tie dear to the human breast, and most dear to the man who had carved that home out of the wilderness by sheer courage and indomitable endurance.

Mr. Palmer’s constitution, originally a very good one, was undermined partly by a long life of exposure and hardship under a tropical sun, but chiefly owing to the misfortunes which latterly overtook him, and after a few years of service under the State in connection with the tick plague, he died in harness at Rockhampton on the 4th day of May, 1899.

Edward Palmer was essentially a lovable man, kind-hearted and genial, a great lover of Nature, as his poems prove, a true comrade, and a right loyal citizen of Queensland, which he loved so well, and which, in the truest sense of the word, he helped to found.

GEO. PHILLIPS.

Brisbane, February 12, 1903. [Pg 12]
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CONTENTS.