Maryborough, Queensland

Evidence of human inhabitation of the Maryborough region stretches back to at least 6,000 years ago. The Gubbi Gubbi (Kabi Kabi) and Batjala (Butchulla) people were the original inhabitants of the region.[10] The Gubbi Gubbi were described as an inland tribe of the Wide Bay–Burnett area, whose lands extended over 3,700 sq. miles and lay west of Maryborough. The northern borders ran as far as Childers and Hervey Bay. On the south, they approached the headwaters of the Mary River and Cooroy. Westwards, they reached as far as the Coast Ranges and Kilkivan. The Batjala occupied the more coastal regions including K’gari (Fraser Island).

The Batjala and Gubbi Gubbi spoke dialects of the Dippil language, the Batjala dialect being spoken in the Fraser Coast region,[11] while the Gubbi Gubbi dialect was spoken in what is now the Gympie and Sunshine Coast regions.[12][13]

The escaped convict James Davis lived among various clans of the Gubbi Gubbi and John Mathew, a clergyman turned anthropologist, also spent five years with them and mastered their language. Dippil language was first described by the Reverend William Ridley on the basis of notes taken from an interview with James Davis in 1855.

The Queensland lungfish was native to Gubbi Gubbi waters and the species fell under a taboo among them, forbidding its consumption. It was known in their language as 'dala'. The Batjala considered porpoises to be of a status close to sacred.

British navigators Matthew Flinders in 1802 and William Edwardson in 1822 were the first Europeans to take detailed surveys of the Hervey Bay coastline. They both noted that the native population living on its shores appeared numerous. The first British people to live in the region were escaped convicts from the Moreton Bay Penal Settlement. Convicts Richard Parsons and John Graham both briefly lived with local Aboriginals during the late 1820s. James Davis, however, lived with several Gubbi Gubbi clans from 1829 to 1842. He became a member of their society and was given the name Duramboi.[10] In 1842, Andrew Petrie and Henry Stuart Russell sailed up the river known to the Gubbi as the Monoboola (later known as the Mary River) looking for land and timber to exploit. They found Duramboi living with the Ginginbara clan of the Gubbi along its banks at a camp close to where the town of Maryborough is now situated.[14]

After these initial explorations, pastoral squatters started to enter the region looking to establish sheep stations. The first of these was Mynarton Joliffe who, under the employment of the prosperous squatter John Eales, overlanded 16,000 sheep and set up the Tiaro property in 1843. Aboriginal resistance was fierce, shepherds and livestock were killed, and Joliffe had to abandon the area within eighteen months.[15] During this time, Commissioner of Crown Lands, Stephen Simpson visited the area and determined that the junction of two waterways (later known as the Mary river and Tinana Creek) would be a suitable place for a township.[10] Squatters started to return to the area in 1847 after John Charles Burnett conducted a more thorough survey of the region.[16][17]

Maryborough itself was founded in 1847 by George Furber who established a small wool depot on the banks of the river.[18] A year later Edgar Thomas Aldridge with Henry Palmer and his brother Richard E. Palmer constructed several permanent buildings and in 1849 a post office, petty sessions court and police station overseen by John Carne Bidwill opened. Edmund Blucher Uhr established a boiling down facility in 1850 and John George Walker started a boatyard not long after. The site for the township was laid out by the government surveyor H.H. Labatt in 1850 and the first land sales occurred in January 1852.[19] The name Maryborough was derived from the Mary River which itself was named in 1847 after Mary Lennox,[20] the wife of Charles Augustus Fitzroy who was the Governor of New South Wales at the time.

Aboriginal resistance remained determined with numerous Mary River squatters and their shepherds being wounded or killed. Within weeks of his arrival, George Furber was seriously wounded by local Aboriginal people,[21] as were other newly arrived colonists such as Alexander Scott.[22] Furber would later shoot dead the Aboriginal man who tried to kill him outside a store in Maryborough. The body of the man was then taken by the local Aboriginal tribe to a location about half a mile away, where it was cut up, roasted, and eaten.[23] About two or three years later, Furber and his newly arrived son-in-law was killed by two Aboriginal men in 1855. One of the Aboriginal men who murdered Furber was named Minni-Minni, and said that the murder was retribution for Furber killing his mother on suspicion of stealing some flour and other articles from his tent.

In November 1850, after receiving intelligence of the murder of a shepherd and the loss of a flock of sheep, the Native Police started to enter the area. Lieutenant Richard Marshall with the assistance of Mary River settlers such as John Murray and Henry Cox Corfield, conducted expeditions to find the stolen sheep.[24] In 1851, the Commandant of the Native Police, Frederick Walker, was called in to apprehend a number of Aboriginal men who had committed criminal acts on the mainland, and were hiding out on K'gari.[25] Walker sailed with three sections of troopers down the Mary River. After landing at K'gari, the men who were guarding the boats saw a group of Aboriginal men in a stolen boat, which was then later captured. Another stolen boat was observed and shot at, with the Aboriginal crew escaping to a nearby island. While the men camped, the Aboriginal's tried to ambush them, with two of them were killed in the engagements. It was later discovered that the Aboriginal's had partly eaten one of the bodies. Another section captured a number of people while another section followed other inhabitants across to the east coast where they escaped into the ocean.[26][27] In 1856, a Native Police barracks was constructed on the outskirts of the town at Owanyilla. In early 1860, Lieutenant John O'Connell Bligh and his troopers conducted an early morning raid on a group of Aboriginal people, killing at least two and wounding many others, in the streets of Maryborough. The townspeople gave Bligh a sword thanking him for his actions.[28]

By the late 1860s Aboriginal resistance to colonisation in the Maryborough district had been defeated with the survivors existing in poverty as fringe-dwellers. Many of these people were forcibly transferred to an isolation camp on K'gari in the 1890s and later shipped to Far North Queensland to the Yarrabah facility.[29]

The early Maryborough economy was centred around livestock farming, logging of the bunya pine forests, and the boiling down of animal carcasses to make tallow. In the late 1850s the soil along the Mary River was deemed ideal for the cultivation of sugarcane and in 1859 Edgar Thomas Aldridge was able to grow and produce a world-class experimental crop.[30] Seeing the profitable potential, many influential local landholders such as Henry Palmer and John Eaton formed the Maryborough Sugar Company in 1865.[31] Farmers switched to growing cane and the first Mary River sugar refinery, known as the Central Mill, was built in 1867 by Robert Greathead and Frederick Gladwell.[32]

At this time, other sugar plantations in Queensland were importing cheap, sometimes blackbirded labour from islands in the South Pacific. The planters along the Mary River also used this type of labour and the first shipment of 84 South Sea Islander workers arrived in Maryborough in November 1867. They came aboard the schooner Mary Smith, owned by Robert Greathead, with 22 of the labourers being engaged by the Maryborough Sugar Company.[33][34] Concerns were raised about whether the Islanders on the Mary Smith understood the work contracts and if the pledge to return them would be honoured due to the lack of an interpreter.[35] It was also alleged that the captain sold the Islanders to the colonists for £9 a head, while a missionary noted that the Islanders were unlikely to understand why they were taken.[36]

In 1869, Robert Tooth and Robert Cran bought up a number of plantations in the region and established the Yengarie Sugar Refinery. They became the local dominant sugar manufacturer with the Maryborough Sugar Company becoming insolvent. By the end of the 1870s, Robert Cran and his sons had taken control of operations under the name Cran & Co.

An unnamed Catholic School had opened by February 1858. Teaching was undertaken by lay teachers as there were no Catholic religious orders in Maryborough at that time.[37][38] It closed in 1888.[39]

S. S. Eagle

Maryborough was proclaimed a municipality in 1861, and became a city in 1905.[40] During the second half of the 19th-century, the city was a major port of entry for immigrants arriving in Queensland from all parts of the world.[41]

Maryborough Central State School opened on 1862. Circa 1874/75 it separated into Maryborough Central Boys School and Maryborough Central Girls' and Infants' School. In 1878 the Girls' and Infants' School separated into Maryborough Central Girls' School and Maryborough Central Infants' School. On 29 July 1932, Maryborough Central Boys School and Maryborough Central Girls School were closed and combined to become Maryborough Central State School. Maryborough Central Infants State School closed on 12 December 1986.[39]

Wesleyan Church, built 1864

Wesleyan Church, built 1883

On Sunday 18 September 1864, a Wesleyan Methodist Church opened on a 0.5-acre (0.20 ha) site on the eastern corner of Adelaide Street and Alice Street (25.5409°S 152.7000°E / -25.5409; 152.7000 (Wesleyan Church (built 1864))).[42] It was a timber building in the Gothic style, capable of seating 200 people on open benches. The architect was Reverend Thomas Holme and the builders were Messrs Hart and Marshall.[43][44][45] Prior to the opening of the church, Wesleyan services were initially held in a store in Adelaide Street and then in the Maryborough School of Arts.[45][46] By August 1882, the church building had become too small and started to show signs of decay, so the southern corner of Adelaide and Alice Street (that is, on the same side of Adelaide Street) was purchased to construct the new church (25.5412°S 152.6997°E / -25.5412; 152.6997 (Wesleyan Methodist Church (built 1883))).[45][47][48] In February 1883, the site of the 1864 church was offered for sale, as the 1864 church was to be relocated to the rear of the new church to be used as a Sunday school hall.[49] The foundation stone for the new church was laid on Tuesday 27 February 1883,[50][51] and the British ensign was waved from the finial of the new church's spire on Friday 22 June 1883 to signify the completion of the highest point of the building.[52] On Sunday 16 December 1883, the new brick church was officially opened and consecrated, as part of a program of church services, public lectures, tea-meetings, and concerts to celebrate the occasion.[53][54][55] The church participated in the 1977 amalgamation that created Uniting Church in Australia. It was demolished some time after 1982.[48]

In July 1870, St Joseph's Catholic School was established in Adelaide Street by Mary MacKillop and her Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart.[38] The school was for girls and infants, with boys continuing to attend the Catholic school taught by lay teachers.[38] St Joseph's closed in March 1879, as the consequence of a long-running dispute between MacKillop and the Roman Catholic Bishop of Brisbane, James Quinn, over whether the Sisters or the diocese should control the schools. In 1879 Quinn directed MacKillop and her sisters to leave the diocese, despite protests from the laity.[39][56] In 1880 the Sisters of Mercy arrived in Maryborough and re-opened the school on 1 April 1880 as St Mary's School.[57][38][39] St Mary's School expanded to offer secondary school for girls in 1928.[39] In 1978, a desire for co-education was achieved by amalgamating with Sacred Heart College to create two new schools St Mary's Primary School (the primary school for boys and girls) and St Mary's College (the secondary school for boys and girls) which commenced operation in 1979.[37][38][39]

St Paul's Anglican church opened in 1879, replacing an earlier timber church on the same site. The architect was FDG Stanley. A memorial hall was added in 1921; it was designed by POE Hawkes.[58]

Maryborough Boys Grammar opened in 1881 and Maryborough Girls Grammar opened circa 1882. In 1936, the Queensland Department of Education took over both grammar schools and created three schools: Maryborough Boys State Intermediate School, Maryborough Boys State High School, and Maryborough Girls State High and Intermediate School. In 1952 Maryborough Girls State High and Intermediate School were separated into Maryborough Girls State Intermediate School and Maryborough Girls State High School. In 1964 the two boys' schools amalgamated to become Maryborough Boys State High School and the two girls' schools amalgamated to form Maryborough Girls State High School. In 1974 the boys' and girl's High Schools were amalgamated to form Maryborough State High School.[39]

The first section of what is now the North Coast Line opened on 6 August 1881, connecting the mining town of Gympie to the river port at Maryborough and followed the Mary River valley. The Queensland Government was under constant pressure to reduce expenditure, and so despite the potential for the line to be part of a future main line, the line was constructed to pioneer standards with minimal earthworks, a sinuous alignment and 17.4 kg/m (35 lb/yd) lightweight rails.

Coal had been discovered at Burrum, 25 km north of Maryborough, and a line was constructed to serve the mine, opening in 1883. The line was extended to Bundaberg in 1888 so coal could be shipped there as well. When the Burrum line was built, it junctioned from the Maryborough line at Baddow, 3 km from the station, creating a triangular junction, with platforms ultimately being provided on all three sides. Maryborough railway station was situated immediately adjacent to the commercial centre of the city, and converting it into a through station would have been prohibitively expensive.

Albert State School opened on 9 July 1883.[39]

In 1885, a Baptist Church opened in Maryborough.[59][60]

Newtown Maryborough State School opened on 19 July 1886, but it was renamed Maryborough West State School later that same year.[39]

St Thomas' Church of England

On Friday 7 October 1887 Archbishop William Webber laid the foundation stone of St Thomas' Anglican Church and School in Pallas Street and Theresa Street.[61] On Wed 21 December 1887 St Thomas Anglican Church was officially opened at 197 Pallas Street (25.5256°S 152.6990°E / -25.5256; 152.6990 (St Thomas' Anglican Church)).[62] The church was erected by Edgar Thomas Aldridge, of Baddow House in memory of his wife Maria who died on 17 March 1886.[61][62] Its closure on 29 October 2005 was approved by Assistant Bishop Appleby.[63][64]

On 3 September 1888, the Christian Brothers established Sacred Heart College for older boys, leaving St Mary's School to educate all younger children and the older girls (with no further need for the lay Catholic school).[37] Sacred Heart College closed in 1978, due to a move to co-education achieved by amalgamating with St Mary's School to create two new schools St Mary's Primary School (the primary school for boys and girls) and St Mary's College (the secondary school for boys and girls) which commenced operation in 1979.[37][38][39]

Sunbury State School opened on 18 January 1891.[39]

Flooding of the Mary River, 1893

When through trains commenced running from Brisbane to Bundaberg and beyond, trains ran into Maryborough, a fresh steam locomotive was attached to the other end of the train, and it then departed. Once diesel locomotives were introduced, there was no need to replace engines, and through trains paused at Baddow on the 3rd leg of the triangular junction before proceeding north. A one carriage connecting service was provided from Maryborough to meet the through train at Baddow, and then return. As trains became longer, the platform on the 3rd leg was not of sufficient length, and the trains would stop on the platform on the line to Maryborough, having to reverse out of, or back into the platform before proceeding further, adding about 15 minutes to the journey. The situation was finally resolved with the opening of the Maryborough West bypass in 1988. Point Lookout Croquet Club was established in 1898, making it the oldest croquet club in Queensland.[65]

Ship building along the Mary River

Australia's only outbreak of pneumonic plague occurred in Maryborough in 1905.[66] At the time Maryborough was Queensland's largest port—a reception centre for wool, meat, timber, sugar and other rural products. A freighter from Hong Kong, where plague was rampant, was in the Port of Maryborough about the time that a wharf worker named Richard O'Connell took home some sacking from the wharf, for his children to sleep on. Subsequently, five of the seven O'Connell children, two nurses, and a neighbour died from the disease. There were no more cases but the ensuing fear, panic, and hysteria totally consumed the town, and a huge crowd gathered to witness the family's house being burnt to the ground by health officials. A memorial fountain was built in the grounds of the City Hall and dedicated to the nurses, Cecelia Bauer and Rose Wiles.[67][68]

Maryborough War Memorial, circa 1922

The foundation stone of Maryborough War Memorial was laid on 22 May 1921 by Lieutenant Colonel James Durrant. It was dedicated on 19 November 1922.[69]

The Andronicus Brothers - Jim and George, formerly from the Greek island of Kythera, established the Café Mimosa in Kent Street, Maryborough in the 1920s. Café Mimosa had a reception lounge above the café large enough to host sporting teams, wedding receptions, musical events and the Philharmonic choir during its practice sessions.[70]

Maryborough Special School opened on 1 January 1969.[39]

Aldridge State High School opened on 30 January 1973.[39] It was named after Edgar Thomas Aldridge, the first resident of Baddow.[71]

The Maryborough Library opened in 1977 and underwent a major refurbishment in 2011. The Maryborough Toy and Special Needs Library opened in 2006.[72]

In 1979, the desire for Catholic co-education resulted in the amalgamation of St Mary's School and Sacred Heart College to create St Mary's Primary School (the primary school for boys and girls) and St Mary's College (the secondary school for boys and girls).[37][38][39]

St Aidan's Anglican Church at Baddow closed circa 1983.[73]

St Mary's College opened on 1983.[39]

The city was the location for the 2013 Australian Scout Jamboree and is scheduled to host the 2025 Australian Scout Jamboree.[74]

In the 2016 census, the suburb of Maryborough had a population of 15,406 people.[75]

At the 2021 Census, the suburb of Maryborough had a population of 15,287.[6]