History
[edit]
Burnett River
Early history[edit]
The Traditional owner Aboriginal groups in the region are the Taribelang, Gooreng Gooreng, Gurang, and Bailai peoples. They are the original inhabitants of the region. A determination of Native Title was made for all four cultural groups by the National Native Title Tribunal, pursuant to the Native Title Act 1993, on 28 November 2017. It was determined that "native title exists in the entire determination area" of Bundaberg, Gladstone, and the North Burnett.
As such, the Bundaberg Regional Council has reflected this recognition in their "First Nations Strategy 2022-2026", and endeavours to celebrate and embrace the region's "local connections to First Nation Peoples and other cultures".
Initial British colonisation[edit]
The first British man to visit the area was James Davis in the 1830s. He was an escaped convict from the Moreton Bay Penal settlement who lived with the Kabi people to the south of the region. He resided mostly around the Mary River and was referred to as Durrumboi. The Burnett River was surveyed by John Charles Burnett, after whom it was named during his exploration mission of the Wide Bay and Burnett regions in 1847.
British occupation of the land in the region began in 1848 when pastoral squatters Gregory Blaxland Jnr and William Forster established a sheep station. Blaxland was a son of the Blue Mountains explorer, Gregory Blaxland, and Forster was later to become a Premier of New South Wales. They selected a very large area of land which encompassed most of the western part of the modern day Bundaberg Region along the Burnett River. They named this pastoral lease Tirroan.[citation needed]
Blaxland and Forster had previously set up sheep stations near the Clarence River and had a notable history of conflict with Aboriginal people. Sheep stations imposed on native bushland disrupt native food production, typically resulting in widespread hunger and illness amongst native peoples. Conflict continued at Tirroan when two of their shepherds were killed by Aboriginal people in 1849. Forster and Blaxland led a punitive expedition causing multiple Aboriginal deaths. Further conflict occurred the following year when Blaxland was clubbed to death. Forster and a number of other squatters conducted another reprisal, resulting in a large massacre of Aboriginal people in scrubland toward the coastal part of Tirroan.[citation needed]
In the early 1850s, Forster sold the property to Alfred Henry Brown who changed the name of the pastoral lease to Gin Gin. At the same time, Native Police officer, Richard Purvis Marshall, took up the Bingera leasehold in the rainforest scrubland downstream from Tirroan. Three towns in the Bundaberg region, Tirroan, South Bingera and Gin Gin, commemorate these massive initial leaseholds.
Sketch of Bundaberg, North Queensland, 1877 (State Library of Queensland)
Cattle and logging[edit]
Timber workers
South Sea Islanders on the deck of a ship arriving in Bundaberg, 1895
South Sea Islander woman planting sugar cane in a field, c.1897
Promotional float for Paramount Theatre for White Zombie with actors in blackface, Bundaberg ca. 1930s.
Before colonisation, much of the land around the lower reaches of the Burnett River consisted of either the Woongarra Scrub, a subtropical rainforest that stood where most of the Bundaberg canefields now grow, or the Barolin Plains, a lightly timbered grassland that stretched along the coastal fringe. Neither of these areas were suitable for sheep farming but the British soon found that raising cattle was possible. In the early 1860s the first cattle stations in the area were established; Branyan on the south side of the Burnett River and Tantitha on the north side.
Timber companies, such as that owned by William Pettigrew, started the logging of the Woongarra Scrub in 1867.
In 1868, Samuel Johnston erected a sawmill in Waterview, on the north bank of the Burnett River. The Waterview sawmill became a prominent supplier of timber until its closure in 1903 after being damaged by flood.
Town of Bundaberg[edit]
In 1867, timber-getters and farmers, John and Gavin Steuart, established the Woondooma property which consisted of a few houses and a wharf on the northern banks of the Burnett River where Bundaberg North now stands. An official survey of the area was undertaken in 1869 by John Charlton Thompson, assisted by James Ellwood and Alfred Dale Edwards, and the town of Bundaberg was gazetted across the river on the higher, southern banks. The first Bundaberg land sale was held in Maryborough on 11 May 1870 where hotelier John Foley bought the original lots.
Sugar[edit]
Most of the early settlers exploited the timber and grew maize on their selections but as a result of the incentives of the Sugar and Coffee Regulations of 1864, sugar became a major component in Bundaberg's development from the 1870s. Experimental sugar cane cultivation in the district was first grown at John Charlton Thompson's Rubyanna property in 1870 and the first sugar mill was built by Richard Elliot Palmer at his Millbank plantation in 1872. Bundaberg rapidly became an important sugar production region after the construction of the Millaquin Sugar Refinery at East Bundaberg by Robert Cran and his sons in 1882. The Fairymead sugar processing plant owned by the Young Brothers (Arthur, Horace and Ernest Young) opened in 1884 which further augmented Bundaberg's sugar producing capacity.[citation needed]
The initial 35 years of the sugar industry in Bundaberg was reliant on South Sea Islander workers, who were often blackbirded and kept in a status close to slavery. The first significant shipload of Kanaka labour, as it was called, to arrive on the Burnett River came in January 1872 aboard the Petrel. Allegations of kidnapping and wounding immediately arose concerning the recruitment of the Islanders on this vessel. Influential Bundaberg plantation owners were able to purchase recruiting ships in order to obtain labour directly from areas such as the Solomon Islands and the New Hebrides. The Young Brothers owned the Lochiel and the May vessels, the Cran family and Frederic Buss were the major investors in the Helena while the Ariel was co-owned by a number of local planters. While some of the recruitment was voluntary, violence and deception toward Islanders often took place. For example, the crew of the Helena fought a battle with the locals of Ambrym while taking Islanders from there.
These labourers had to work for three years and were only paid at the end of this time period. Instead of cash, they usually received substandard goods and trinkets of minimal value as payment. Excessive mortality of the Islanders while serving their term of labour in the Bundaberg region was frequent. Overwork, poor housing, inadequate food, contaminated water supplies and a lack of medical care all contributed to the high death rate. Penalties for the plantation owners whose neglect resulted in these fatalities were rare and did not exceed a £10 fine. Importing South Sea Islander labour was made illegal in 1904 and enforced repatriation of these workers out of Bundaberg and other locations in Queensland occurred from 1906 to 1908.
Holy Rosary Catholic Church, Bundaberg, 1939
The 1911 Queensland sugar strike occurred after the phasing out of South Sea Islander labour, with workers claiming that many plantation owners had substituted black indentured labourers (sometimes referred to as slaves) with white ones. Workers sought better accommodation, wages and conditions, including an eight-hour day and a minimum weekly wage of 30 shillings, including food. The mobilisation of unionists from Bundaberg to Mossman was a major achievement, with the 1911 strike lasting over seven weeks in Bundaberg where the town's economy was largely based on the sugar industry. The end result of the strike was a Commonwealth Royal Commission into the sugar industry in 1911–12, which had been initially requested by Harry Hall, a Bundaberg AWA organiser in 1908 with a petition signed by 1500 Bundaberg sugar workers. The Royal Commission, with ALF Secretary Albert Hinchcliffe as secretary, concluded the AWA demands had been justified. The union victory was a watershed in organised labour in Queensland and Australia.
Vaudeville marquees on Quay Street on the banks of the Burnett River, 1935
Further progress[edit]
Buss Park vista, the Church of England to the left, and the Presbyterian Church and the Ambulance Building in the background, 1946
Bundaberg War Memorial in front of the Bundaberg Post Office, 1948
St Joseph's School opened in June 1876.
With the passage of the Local Authorities Act 1902, Barolin Division became the Shire of Barolin and the Borough of Bundaberg became the Town of Bundaberg on 31 March 1903. On 22 November 1913, Bundaberg was proclaimed a City.
In 1912 Bundaberg pioneering aviator Bert Hinkler built and successfully flew his own glider on Mon Repos beach. He also completed a noteworthy non-stop flight from London to Turin in 1920. The following year in 1921 Hinkler flew from Sydney to Bundaberg, non-stop, in a record breaking flight of 8 and a half hours, in the process beating a telegram he had sent to his mother, to warn her of his arrival.
The Bundaberg War Memorial commemorating those who died in the Anglo-Boer War and World War I was unveiled by Major-General Charles Brand on 30 July 1921. The Bundaberg digger was imported from Italy and is constructed of Italian marble. The completed memorial, at a cost of £1,650, was the third most costly to be erected in Queensland. It is a major regional memorial and one of the two most intact digger memorials that remain in their original settings of intersections.[citation needed]
The Bundaberg tragedy of 1928 resulted in the deaths of 12 children in a 24-hour period after they were administered a contaminated diphtheria vaccine.
In 1941 the Sisters of Mercy purchased the house Brabourne (originally owned by prominent citizen Frederick Buss) and established St Mary's Hostel, for women and girls working in or visiting Bundaberg. After World War II, doctors were calling for modern hospital facilities in Bundaberg, so the Sisters converted the hostel into the Mater Private Hospital, a 24-bed hospital with an operating theatre, chapel, and accommodation for the nurses and maids, officially opening on 28 July 1946. The nurses were initially all nuns, but they established a training school for other women to become nurses. The hospital expanded over the years with additional beds, operating theatres, X-ray, pathology and a dedicated children's ward. It was the first hospital in Queensland to use the Zeiss ophthalmic microscope, the first regional hospital in Queensland to have a lymphoedema clinic, and to use facial recognition technology for endoscopic sinus surgery.
In the 1960s the township was completely flooded by the Burnett river. In 1967 Bundaberg celebrated its centenary by producing a coin and opening The Bundaberg and District Historical Museum in the Bundaberg Botanical Gardens in Bundaberg North.[citation needed]
Bundaberg in the 21st century[edit]
In December 2010, Bundaberg suffered its worst floods in 60 years, when floodwaters from the Burnett River inundated hundreds of homes.
Two years later, in January 2013, Bundaberg experienced its worst flooding in recorded history as a result of Cyclone Oswald. Floodwaters from the Burnett River peaked at 9.53 metres. Over 4,000 properties and 600 businesses had been affected by floodwaters, which moved in excess of 70 kilometres per hour (43 mph). Two defence force Blackhawk helicopters were brought in from Townsville as part of the evacuation operation, which ultimately used an additional 14 aircraft.[citation needed]
In March 2026, Bundaberg again experienced major flooding, with the Burnett River expected to peak on Tuesday evening, or Wednesday morning 11 March.[needs update] Tropical Low 29U crossed the coast in North Queensland on 5 March, before dragging the monsoon trough southwards as the low progressed to the West, bringing rain to much of Queensland. The low then progressed to the coast along the trough, with the rain ending on Monday evening following four days of rain. Riverine flooding began on Tuesday morning as floodwaters from upstream accumulated in the tidal plains of the Burnett River near Bundaberg. The Burnett River's depth rose to over 7 metres (23 ft), with more than 200 residents required to leave. Areas in town were flooded including McDonalds, Bundaberg Motor Group, Mitre 10, and Dan Murphy's.
On 6 April 2018, Prince Charles visited Bundaberg Rum Distillery. He stated, "I'm thrilled that this Distillery's proving to be the one that produces some of the most famous and special of all rums around the world."
In 2018, the Australian Bureau of Statistics estimated the population of Bundaberg's significant urban area was 70,921 people.
