Queensland: Humble Beginnings to World Stage Quiz

Aborigines settled in the land mass of Australia over 50 000 years ago and possibly to be as many as 65 000 years ago. It is believed the first aborigines migrated from the Asian mainland to the now Kimberley region in Western Australia by sea, making them the first seafaring people. At the other end of the continent, aborigines simply crossed the land bridge that connected mainland Asia, Indonesia, the island of New Guinea and the Australian land mass. It should be noted that both groups had a common ancestor. The two groups migrated around the continent and met somewhere in suuthern Australia between what is now Adelaide and the Nullabor Plain. They then migrated through inland Australia which had a kinder climate in these early times with the northern part of the Australian land mass being rainforest and arable land.

The Aborigines are the oldest civilisation in the world. They are masters of understanding the land they occupy and could have taught early European settlers pertinent information to live in the harsh climes of inland Australia - if the Europeans allowed this. Unfortunately, this did not happen and the Aboriginal people were decimated by European violence and disease brought in from the Northern Hemisphere.

The penal settlement in Brisbane was founded in 1824 and was viable until 1839 when it was abolished. Squatters had fanned out from Brisbane and the fertile land of the Darling Downs less than a hundred miles west of Brisbane was attracting settlers. In 1842 free settlers were arriving directly from Great Britain and the first land sales took place. Wool became an established industry and crop growing was adding to the economy of the region. Coal was discovered between Brisbane and Ipswich in 1827 and the first mine opened soon after. Sydney, the administrative centre for New South Wales was 600 miles to the south and showed little regard for the growing settlements around Brisbane. The first suggestion of the northern districts being a separate colony to New South Wales was heard in 1846 and accelerated when the southern part of New South Wales centred around Melbourne and Port Phillip Bay separated in 1851 to form the colony of Victoria.

On 6th June 1859, Queen Victoria signed the Letters Patent, which approved Queensland becoming a separate colony with its own government. On 10th December, the first governor of Queensland, Sir George Ferguson Bowen, and his wife Lady Diamantina, arrived in Brisbane from Great Britain. The proclamation establishing the colony of Queensland was read from the balcony of the newly appointed Government House. Queensland had a 'European' population of 23 520 at that time.

While gold deposits were known to exist as early as 1858 in Queensland, it wasn't until gold was discovered in Gympie, a small town 100 miles north of Brisbane that a gold rush occurred. Gold was also discovered in Canoona, Peak Downs, Ravenswood, Charters Towers, and Palmer River in the centre and north of the colony between 1858 and 1873. However, it was the large deposits around Gympie that saved the young colony from bankruptcy due to the depression of 1866. The population swelled to over 100 000 people. When the gold ran out in Canoona near Rockhampton, at nearby Mount Morgan, a mountain of gold and copper, was discovered in 1882.

In the 1860s, migration westward (away from the coast) was rapid wherever there was water. In 1869 an act of Parliament granted 21-year leases to those who had 25 sheep or 5 cattle to the square mile - Wool and beef became a mainstay of the Queensland economy (and always have been).

By the 1870s the prosperity that gold brought to Queensland was being invested in infrastructure such as the first railways, built from Ipswich to Dalby and Warwick, and later, west from Brisbane to Charleville and west from Rockhampton to Barcaldine. All were busy with freight and passengers.

The rapid increase in required labour meant South Sea Islanders (Kanakas) were brought in to fill the need (especially in the cotton and sugar cane industries both of which were favourably grown in Queensland's climate). This was indentured labour and was controversial. The practice was banned in the 1890s and was a factor in the 1901 introduction of Australia's new federal government's White Australia policy. From 1904 to 1908 more than 7,000 islanders were forcibly deported.

In 1891, during a depression with falling wool prices, sheep station owners wanted to pay less for shearers' labour. Wool production was one of Australia's largest industries and Queensland was the colony with the most sheep. The shearers were unionised and went on strike. Non-union labour was brought in but wharf workers refused to load non-unionised sourced wool onto ships. The shearers congregated in Barcaldine in central Queensland where they set up camp - all 4500 of them. The army was called in to shear the sheep and after three months the strike was over. Thirteen union organisers went to jail for three years for the role they played. However, concessions were made: Subsequent legislation provided for shorter working hours, improved working conditions and the establishment of industrial arbitration as a central plank of how work was conducted not only in Queensland but all the colonies. The strike was credited as being the leading factor in the formation of the Australian Labor Party. On 9th September 1892, the "Manifesto of the Queensland Labour Party" was read out under what was to become known as the Tree of Knowledge at Barcaldine following the Great Shearers' Strike. Queensland had the first Labour government in the world, briefly in 1899, and the party quickly became so strong that it remained in office from 1915 to 195, except for three years during the depression.

Australia's subsequent conditions and its propensity to ground much of its industrial relations principles in industrial arbitration has ensured that Australian workers have some of the best working conditions in the world and is a mainstay in the country's ethos of every Australian being given a 'fair go'.

The concept of a united Australian country was first raised in 1842, sixty years before federation was achieved. It was only when Queensland tried to annex New Guinea unilaterally that the British government waggled its finger and said "You can't do that". This caused the British to call a convention to address and debate the strategies needed to counter the activities of the Germans and French in New Guinea and in New Hebrides. A series of conventions and referendums were held over the last two decades of the 19th century resulting in the six colonies forming a federated Commonwealth of Australia where the colonies became the States of Australia (the Northern Territory did not become a state but came under the control of the federal government). The Australian Capital Territory was added later when yet-to-be-built Canberra was decided upon as the capital. New Zealand and Fiji were considered as being part of this new country but they both declined and forged ahead with their own countries.

The national identity of Australia did not occur at federation. Its genesis started when a united Australian force fought in the Boer War in South Africa a year later. It was cemented and became entrenched with the ANZAC legend of WWI at Gallipoli.

Qantas is an acronym of Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Limited and is Australia's largest airline and the world's third-oldest airline.

Qantas was founded in Winton, Queensland, in 1920 by four pilots and an engineer. At first, the airline operated in western Queensland offering taxi services and joy flights. It also provided airmail services for the Australian government linking railheads in the region. By 1934 it had linked with Imperial Airways from Great Britain to offer flying boat services from Sydney and Darwin on to Singapore, where it connected with Imperial Airlines to continue onto London. In 1947 after nationalisation, Qantas became the second airline to fly around the world with Lockheed L-749 Constellations. It became one of the first airlines to fly the Boeing 707 jet in 1959, the 747 Jumbo jet in 1969 and the Airbus A380 in 2008. In 1993 it was privatised and took over the domestic routes previously flown by Trans Australia Airlines. It had become one of the biggest airlines in the world and is an icon of Australia.

The Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS), more commonly known as the Flying Doctor was formed in 1928. The non-profit organisation is an air medical service. It provides emergency and primary health care services for those people living in rural and outback Australia who have no access to hospitals or even general practice because of the huge distances in the outback. In 2021 it was the largest aeromedical organisation in the world flying 79 aircraft from over 20 rural bases.

In 1912, the Reverend John Flynn established the Australian Inland Mission (AIM), to improve access for Australians living in rural and remote Australia. In 1928, he formed the AIM Aerial Medical Service, which was a one-year experiment based in Cloncurry, in north-western Queensland. This experiment became the Royal Flying Doctor Service. In 2009 as part of the Q150 celebrations to celebrate 150 years since Queensland became a colony then state, the Royal Flying Doctor Service was announced as one of the Q150 Icons of Queensland.

As an aside, at about the same time, in 1927, Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary was established in the Brisbane suburb of Fig Tree Pocket. It became, and remained the oldest and largest koala sanctuary in the world, being a major Queensland tourist attraction as well as providing vital rehabilitative services for koalas.

In January 1974 a flood occurred in Brisbane, after three weeks of continual rain. Over the Australia Day weekend, 642 mm of rain fell in 24 hours as a result of the tail end of tropical cyclone Wanda. The Brisbane River, which bisects the city in a meandering path, broke its banks and flooded large parts of the city which unknowingly had been built on a flood plain when first settled in 1824. The cyclone's effect also flooded the surrounding cities of Ipswich, Logan, and the Gold Coast. There were 16 fatalities, over 300 people injured, 8,000 homes destroyed, and thousands more flood damaged. In 1974 figures there was an estimated A$980 million in damages.

The 67,320 tonne "Robert Miller", the largest ship ever built in Australia at the time, broke free from its moorings at Kangaroo Point and became adrift in the river. The ship was 237 metres long and the river was, at two points, less than 200 metres wide. It was thought that the ship could dam the river causing the river to rise by a further 3 metres, leading to even greater flooding in Brisbane. It was the harbour master, Captain Phillip Gibson who shimmied up a rope to the stricken ship and attached it to two tug boats who then steered the runaway ship to safety in the swift swollen river. Captain Gibson and the two tug boat captains shunned publicity and the event that probably saved Brisbane would have made them national heroes in today's media-saturated world. Bravery awards were warranted but never given.

Queensland showed its fighting spirit when the water began to recede. Unaffected residents, donned boots and armed themselves with mops, hoses and buckets and turned out in force to help those affected. People with no longer a home were billeted in safe dwellings, thousands of meals were cooked for displaced people and children looked after the pets of others who could not return home. The young people of 1974, when it became their turn to buy a home in Brisbane, knew exactly where the flood lines stopped and made sure they bought houses in unaffected areas. This author was one of those.

In response to the flood, the Wivenhoe dam was built 80km upstream to mitigate flood damag, in later years.

Never underestimate the importance of sport in Australian culture. Arguably, Queenslanders have the fiercest competitive streak among Australian. While Australia remains a unified country, there are only six states, and there is intense rivalry between states in nearly all aspects of life, particularly in sports. This stems from the six individual colonies before they federated.

The major football code in New South Wales and Queensland is rugby league. Each year there was an interstate series between the two states which NSW nearly always won. Queenslanders used to complain that the matches were between Queensland ex-pats and Queensland residents as NSW clubs were very wealthy compared with Queensland clubs so could buy the best Queensland players (in NSW clubs could operate poker/slot machines which were a considerable source of income. In Queensland, they were illegal).

In 1980, after NSW had beaten Queensland 2-0 after two matches, the dead rubber match was pitched as a "state of origin match". Players were selected to play for the state where they played their first senior football match. Queenslanders were excited about the prospect, but NSW thought it was a bit of a gimmick. Publicity was pitched as "mate against mate" as two players who played for the same club could be on opposing state's sides. Queenslanders saw this match as a way to right the wrongs of unfair uneven competition for the past decades and the match was indeed a high standard, sometimes brutal match, where Queensland emerged the winner 20-10.

There was a similar match in 1981 (also won by Queensland). In 1982 it became the whole three-match series. Queensland had the upper hand initially, NSW fought back and therafter this became the most intense, most watched sporting event in Queensland and NSW. It is one of the most enduring rivalries in world sport.

Brisbane won the bid for the 1982 Commonwealth Games over Lagos, Kuala Lumpur, and Birmingham. The opening ceremony and athletics were held at Queen Elizabeth II stadium and other sports were hosted at the purpose-built Sleeman centre at Chandler. The highlight of the opening ceremony was a 13-metre-high mechanised kangaroo called Matilda who won the heart of everyone who saw this monster marsupial wink as she passed the Royal Box.

Forty-six Commonwealth nations and territories participated in the Games with a total of 1,583 athletes competing. England won the medal count (109) over Australia but Australia reversed that in the gold medal count of 39-38.

As part of the Q150 celebrations in 2009, the 1982 Commonwealth Games were announced as one of the Q150 Icons of Queensland for being as a "Defining Moment" in Queensland's history. It actually did more than that as Brisbane was considered a 'big country town' up to that stage. But being on the world stage, overseas visitors commented on the friendliness of its people and the vibrancy of Brisbane. Brisbane and Queensland were suddenly 'all grown up'.

In the middle six months of 1988, Brisbane hosted the World Expo '88 where Queensland was showcased. This was a specialised Expo with "Leisure in the Age of Technology". Brisbane lobbied for the Expo so it could be part of the 1988 Bicentennial celebrations of the arrival of the First Fleet in Sydney Harbour. It cost A$625 million and attracted more than 15,760,000 visitors The event achieved both its economic aims and was successfully used to promote Queensland as a tourist destination. Interstate migration to Queensland, already the biggest state in receiving migration of interstate residents permanently wishing to relocate, increased dramatically. The core feature of the site was the international pavilions.

The Expo spurred a major re-development at the South Brisbane site which was previously a run-down area of Brisbane and was converted into parklands and a cultural precinct after the expo concluded. Expo changed the culture of Brisbane. City workers would cross the bridge from the city and enjoy a restaurant meal after work. Brisbane became a coffee-culture centre overnight. If Brisbane and Queensland awakened from slumber during the Commonwealth Games, the two became major global players after Expo.

Background: In 1770 Lieutenant James Cook claimed ownership of the east coast of Australia for Great Britain. The claim was based on the concept of terra nullius (land of nobody}, where Great Britain assumed that Aboriginal people had no political organisation and therefore nobody with any authority to sign treaties.

In May 1982 a group of Meriam people from the Torres Strait north of Cape York in far North Queensland sought legal ownership of the island. They lodged a case with the High Court of Australia. They presented over 4000 pages of evidence, over ten years, proving that the eight clans of Mer (Murray Island) have "occupied clearly defined territories on the island for hundreds of years, and proved the continuity of custom on Mer".

The High Court decreed that the Supreme Court of Queensland should determine the parameters of the case. During the extended High Court case, the Queensland Parliament passed the Torres Strait Islands Coastal Islands Act 1985, which "extinguished without compensation" any Torres Strait Islander claims to their traditional lands". In February 1986, the Meriam challenged the Queensland legislation in the High Court which ruled (in the Mabo No. 1 case) that the Queensland Act contravened the Commonwealth Racial Discrimination Act 1975. (Frank Mabo being one of the Mer people)

This ruling meant the High Court could hear the Mabo Number 2 case, the Meriams' land rights case. On June 3, 1992 the high court judges agreed that the Meriam held traditional ownership of the lands of Mer. This decision led to the passing of the federal Native Title Act 1993, providing the framework for all Australian Indigenous people to make claims of native title. This decision changed forever the land law in Australia and rendered terra nullius a legal fiction. Further, the ruling stated that native title claims only apply to lands such as vacant Crown land, national parks and some leased land - therefore native title could co-exist with pastoral leases.

In 21st Century Queensland, and indeed Australia, each public event is preceded by a dedication to the traditional owners of the land and their leaders both past present and future.

The spring of 2010 was the wettest on record in Queensland, meaning the land was saturated when the flooding rains started in November but peaked in January 2011. The floods forced the evacuation of over 100 000 people from towns and cities all along the Queensland coast and hinterland. Nearly 100 towns and over 250,000 people were negatively affected. Damage was measured at $2.38 billion with an estimated hit to Australia's GDP of about A$30 billion. The coal industry was particularly badly hit. There were 33 deaths attributed to the floods, with a further three people still missing. Most of the deaths were from the Toowoomba area (a city without a river) where flash flooding caught the city off guard, washing cars away before generalised flooding covered three-quarters of the local government areas of the state.

The Wivenhoe Dam built upstream on the Brisbane River, built to ensure the floods of 1974 were never repeated was an additional cause of the flooding as the dam exceeded capacity and excess water had to be released during the flood to safeguard the dam's integrity. That water flowed down the river increasing water levels in the already flooded cities of Ipswich and Brisbane. The flooding in Brisbane was as intense as in 1974. The once-in-a-century 1974 floods were back for the 21st century.

More than 55 000 people registered (with thousands more that just turned up for days on end) to help clean up the damage, house people who had lost homes and cook meals for those who had lost everything. Prime Minister Julia Gillard praised Queenslanders for having the "great Aussie spirit". Indeed despite the tragedy, Queenslanders dusted themselves off and didn't let their mates down.

Just as the state was getting over that the biggest cyclone to cross the Queensland coast hit North Queensland, with Mission Beach, Cardwell, Silkwood and Innisfail suffering massive damage and wiping out the country's banana crop for 2011.

The Group of Twenty, stylised as G20, is an intergovernmental forum comprising 19 countries and the European Union. It addresses major issues related to the global economy, climate change mitigation, and sustainable development. The G20 is composed of most of the world's largest economies and it accounts for around 80% of gross world product (GWP) and 60% of the world's land area. It was founded in 1999 as a response to global finance fluctuations. It has convened at least once a year, with summits involving each member's head of government or state. When Brisbane held the 2014 version, the meeting was held annually.

The 2014 G20 Brisbane meeting was the ninth meeting of the G20 heads. It was held on 15-16 November 2014. and represented the largest-ever peacetime police operation in Australia. Brisbane was chosen over Sydney because it had capacity to absorb a sudden and dramatic rise in plane and passenger traffic that Sydney did not.

The meeting was peaceful but not without controversy. Some nations did not want the Russian president to attend but he did and brought without disclosing, a fleet of warships that dropped anchor in Brisbane waters. Climate change was not on the agenda, which upset some leaders, (Australia had few CC policies at this stage). The meeting was a success and certainly confirmed Brisbane as a global city and Queensland as a favourable place to visit.

Gold Coast is a city wedged in the coastal strip south of Brisbane between the Great Dividing Range to the west and the New South Wales border to the South. It is Australia's sixth-biggest and largest non-capital city and Queensland's second-biggest city with a 2021 population of 640 000.

The Commonwealth Games, held every four years, is the second biggest sporting event in the British Commonwealth after the Olympics with more than 4,400 athletes including 300 para-athletes from 71 Commonwealth Games Associations participating. It was the fifth time Australia had hosted the Commonwealth Games but the first in a non-capital city. All fourteen venues used were within the Gold Coast City boundaries. This event was the first time a major multi-sport event had achieved gender equality by having the same number of events for male and female athletes.

The games were an outstanding success and were a factor in the 2032 Olympics being awarded to Queensland which was announced two years later.