North held the fate of a state

North Queenslanders have that streak of independence common to communities separated by great distance from the seat of power. However, it was this independent spirit that paved the road to Federation, as Chris Jones reports

QUEENSLAND owes its place in Federation to north Queensland.

The colony would never have joined the Commonwealth of Australia had more than 80 per cent of north Queensland's population not voted in favour of Federation in the 1899 referendum.

People in the north were enthusiastic supporters for a number of reasons, including longing for better defence along the lonely northern coastline and almost unanimous support for the White Australia Policy.

They were also angry that, by the 1890s, northern industry was generating massive wealth for the colonial Queensland government and most expenditure on services and communications went to Brisbane and the Darling Downs.

Those in the south of the state were hesitant to embrace Federation because they feared competition from southern businesses would swamp local businesses.

Businesses in the far north longed for closer trade links with the major ports in Melbourne and Sydney.

In the end, intense lobbying from powerful northern businessmen was one of the main reasons why the Queensland Government agreed to be involved in discussions on Federation.

By 1901, Cairns was a thriving colonial outpost boasting 16 hotels, seven grocers, nine drapers and two newspapers.

Reflecting their support for Federation at the ballot box two years previously, more than 1000 people turned out in Cairns on January 1 to celebrate being part of the new nation.

The celebrations – organised by Customs sub-collector John Forbes, who overnight had become one of the region's first federal employees – included a procession through the city streets, a festival at the showgrounds and a concert and fireworks display at the esplanade in the evening.

It was not long, however, before the region's cane farmers, who had been among the most ardent supporters of Federation in the late 1890s, were cursing the day they voted in favour of it.

In April 1901, the Commonwealth Parliament, sitting in Melbourne, passed the Pacific Island Labourers Act that legislated to expel all South Sea Islanders, or kanakas, from Australia by 1907.

With more than 90 per cent of the Cairns district's sugar cane being harvested by kanakas in 1901, few farmers could understand how they could survive without the cheap labour provided by the Islander cane cutters.

Reflecting the anger felt by cane farmers across the state, Thomas Plunkett MLA (Ministerialist, Albert) tabled a motion in State Parliament requesting that Queensland secede from the Commonwealth.

But the farmers eventually fell into line, aided by a Federal Government subsidy to cane-growers employing white labour.

By 1907, almost 80 per cent of cane cut in the Cairns district was being produced by white labour.

The enactment of the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 – later known as the White Australia Policy – also had a massive effect on the north as it halted any expansion of Chinese agriculture in the region by preventing younger Chinese from replacing the ageing population.

Despite the short-term disruption to labour caused by the repatriation of the kanakas, sugar continued to be the major industry in the far north in the first few decades of the new century.

But cane was not always Far North Queensland's primary export – originally it was gold.

A century after Captain James Cook's ship struck a reef off the present-day site of Cooktown and forced him to beach his vessel in the Endeavour River for seven weeks, it was a gold reef that lured Europeans to the vast expanses of the wild far north.

Irish explorer James Venture Mulligan discovered gold on the Palmer River in 1873, and the colonial Queensland government chose the mouth of the Endeavour River as the port for the field, naming the township Cooktown.

Three years later, Mulligan announced a new find on the Hodgkinson River, west of Trinity Bay, but the only access to this new field was a long and difficult journey from Cooktown and a more direct route from the coast was soon necessary.

To this end, Thornton, a settlement of tents, was established at the mouth of Trinity Inlet in September 1876. The township was surveyed later that year and was renamed Cairns in honour of Queensland's new governor, Sir William Cairns.

But Cairns still had some battles to fight before it could rightly claim to be the capital of Far North Queensland.

An easier route was soon discovered to the Hodgkinson goldfields from Port Douglas and almost all trade drifted to that port over the next few years.

Meanwhile to the inland, explorer and cattleman John Atherton had selected a property on lush cattle grazing country at Emerald Creek, just north of the present-day site of Mareeba.

Atherton – after whom the nearby Atherton Tableland was later named – went on to become one of the most respected names in the district and the tableland around his property proved to be one of the richest crop-growing regions in North Queensland.

Back on the coast, Port Douglas was surging ahead of Cairns, where only a few settlers remained by 1882.

But lady luck was about to shine on Cairns, firstly courtesy of the tin miners at Herberton – who demanded a shorter route to the coast than that provided by the road to Port Douglas – and secondly by the Queensland Government's decision in 1885 to start the inland railway line at Cairns.

The bigger towns of Port Douglas and Innisfail, then known as Geraldton, had both lobbied hard to be chosen as the site for the terminus for the railway line.

But the government backed the decision of their surveyor, Mr Ballard, and Geraldton and Port Douglas were never again in a position to compete economically with Cairns.

Cairns was proclaimed a town on May 28, 1885, and construction of the first stage of the railway to Redlynch began a year later.

The 21km Redlynch to Myola section, constructed from 1887 to 1891 under the stewardship of Irish-born engineer John Robb, remains one of the world's great engineering feats and, branded as the Kuranda scenic railway, is now one of the region's key tourist attractions.

The railway reached the fledgling town of Mareeba in 1893, prompting an influx of farming settlers to the town and surrounding district.

When the railway reached Herberton in 1910 and Ravenshoe in 1916, the future of Cairns was assured, despite the gold fields being all but deserted by this time.

The establishment of a sugar industry in the Cairns region was another vital factor in the continuing fortunes of the far north.

And while sugar quickly stamped its authority as the predominant crop of the region, the rich soils of the district were also perfect for growing other crops such as bananas, maize, rice, cotton and pineapples.

Timber milling and tropical fruit farming also figured highly in terms of value to the region, but tourism was rapidly developing as a major industry.

Even before Federation, enterprising shipping companies had been promoting the scenic wonders of Far North Queensland to residents of the southern colonies.

Each decade saw an increase in visitor numbers to Far North Queensland, spurred on in more recent years by the development of the big game fishing industry in the early 1970s and the opening of the Cairns International Airport in 1984.

But the first major influx of international visitors to Far North Queensland did not come for a holiday – they arrived to fight a war. Cairns began its role in World War II as the base for Australia's relatively insignificant fleet of Catalina flying boats.

But the Australian presence was soon dwarfed by a massive United States military build-up, in which an estimated two million allied soldiers passed through the region in less than three years.

A major base for Australian and US troops was established on the Atherton Tableland and numerous airfields were hastily constructed across the north, including the Mareeba aerodrome, which was built in just eight days.

Cairns also played an important role as the wartime base for the 'Z' and 'M' commando units, whose major accomplishment was destroying about 35,000 tonnes of enemy shipping during a clandestine raid on Singapore harbour in 1942.

As the millions of servicemen poured into the region, almost half the civilian population chose to head south to Brisbane, fearful of a Japanese invasion.

Invasion was also a real concern for the military, which soon had anti-aircraft guns, searchlight and radar units encircling Cairns and a gun emplacement built at False Cape to defend against a possible invasion by sea.

In July 1942, the air raid sirens wailed over Cairns and surrounding towns on several occasions.

The town itself was never bombed, but during one of these raids Mossman toddler Carmel Zullo became the only person to be injured by an enemy air attack on the eastern Australian mainland. She was hit by shrapnel from a Japanese bomb jettisoned in nearby cane fields.

When hostilities ceased in 1945, life in Far North Queensland had changed forever and the region was no longer an isolated backwater.

The armed forces had left behind sealed roads, wharves, dams and airfields and these proved to be a major factor in the post-war development of the region.

The cheap machinery sold to locals by the military after the war also helped accelerate the mechanisation of farming in the district.

Tinaroo Dam was opened in 1958, the sugar industry was mechanised in the early 1960s and the Cairns bulk sugar terminal opened in 1964.

And while much has changed in the far north since European settlers were lured by gold more than a century ago, the region remains hostage to the fickle tropical environment. In 1991, Cyclone Joy devastated Cairns, just as a storm of similar ferocity washed away the fledgling town of Smithfield in 1877.

Far North Queenslanders of today are just as enthusiastic about Federation as their ancestors were in 1901.

Fair enough, when you consider the vital role Far North Queensland has played in the first 100 years of the Commonwealth of Australia.