From the moment I step outside for the morning walk I’m reminded the early settlers of Bowen expected the town would, in the fullness of time, develop into the capital of a separate North Queensland. Bowen, as has frequently been remarked, has remarkably wide streets.
A couple of minutes later, passing the Accountant’s, the Cenotaph or the Servo and looking towards the Front Beach you might pause to consider that Herbert Street isn’t that much wider than, say, Townsville’s Flinders Street, Ayr’s Queen Street or the streets in Mackay’s old central business district but in each of those cases you’re talking a CBD with a couple of side streets whereas, in the case of downtown Bowen if you backtrack slightly and make your from Livingstone Street past Kennedy, Poole, Gordon, Powell, Williams, George and Dalrymple you’ll notice a remarkable consistency in width at each intersection.
Alternatively, start on the corner of Brisbane Street and head west and you’ll find the same consistency as you cross Herbert, Gregory, Sinclair and Leichhardt.
Bowen, of course, regardless of the aspirations of George Elphinstone Dalrymple and company, never developed to the lofty heights of capital city status, and had North Queensland managed to separate from the south in the pre-Federation era you can’t help thinking the capital would have wound up out at Charters Towers where the wealth was, safely removed from the possibility of invading Russians or runaway French convicts from New Caledonia.
Still, a glance at the Queensland Parliamentary Papers or Votes and Proceedings from the 1870s will reveal analyses of expenditure and revenue north and south of Cape Palmerston (that’s just south of Sarina, in case you were wondering) so the possibility of separation was definitely being considered and there was ongoing agitation from the North Queensland Self-government League through the sixties and seventies, with the prospect of separation being raised as late as 2007.
A cynic would suggest there’s no chance the North will ever achieve self-government, given the fact that it would require a referendum and there would be implications for the balance of power in the Australian Senate, but there’s no doubt long term residents of the Deep North see themselves as possessing a separate regional identity regardless of minor matters like state borders.
Much of that identity has faded over recent years, but there’s no doubt that geographic and climatic factors will continue to encourage a belief that things are different up this way.
We’ve already touched on these matters in the previous chapter, and there’s no doubt we’ll be returning to the same theme in subsequent sections of this project, but a road journey from Rockhampton to Sarina will underline the sense that there’s a definite line that separates the North from the rest of the country.
You might, of course, point out that there’s not a whole lot along the highway between Gin Gin and Gladstone either, and while that’s true, an hour north of Rockhampton you’re passing the outpost of Marlborough and you’re faced with the best part of two hours, much of that time cruising at 110, before you start to hit signs of civilisation again.
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