Queensland electoral redistribution sees new seats created in Bowen, Burke (northwestern Queensland), Normanby (stretching inland from St Lawrence towards Clermont) and Ravenswood. Leichhardt was changed from a dual member to a single member electorate.
Thomas Henry FitzGerald elected Member for Bowen. Served 1873–1875
John Murtagh Macrossan elected Member for Kennedy. Served 25 November 1873 – 28 November 1878
Edward O'Donnell MacDevitt elected Member for Ravenswood Served 18 November 1873 - 13 November 1874
The Sisters of St Joseph establish St Mary's School in Bowen.
George Dalrymple names Mount Whitfield after Edwin Whitfield, a merchant in Cardwell and Mount Sheridan after Brinsley Sheridan, Police Magistrate in Cardwell.
Experienced prospector, James Mulligan found plentiful alluvial gold on the Palmer River. Within a few months there was a rush, some miners coming overland and some by boat to the Endeavour from where they walked 100 km to the goldfields.
121,000 ounces of alluvial gold produced on the Etheridge.
The Queensland Government commissioned George Dalrymple to explore the coast. Dalrymple reported favourably on the region's potential for tropical agriculture and named the Johnstone River after Robert Johnstone, a sub-inspector of native police and former manager of a sugar plantation near Cardwell.
October
16 Dalrymple's North-East Coast Expedition in two tiny cutters sailed up Trinity Bay in a whaleboat into what they thought was the mouth of a large river. Dalrymple named Walsh’s Pyramid after a cabinet minister and the nearer Mt. Whitfield after a merchant in Cardwell. A native well providing fresh water was found at what was later the intersection of Abbott and Shields Street in the centre of the city of Cairns. Dalrymple was disappointed to find Trinity Inlet was not the estuary of a river with fertile soil on its banks, but he was impressed with the inlet as a likely seaport for the interior.