Bingil Bay Blacks Beach Bohle Bohle Plains Bohlevale

Belyando 

River named by the New South Wales Surveyor-General, Thomas Mitchell in 1846, with a source near Alpha that enters the Burdekin system at Lake Dalrymple.  

Shire north-west of Rockhampton, named after the Belyando River, amalgamated with Broadsound and Nebo Shire Councils to form Isaac Regional Council in 2008, that encompased the former mining towns of Clermont and Copperfield and the Blair Athol and Moranbah/Goonyella coal fields. Gold mining petered out and copper mining ebbed and flowed with export prices and competition from Cloncurry. The area lies within the brigalow belt, where the dominnt vegetation is a form of acacia which regrows as suckers if not cleanly ripped from the ground. Mechanised clearing and sowing with exotic pasture enabled intensified grazing and cereal growing in the eastern part of the shire in the postwar years.

Coal mining at Blair Athol became viable with the extension of the Emerald to Clermont railway line in 1910, with open cut mining after 1924. Coal was mined for railway locomotives and local consumption, with exports commencing after the 1972 oil shock. Blair Athol's expansion coincided with new open cut operations at Peak Downs and Goonyella, which resulted in the development of Moranbah.

Bentley Park

Residential suburb south of Cairns between Sheleton and Blackfellows Creeks,  settled by Isaac Abraham Hartill, an immigrant from the England who named his property after his family home, Bentley Hall. Originally part of Edmonton, Bentley Park was detached and named after his homestead, which can be seen from the grounds of the Bentley Park College, in 2001.

Bicton

Rural estate founded in 1888 by the Cutten family at Bingil Bay.

Bingil Bay

Coastal resort five kilometres north of Mission Beach, settled by the Cutten family, who acquired several homestead selections in 1888. The name was possibly derived from an Aboriginal word for a good camping place. The Cutten family holdings eventually amounted to some 3000 acres, growing mangoes, bananas, pineapples, coffee, tea, tobacco, citrus fruit and coconuts. They manufactured their own coffee and established a timber mill to provide material for fruit cases. The 1919 cyclone obliterated the plantation, but coffee and tea bushes survived in the regrowth. Some tea cultivars were used for the Nerada tea plantation in 1960.

Blacks Beach 

Coastal locality north of Mackay, the longest northern beach in the Mackay region, ending in cliffs at Dolphin Heads. 


© Ian Hughes 2013