Clermont Clifton Beach

Clermont

Electorate created by the Additional Members Act of 1864, based on the town of Clermont. Abolished in 1910 and incorporated into Leichhardt.

Mining town  100 km north of Emerald on the junction of the Gregory and Peak Downs highways, named after Clermont-Ferrand in France, possibly at the suggestion of pioneer pastoralist Oscar de Satgé. Initially part of the Peak Downs pastoral district, settled by Europeans in 1854 but deposits of alluvial gold were discovered in 1861 near a seasonal lagoon (initially Hoods Lagoon, then Diggers Lagoon). In 1863 the Peak Downs Copper Company began mining a copper lode a few kilometres south of the town that developed into the town of Copperfield, which produced 17,000 tonnes of copper over 15 years. In 1876 The Australian Handbook recorded Copperfield as having an estimated population of 2000 people, a town newspaper, the Copperfield Miner, Church of England, Catholic, Presbyterian and Wesleyan churches and eight hotels.  By the end of the 1870s Copperfield's population had halved, due to falling copper prices in London and competition from new mines at Cloncurry and Mount Perry. 

Clermont became the administrative centre for the surrounding Belyando local government division in 1884, and by 1886 local confidence spurred the formation of the Clermont Club. In the 1880s up to 4000 Chinese people were working around Clermont, mining for gold and copper, but they were removed in 1888 after racial riots and the town was involved in the Shearers' Strike of 1891, with several hundred troopers needed to separate unionists and sca' labourers. 

Flooding was always a problem, with four substantial floods between 1864 and 1896 and a catastrophic flood in 1916 destroyed the town's business precinct and took 65 lives out of a town population of 1,500, one of Australia's worst natural disasters in terms of lives lost. The town was rebuilt on higher ground, south of the lagoon, and some surviving buildings were moved to the new site by steam traction engines.

Cleveland 

Bay, and Cape, geographic features named by Cook on 6 June 1770 in honour of a John Clevland MP, Secretary to the Admiralty 1751–1763 (First Secretary from 1759), or after the town where he was born.

Clifton Beach

Northern suburb of Cairns that developed after cane farmer, William Fairweather formed an access road from his farm to the beach, and the Mulgrave Shire Council decided to name the locality after the birthplace of his wife in Clifton on the Darling Downs. Housing subdivisions and road improvements began in the 1970s, with three caravan parks and a stinger-resistant swimming enclosure in place by the 1980s. The population increased rapidly in the late 1980s and the momentum continued into the 2000s as the area was transformed transformed into middle to upper-range suburbs with a good population of sea-change retirees.

Cloncurry 

Rural centre that began as a copper and gold mining settlement in the late 1860s. Finds in the Selwyn Range spawned townships with populations up to 1000. As the initial wave of mining petered out, pastoralists replaced miners, a change resisted by the Kalkadoons in a struggle that culminated in a murderous encounter at Battle Mountain in 1884, twenty kilometres from Kajabbi. The bones of several hundred Aborigines littered the hillside for decades.

Other mining towns developed nearby, including Argylla (1880), west of Cloncurry, Hampden (1884) to the south and Duchess (1887) to the south-west. Mining boomed after the railway line was extended to Cloncurry in 1907, and on to Selwyn (1910) and Duchess (1912). Kuridala, a mining town on the Selwyn line, had 2000 people by 1918.

The discovery of the Mount Isa copper lode in 1923 spelt the end of Cloncurry's regional dominance. While other copper towns declined, Mount Isa grew, purchasing progressed steadily. In 1944 Mount Isa purchased Cloncurry's derelict smelters. Modern open-cut operations in the area were working at Ernest Henry, north-east of Cloncurry (copper gold), together with Mt Cuthbert (copper), Great Australian (copper) and Selwyn (copper, gold). 

Shire, local government area named after the Cloncurry River, named by Robert O'Hara Burke after his cousin, Lady Elizabeth Cloncurry of County Galway. From 1879 the area was part of an enormous local government division administered from Normanton, then in 1884 Cloncurry division was created, extending beyond Mount Isa to the Northern Territory border. In 1963 Mount Isa was detached from the Cloncurry Shire to form a separate local government area.

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© Ian Hughes 2013