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Leichhardt

Electorate created at the time of Separation from New South Wales in 1859, extending from Mackay in the north to Taroom, encompassing the area west of the Great Divide, as far as the Nogoa River. Returned two members (1860-1873) and (1878-1888) and was abolished in 1931 redistribution, when it had become a central western seat based on Clermont and Springsure, with part going into Barcoo and the rest into Normanby.

River in north west Queensland, named after Ludwig Leichhardt, with a source in the Paroo Range near Mount Isa that runs in a northerly direction across the Gulf Country into the Gulf of Carpentaria east of Burketown. The river is dammed near Mount Isa to form Lake Moondarra and the Leichhardt Falls are around 50 kilometres upstream from its mouth. Leichhardt River Catchment

Lindeman 

Island in the Lindeman Group of the Whitsunday Islands. The islands were named by Captain Bedwell of HMS Virago after Sub-lieutenant, George Sidney Lindeman. Most of the island is included in the Lindeman Islands National Park along with thirteen other islands. The island was occupied for livestock grazing in 1906, with the homestead and woolshed refurbished for tourist accommodation in 1923, when grass-hut bungalows were also added. Medium-rise apartments brought accommodation to about 300 guests  and the resort was purchased by Club Med in 1992, becoming the only Club Med village in Australia. The resort was closed on 31 January 2012 and sold to a Chinese company, White Horse Holding,  for $12 million, considerably less than its real value because the resort needed refurbishment.

Lissner

Residential suburb of Charters Towers that includes Lissner Park, named after I.S Lissner, mining entrepreneur. Laid out in 1891, it was Charters Towers' early initiative to soften the mining landscape. It has a Boer War memorial kiosk, a memorial swimming pool and an elaborate band rotunda.The suburb of Lissner was named in 2001 and covers the former suburbs of Towers Hill, Alabama Hill and Grand Secret.

Lizard

Island, 93 km north-east of Cooktown and 27 km from the coast, the largest of four islands (Lizard, Palfrey, South and Bird) comprising the Lizard Island Group. Cook named it on 12 August 1770 after the island's Monitor Lizards. Cook anchored in one of the island's bays and climbed to the top of the hill now known as Cook's Look in search of a suitable passage away from the island. After Cook, most of the major expeditions that passed along this section of the Queensland coast - HMS Beagle (1839), HMS Fly (1843) and HMS Rattlesnake (1848)- visited the island, which  was known as Dyiigurra or Jiigurruto the Dingaal Aboriginal people. 

Indigenous use of the island included the initiation of young males and harvesting shellfish, turtles, dugongs and fish. The Dingaal saw the Lizard group as a Dreamtime stingray with Lizard Island as the body and the other islands in the group forming the tail. 

 By the 1860s,  the island was being used by sea cucumber fishermen harvesting the sea cucumber which was a popular delicacy in Asia. In 1879, sea cucumber fisherman Captain Robert Watson with his wife Mary, two servants and baby son, modified an abandoned cottage left by the crew of the Julia Percy. During one of Watson's frequent absences Aborigines from the mainland killed one of the servants. Mrs. Watson, accompanied by her child and the other Chinese servant, attempted to flee to the mainland in an iron boiling tank used for boiling sea cucumber. The vessel floated away from the coast. All three died nine days later on the waterless Howick No 5 Island. Their bodies were found three months later along with Mrs Watson's diary.

 In 1939, all the islands in the group were declared a national park. The island is also part of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, administered jointly by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and the Queensland Environmental Protection Agency. Today the island has a research station and a small 40 villa luxury resort focusing on watersports that take advantage of the island's position on the Great Barrier Reef.

Lockhart

River on the east coast of Cape York Peninsula located 14 km south of the Lockhart River community, named by Robert Logan Jack after his close friend, Hugh Lockhart.

River Aboriginal community on Lloyd Bay on the eastern coast of Cape York Peninsula, with a population drawn from five different clan groups: the Wuthathi from the north of the Olive River; the Kuuku Ya'u from Lloyd Bay and Weymouth Bay; the Uutaalnganu from the Lockhart River south to Friendly Point; the Umpila from Friendly Point to the Massey River; and the Kaanju from the inland mountain areas behind the coast. the Ancestors of the current population were forcibly moved to the area after the Anglican church established a mission at a site south of the present town in 1924. Orchid Point had been a centre for the sandalwood trade, and the local people had been affected by contact with Japanese seamen and white trader Hugh Giblet. The mission was established after Giblet’s death and relocated, six months later, the Mission to Bare Hill, south of Cape Direction.

Missionary Harry Johnson went on leave at the start of World War Two, and with the outbreak of war in the Pacific the 'Old Site' mission was abandoned by non-Indigenous staff for four months with the local people left to fend for themselves. After missionary Johnson returned from leave, they returned to the old mission site.

A large American base was set up at Gordon's Airstrip (today’s Lockhart River Airport) with bombers attacking targets in Papua New Guinea accompanied by fighter escorts based at Bamaga and Horn Island. Thousands of US and Australian troops passed through the area as part of their jungle training, and Portland Roads, 40 km north of Lockhart River, was the supply port for the war efforts.

The mission was re-established in 1947, with a co-operative formed under superintendent John Warbythat developed  new industries (trochus and pearl shell, cattle, vegetable growing). Twenty years later the Anglican church handed the mission to the Queensland Government, who tried to relocate the people to Bamaga. Most refused to go. In 1968-9, the people were relocated to a new site further north inland from Quintel Beach.

Long 

Resort Island in the Whitsunday Island group is 9 kilometres long, but only 300 metres across at its widest point. It is the closest island in the Whitsunday group to the mainland of Australia. Long Island Resort overlooks Happy Bay and most of the island is national park, with over 20 kilometres of bush walking tracks. 

Cook's chart of the east coast showed the east side of Long Island quite accurately, but he believed it was part of the mainland. The mistake was noted by Lieutenant Blackwood of HMS Fly when he surveyed the Whitsundays in 1843. 

In 1825 the 57-man crew of Indian built Valetta, which sailed between Calcutta, Hong Kong and Australia carrying opium, tea and other trade goods and had run aground on a reef off Scawfell Island, is supposed to spent three months in Happy Bay attempting to repair the vessel before they were eventually rescued. There are a number of issues with that story, with the first of them being the fact that Happy Bay faces west (towards the mainland) and, as noted, Long Island was, at the time, thought to be part of the mainland.

There was, however, a wreck found in the bay, Spanish coins and shards of Ming pottery have been found on the beach and 32 pound iron cannon balls, links of hand forged chain and lead musket balls have been found on a hillside overlooking the beach. The members of the HMS Zebra, stopping in Happy Bay in 1836 also noticed the wreck and they also mentioned the presence of an a stone well (erroneously called “Flinders’s Well" though Flinders did not land there) on the shore. 

Today there is nothing to be seen of the wreck but in 1836 when HMS Zebra’s sailing master remarked: In the sandy bay was the wreck of a vessel of about 360 to 400 tons…… She was built of teak. (Teak is one of the most durable timbers and if the teak was “quite decayed” the shipwreck would have been there for much more than 20 or 30 years.) Another naval officer noted that the wreck appeared to be that of a man of war, the gun ports being clearly visible. (Only a man of war, more particularly a ship of the line would have carried 32 pound cannon, which needed a reinforced gun deck to support their weight and deal with the recoil when fired).

In 1843 a crew member from HMS Fly wrote ….. it must have been a large brig or schooner (judging from) from  the remains of the timber, which were quite decayed, it must have been here for many years at least. Another report from 1843 mentions that  the wreck had gun ports.

Aboriginal legends recount a battle between the local Aborigines and sailors from a ship.

Donald Coutts Gordon applied for a pastoral lease for Long Island in 1883, was given one for South Molle instead but tried again and received a Long Island lease. By that time he had changed his mind and never actually used the island. 

Hugh Percival Kean obtained the next lease during the 1890's and ran sheep on the island. Kean may have taken up the grazing rights because he knew the wreck was there and wanted to gain exclusive access to the wreck. Alternatively, he may have found the wreck and associated treasure while exploring his new holding, but whichever was the case is reported to have recovered silver plate from the wreck after digging down into the hold at low tide along with gold and silver Spanish coins on the beach and scattered up a slope near the wreck. Kean believed there was treasure buried on a hill above Happy Bay and the direction of the coins scattered on the slope pointed towards the treasure, but illness forced him to vacate the island around 1898. A 1940 edition of “Walkabout” magazine reported two 32-pound iron cannon balls on the side of a hill above Happy Bay where they supposed Kean had been searching. 

Long Island remained unused until 1921 when Carl Alderman moved onto the Island and grew bananas. When his wife died the island was divided into three and the first resort was established at Happy Bay in 1934. 

World War II saw the resorts on Long Island closed, and following the war Happy Bay changed hands several times before the Mountney family took over n 1949. In 1984 the resort changed hands again and was virtually rebuilt by the founder of Contiki Holidays.  

Lucinda

Sugar port and coastal holiday location north-east of Ingham at the southern end of the Hinchinbrook Channel. The settlement was named after a Government steam yacht and developed after the nearby sugar towns of Halifax and Ingham struggled to overcome difficulties in exporting sugar from riverside wharves due to silting in the Herbert River. In 1896,  CSR Limited opened a tramway to Lucinda Point, built a jetty and transferred a storage shed from Halifax to the new facility. By connecting Ingham with a deepwater port, the development assured the town's ascendancy. 

The harbour was known as Dunganess, with a pilot station and customs office and became the export port for Herbert River sugar. Ingham residents, given easy access to a coastal location chose Lucinda as the spot for weekend cottages and beach huts. Proximity to the Herbert River estuary and easy access to the Hinchinbrook Passage wetlands made fishing and crabbing popular forms of recreation. 

The most obvious feature of the town is the world's longest offshore bulk sugar loading facility, constructed in 1979 with a 6 km-long continuous conveyor jetty and storage sheds that hold over 230,000 tonnes supplied by the Macknade and Victoria Mills. Lucinda is also the port for a supply barge to Palm Island.

© Ian Hughes 2013