Before I’d gone too far with Dirty Work at the Crossroads it was obvious the geography of Bowen would need to be modified to allow things in the plot line to flow the way they needed to.
David Herston’s teacher accommodation needed to be located within walking distance of the Palace Hotel. Hopalong Cassidy needed to be able to walk home, which therefore should be next door to the pub. The Crossroads Motel needed to be surrounded by farmland on the highway on the outskirts of town.
Once I’d resumed work on the story it was obvious I needed a slightly different town to work around, and contemplation on the morning walk led me to conclude creating one would require a little manipulation of history as well as a slight redrawing of the coastline.
The first change that needed to happen was a new name.
Given the likely continued existence of Port Denison, the logical thing to do was to name the town after the port which was, in turn, named after the governor of New South Wales.
Since Bowen was named after Queensland’s first governor, that meant Denison had to be established around the time Queensland separated from New South Wales rather than slightly afterwards.
As I pondered these matters I realised those changes could also form the basis of a sweeping multi-generation story based around real events in North Queensland’s history, and it seemed fairly obvious you could lay down the framework for that sort of story in the revised version of how the settlement was established.
There are themes running through Australian history that seemed a fairly logical fit for that framework. A basic conflict between a Labour/Catholic/Irish family and a Conservative/Protestant/English family, for the dominant role in the town’s business life seemed like a logical starting point.
The failure of separation movements in North Queensland, for example, could be tied to fears that the new colony would be dominated by Irish Catholic interests.
Rejection of Robert Towns’ proposal to build a boiling down works on Poole Island, an act which resulted in the establishment of Townsville, could be linked to Catholic fears the presumably-Protestant Towns would end up strengthening the business interests of the other side.
It seemed logical to tweak history slightly. New South Wales government could have acted immediately after Captain Sinclair’s discovery of Port Denison, sending a surveying party to establish a settlement just before the Act of Separation came through. It also seemed logical, in view of the direction the story was likely to take, to make the surveyor an Irish Catholic with Republican sympathies.
A recall would have been sent out as soon as news of Separation came through, but the vessel carrying the recall failed to arrive, or if it arrived, delivered the recall itwas lost on the return voyage carrying the surveyor’s letter of resignation.
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