The morning walk tends to produce musings on my experience of living in the North. This project is the result of such musings. If I was a professional historian, or operated in a more academic environment things might look substantially different. Someone working in such a sphere would spend time working through the archives and other primary sources, devouring everything that has been written on a particular topic and aiming to produce the definitive account of something or other.
This project, on the other hand, falls into four separate but interlinked areas.
For a start, there’s a general focus on certain aspects of the history of North Queensland, filtered through a desire to research and reflect on matters that have influenced my own experience of living in a quite fascinating part of the world. That begins with a look at the region I arrived in towards the end of August 1963, labelled ‘Course, when I come here this was all scrub because that’s, largely, what it was.
From there, we have chapters titled A Separate North, attempting to identify the factors that differentiate North Queensland from the rest of Australia and The Parochial North, which looks at the divisions and rivalries between the centres within the region.
The first of those is, largely, complete. The second has a basic shape that will be fleshed out as I work my way through other material.
From there, the reader will find a number of other thematic works in progress, beginning with Exploring the North and Settling the North and looking backwards into The Black North. Other topics, including Mining the North, The Sweet North, The Pastoral North, The Militant North and The Sporting North will probably follow.
Each will be, more or less, an exploration of a particular strand of northern history. Given the nature of the beast, none of them will be definitive, but that's not the purpose ofthe exercise.
Second, based on my interest in the places we drive past en route from here to there, the reader will find a number of chapters under the general heading of Highways and Byways. Each provides, in sequence, historical and geographical information about the various localities the traveller passes through on the way between Point A and Point B.
These are, again, works in progress that will be fleshed out with additional detail as it comes to light in the course of wider reading.