A New Convict Colony
The transportation of convicts to Australia became an integral part of the British penal system in the late eighteenth century.
Following the establishment of the first convict settlement at Port jackson (originally at Botany Bay) in 1788, a second settlement was established at Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) in 1803.
By the early 1820s the flow of convicts was such that the British government decided to establish another penal colony.
Surveyor General, John Oxley was despatched by Governor Brisbane to examine Port Bowen, Port Curtis and Moreton Bay and report on the suitability of each as a new centre for the exported felons.
On 5th November, 1823, H.M.S. Mermaid with Oxley aboard anchored in Port Curtis. The eighty ton cutter had, according to the impatient Oxley, a tedious passage from Sydney, battling adverse north easterly winds. Their water supply, stored in old casks had become tainted and unfit for use over the last week. A party, which included Lieutenant Stirling of the Buffs and John Uniacke, was sent ashore to Facing Island on the first afternoon to replenish the water, while Oxley and the master took soundings. The shore party found the November heat of Port Curtis intense and risked a swim near Gatcombe Head in defiance of the sharks, before returning to the ship.
From then the tempo quickened. The forty year old Oxley, drove himself and the party at a fast pace. It had been noon when the ship anchored. By three p.m. they had eaten an early dinner, loaded up two of the boats with three days' provisions and set off from Facing Island to the mainland, against an ebb tide. By six o'clock they reached a small beach (possibly at Barney Point) and because of the low tide had difficulty in landing. They spend a miserable night in their tents persecuted by sand flies and mosquitoes.
Next morning they left the camp at six. In John Uniacke's narrative of events, he states they took a south south easterly direction and walked for six hours to cover barely twelve miles. They turned back on the bank of a small watercourse which by this description may have been Machine Creek near Benaraby. The walk over the steep stony hills south of Gladstone and down through Toolooa in extreme summer heat gave them a poor impression of the country. It seemed even the natives shunned the area. The only evidence they saw of their existence was a grave by the creek, of one they took to be a hunter. When they reached the tents that evening, after nearly twelve hours on the march, Uniacke thought the distance he had traversed that day as exhausting as a forty mile walk in England.
Next morning they set off by boat seeking the entrances to two fresh water creeks they had found on their walk. The boats' crew rowed about sixteen miles but only a meagre supply of fresh water was found six miles up one of the inlets they entered. After another tormented night they struck camp and returned to the Mermaid at Gatcombe Head.
Oxley at this time had discarded Port Curtis as a possible site for a settlement, and was ready to continue the passage north to Port Bowen. But the ship's master had done some exploring himself in their absence. He reported the discovery of a fine fresh water river, the mouth of which lay due south and could be seen from the ship. Oxley was persuaded to delay their departure and next day went with Stirling to the mouth of the river which they named Boyne. They penetrated upstream to the limit of the tidal waters which in that season was about a mile above where the Bruce Highway now crosses the River. Despite the fact that the entrance was nearly blocked with sand bars, Oxley was more impressed with the country along the banks of the river, than that he had been around the site of the present Gladstone.
Although the hills were stony and almost incapable of cultivation the party noted several small flats of a good light sandy soil. But everywhere they looked were signs of flood. Even in these tidal reaches the Surveyor General's party found evidence that the waters had risen twenty five feet above the normal levels of the river. But Oxley returned that evening to the Mermaid convinced the river was worth more of his attention.
Stocking up with provisions, he set off again early the next morning. Above the tidal reach of the Boyne they found the depth varied. In places the crew would drag the boat through rapids a few inches deep. In other parts were what Oxley called 'deep and picturesque reaches of the river'. The bird life was prolific. There was a multitude of water fowl and Uniacke records swamp pheasants, doves and an owl none of them had seen before. There were numerous fish and fresh water turtles. Twelve miles up the river, which would put them near Pikes Crossing, they camped that night on the bank about forty feet above the water level. The soil was rich and Uniacke thought it would grow cotton, sugar and indigo while Oxley believed it would grow anything the climate would allow. But again there was the problem of flooding. There was two inches of drift sand everywhere, which they surmised was deposited by the last inundation. Even though they were camped on the high bank they could see flood debris in the trees at least fifteen feet above them.
Intending an early start next morning, they turned in quickly hoping for a good night's rest. Uniacke wrote 'Soon after dark our tent was filled with musquitoes of a larger size than we had before seen: their noises alone would have been sufficient to banish sleep, but their sting was intolerable. In spite of all the precaution we could take, by covering ourselves completely with our cloaks, and every thing else we could lay hold of, although the thermometer stood at 94' all night in the tent, these little tormentors continued to persecute us in the most unrelenting manner till morning.'
At daylight the sleepless explorers went down to the river to bathe only to be greeted by a swarm of sandflies. Leaving their tents unguarded, they gratefully departed from the scene of their persecution and pushed up the river for a further six miles. They reached a point just above New Zealand Gully and climbed a hill on the left from which Uniacke notes 'we had a beautiful and extensive view of the river for many miles, through a rich brush country, the banks in many parts well clothed with timber'. They were the first white men to view the extent of the Boyne Valley. Returning to the camp they shot a brace of wild duck and caught fish which Uniacke descdribed as perch and which were possibly barramundi.
Uniacke's narrative continues 'It had originally been our intention to remain another day in this neighbourhood, for the purpose of examining the country at a little distance on either side of the river; but the torment we suffered from the mosquitoes was such that we resolved to return to the vessel the next morning. Accordingly after spending another rnost wretched night, we struck our tent and proceeded down the stream.'
They were back at the Mermaid by half past four that evehing having spent some time at the mouth of the Boyne to allow Oxley to inspect the bar at low water. In their absence the mate had been despatched to sound out a passage to the south. There was some anxiety when he had not returned by nightfall and it was the next afternoon before he arrived at the ship. He was full of enthusiasm for a large harbour he had found, twelve miles away. If Oxley knew this was Rodds Bay which had been charted by Phillip King four years earlier, he said nothing. Pleased at having a reason to turn back to a cooler clime, he abandoned the plan to go to Port Bowen, and headed south. On Saturday, November 15th the anchor was weighed and the Mermaid left Port Curtis.

John Oxley didn't like the area he had just explored. His report to Governor Brisbane exaggerated and twisted facts to support his prejudice against it. He claimed for instance to have made a minute examination' of the coast from Bustard Head to Mount Larcom, yet he had failed to find the Calliope River. He stated that between South Trees Island and Mount Larcom the timber consisted entirely of a 'diminutive Species of Eucalyptus'. Later travellers must have looked in vain for this bonsai forest. In the valleys in the same area, the soil, he claimed 'was poor sand, and in an area eight miles by four, I did not see even 200 acres of even tolerable ground.'

He spent sixteen days exploring the area but decided against it in favour of Moreton Bay, where he found a 'large and important river' (the Brisbane River). The new Moreton Bay colony was established the following year and another convict settlement was set up at Norfolk Island in 1825 (after an earlier settlement had been abandoned).

The role of William Ewart Gladstone
As local opposition to transportation grew, the British government was forced to cease importing convicts to Sydney and Brisbane.
Despite having been dismissed by Oxley twenty years earlier, Port Curtis was once again considered as the site for a convict settlement. The idea was taken up by William Ewart Gladstone, who was appointed British colonial secretary in 1845.
Gladstone, a devout churchman with a strong humanitarian streak, was interested in prison reform and decided that the Port Curtis settlement should be populated by a mixture of new arrivals from England and expired convicts from Van Diemen's Land.
In 1846 Gladstone made his intentions known to the newly appointed governor of New South Wales, Sir Charles Fitzroy.
On arriving in Australia, Fitzroy discovered that there was widespread opposition to the idea of reviving transportation in any form.
Despite this, Gladstone decided to proceed with his plan and appointed Lieutenant Colonel George Barney, formerly head of the Royal Engineers at Port jackson in Sydney, as the administrative head of the new colony.

The Colony of North Australia 1846-1847
Colonel Barney arrived in Sydney in September 1846 and immediately set out to find a suitable site for the capital of what was to be known as the 'Colony of North Australia'.
After a brief investigation of the coastline in the paddle steamer 'Cornubia', he settled on Port Curtis, where he found a 'capacious harbour' and 'a fair site' for a town about eight miles from its entrance.
Barney told Fitzroy that he thought the town site could be laid out with relatively little effort and noted that there seemed to be plenty of timber for building, as well as an abundance of sandstone, granite and shells for lime.
His only real concern was the apparent lack of fresh water and he concluded that this might very well prove to be a 'fatal objection'.
Fitzroy duly confirmed Port Curtis as the seat of government for the new colony, which took in the whole of New South Wales lying north of the twenty-sixth parallel (near present-day Gympie) and extended out in the west to the West Australian border.
Barney made the necessary preparations and left Sydney with the first group of settlers - some 87 souls - on the Lord Auckland on 8 January 1847.
But right from the start there were problems. The ship was buffeted by stormy seas as it sailed up the coast and arrived five days later than expected.
As if that was not bad enough, the captain then decided to ignore Flinders's instructions and ran aground on a shoal just as he was entering the harbour. Although no lives were lost, the ship had to be evacuated and all those on board were forced to make camp on Facing Island.
There, on a small hill overlooking the sea near Gatcombe Head (at what became known as 'Settlement Point'), the colonists lived in 'constant misery' for nearly three months.
Battered by cyclonic winds and tormented by 'excessive heat' and mosquitoes 'in millions', they had to endure severe shortages of food, which were caused by the delayed arrival of their supply ship, the Thomas Lowry.
Not all the time ashore was wasted as Colonel Barney oversaw the production of three issues of the North Australia Government Gazette, the first on 30 January - the day he was officially sworn in as lieutenant governor.
He also set up an Executive Council and a Legislative Council - the former consisting of Barney, his colonial secretary and attorney general and the latter of the same three, plus three justices of the peace (the colony had six JPs who were responsible for establishing and maintaining the colony's legal system).
In the end, however, it all came to nothing because a change in the British government led to the abandonment of the colony before a single convict arrived.
Williain Ewart Gladstone was succeeded by Earl Grey as colonial secretary in London and the colonists were ordered to return to Sydney in April 1847. The majority were glad to leave, though Barney elected to stay on and explore the countryside while the Lord Auckland was repaired.
He eventually returned to Sydney in July, where he was severely criticised for his role in the venture which cost the British government over 15,000 pounds.

The Founding of Gladstone 1853-1854
Despite the decision to abandon the Colony of North Australia, Colonel Barney remained convinced that Port Curtis was an ideal place for a settlement and advised Governor Fitzroy to act quickly to prevent the surrounding countryside and the nearby harbour from being seized by land-hungry squatters.
Fitzroy took his advice and had the harbour surveyed, but it was nearly six years before a final decision was made. By then a number of squatters had moved into the area, driving their flocks of sheep and cattle north from the Brisbane Valley.
Among the first to arrive were the Archer brothers. After founding Coonambula and Eidsvold on the Burnett in 1848, Charles Archer began exploring the Dawson and Callide country in 1850.
Three years later Charles and his brother William examined the area to the north of Port Curtis, discovering and naming the Fitzroy River (after Governor Fitzroy) and the Calliope River (which they called 'Lilly Creek') before marking out a new property at Gracemere.
In 1853 Governor Fitzroy announced that a town by the name of 'Gladstone' was to be established at Port Curtis.
Surveyor Francis MacCabe was appointed to select a suitable site, lay out allotments for sale and open up communications with the Wide Bay area. MacCabe and his party landed at 'Barney Bay' on 18 June 1853 and initially found no Europeans in residence.
But within weeks people began to arrive, with Joseph Willmott, Jack Allport and Joseph Trundle sailing up from Maryborough and William Walsh opening up the overland route.
After settling on a site which lay between South Trees Point and Auckland Inlet, MacCabe duly set to work, laying out the streets in a grid pattern.
The plan had been prepared in advance by the surveyor general's office in Sydney, as had a number of street and place names.
These included 'Auckland Point', 'Auckland' Street and 'Lord' Street, which were all designed to pay tribute to Barney's expedition.
But MacCabe also chose some himself, such as 'Yarroon' Street, 'Goondoon' (originally 'Gondoon') Street and 'Oaka' (originally 'Ooka') Lane, which were of Aboriginal origin.
In November 1853 MacCabe established a depot camp on 'Lilly Creek' (which he called the 'Liffey River') and laid out a number of small farms in the area near 'East Stowe' (one of several places he apparently named after reading Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin).
By January the following year, when Port Curtis was declared a pastoral district, MacCabe had surveyed the 'Liffey River' as far as 'Leixlip Creek' (which, like the name Liffey', was a tribute to his Irish ancestry).
The first land sales were held in Sydney in February 1854, and by the time MacCabe left Gladstone in August the following year, he had marked out thirty-five hectares of land for the township and surveyed over 7,000 square miles of the surrounding countryside.

The Appointment of a Government Resident 1854.
As the population of New South Wales began to spread north, talk of separation from Sydney became widespread, especially following the appointment of a government resident at Brisbane in 1850.
But in 1854 a government resident was appointed at Gladstone. Until then, most people had assumed that the larger and older settlement of Brisbane would automatically become the capital of any future northern colony.
This, however, was not apparently what the Sydney authorities wanted and, in what has been described as 'one of the most devious acts of self-interest', they decided to advance the claims of Gladstone at Brisbane's expense.
The man chosen to become government resident at Gladstone was Maurice O'Connell. Born in Sydney and educated in England, Scotland, Ireland and France, O'Connell had had a distinguished military career and came from a well-known family (his maternal grandfather was Wilham Bligh of Bounty fame, who had been the governor of New South Wales from 1805 until 1808).
He had spent several years working in Sydney as assistant military secretary to his father, Sir Maurice O'Connell, commander of the military forces of New South Wales 1838-46 and lieutenant governor in 1841, before being elected as a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council in 1845.
Three years later, at the age of thirty-six, he had been appointed as commissioner of crown lands in the Burnett District.
O'Connell's appointment as government resident in Gladstone was gazetted on 2 January 1854. He arrived at Port Curtis with his wife and fifty-six other passengers on the Tom Tough on 30 March to find eight white settlers in residence.
A second group of officials, tradesmen and their families arrived in the Spitfire on 13 April, followed by another group on the Jenny Lind.
A little over two weeks later the tiny community was graced by a visit from the retiring governor of New South Wales, Sir Charles Fitzroy.
He arrived in HMS Calliope on 16 April and installed O'Connell as government resident, commissioner of crown lands and police magistrate for the Port Curtis district at 'Barney Point' the following morning. Fitzroy toured the area and liked what he saw, expressing 'the highest encomiums' upon the beauty and position of the harbour.
He even made a trip up the 'Liffey River' where he met surveyor Francis MacCabe and apparently instructed him to name the river after the ship which had brought him on his historic visit to Gladstone. MacCabe was happy to oblige and the 'Liffey River' was duly renamed the 'Calliope River'.

The Development of a Frontier Town.
Despite his previous experience of working in the isolated Burnett District, O'Connell found living and working in Gladstone a frustrating experience.
He took his responsibilities very seriously and gave freely of his time, money and possessions to help people in whatever way he could but, like his predecessor Colonel Barney, he found it difficult to get anything done in a hurry.
One of the main reasons was that the town did not grow as quickly as expected because most of the land, put up for sale in 1854, was snapped up by Sydney speculators who had no intention of ever setting foot in the place. O'Connell tried to discourage absentee ownership and the first local sales were held in Gladstone in July 1855. But not all of the land was sold and by the end of the year the civilian population had only increased to sixty.
The town naturally struggled because it had only a limited supply of skilled labour. Many residents were forced to build their houses in their spare time, while O'Connell and his wife spent their first two and a half years living in a tent at Barney Point before their official residence was completed. O'Connell also had to import labourers from New South Wales to provide the town with an adequate water supply. A party of sixteen men arrived in April 1855 and completed the building of a dam on 'Happy Valley Creek' just over a year later.
Another major problem was Gladstone's geographical isolation. Residents were totally dependent on supply ships and delays in their arrival could lead to food shortages (as was the case in the winter of 1855 when flour supplies ran out).
Residents also had to put up with an extremely unreliable postal service, which meant that it took almost as long for a letter to travel from Gladstone to Sydney and back as it did for one to travel from London to Sydney.
O'Connell tried to encourage Gladstonians in their efforts to make Gladstone a better place to live but, at heart, he remained a military man, with a distinctly autocratic approach to leadership. Impatient and hot-tempered, he made more enemies than friends, and in 1855 he was publicly censured by a select committee headed by New South Wales MP, Sir Henry Parkes.
The committee's damning report criticised Governor Fitzroy for wasting money on a pointless settlement and accused O'Connell of 'capriciousness and want of consideration' towards his subordinates. O'Connell was duly demoted and the status of Port Curtis was downgraded to that of an ordinary pastoral district.

The 'Port Curtis gold rush' 1858.
After the humiliation of losing the residency, the fortunes of Gladstone were dealt a further blow by the discovery of gold at Canoona on the Fitzroy River in 1858. Although actually within the bounds of the Port Curtis District (which stretched all the way north to Cape Palmerston, north of Broad Sound), the discovery provided an enormous boost to the development of Rockhampton, which had been founded on the banks of the Fitzroy in 1856.
As the news spread, Gladstone was left virtually deserted and thousands poured in from the south to make their fortunes.
O'Connell was reinstated as government resident but his efforts to have Gladstone confirmed as the district's commercial and judicial centre failed.
A number of new officials were appointed to maintain law and order and they naturally based themselves in Rockhampton, which was situated about sixty five miles away from the diggings.
In October 1858, the town of Rockhampton was given official recognition and declared 'a port of entry' with its own customs officers.
A sufferance wharf was built on Quay Street and a government immigration officer appointed. Many people not surprisingly chose to sail direct to Rockhampton, by-passing Gladstone and ignoring the virtues of its harbour, which was finally given recognition as a 'port of entry' at the end of 1859.

The Aftermath for Gladstone.
The gold rush sealed Gladstone's fate. When the time came for the selection of a capital for the new colony of Queensland, which was finally established in 1859, Brisbane inevitably got the nod.
By then, Gladstone had slipped behind Rockhampton in the population stakes and was written off by many as nothing more than a sleepy little fishing village. It was finally proclaimed as a town in 1860 and became a municipality three years later.
A town council was formed in 1863 and Richard Hetherington was elected as the first mayor.
Despite losing the battle for recognition with both Brisbane and Rockhampton, Gladstonians remained convinced of the beauty and commercial potential of their harbour. Among these was storekeeper Henry Friend, one of the dam builders imported from Sydney in 1855.
After establishing a successful business on Toolooa Street, he moved to new premises on the waterfront at Auckland Creek in 1862 and built a wharf to handle his own goods (there were already several in existence by this time). The 'Victoria Store' became one of Gladstone's early landmarks, while Friend became one of the town's pioneering figures.
A member of Gladstone's first town council, Friend was twice elected as mayor and succeeded in establishing a business which lasted for more than a hundred years.
Another who retained his faith in the commercial potential of Gladstone was Maurice O'Connell. He correctly predicted that the port would become an important export centre and in 1859 (his last year as government resident) he was responsible for Gladstone's first live export of horses.
The horses had been bred on his property at 'Riverston' near the Boyne River and were destined for India.
O'Connell himself left Gladstone in 1860 and went on to enjoy an illustrious career in the new Queensland Parliament. In May 1860 he was appointed to the Legislative Council and was also briefly a member of the Executive Council and of Robert Herbert's first ministry.
Knighted in 1868, he was acting governor of Queensland on four occasions and served nineteen years as president of the Legislative Council.
After his death from throat cancer in 1879, he was buried in Toowong Cemetery and an elaborate memorial was erected over his grave. Another memorial to him, in the form of a marble bust, can be found in Parliament House.

This information is by courtesy of M. H. for the Gladstone Regional Art Gallery and Museum.

Further reading. "Gladstone - City That Waited" by L. McD.
"The Birth of Central Qld. 1802 - 1959" by W. Golding.