Then the first parliament met in 1860 and recognized that Australia - the second largest state needed some form of power transfer
and soon railways started running west from the ports of Brisbane , Rockhampton and Townsville. Even so, Rockhampton’s spirit of independence, first noted
in the 1860s, has undoubtedly been enhanced by its several attempts to become capital of a
new state stretching westward from Keppel Bay to the Northern Territory border, south to the
Dawes Range and north to Capt Palmerston (south of Sarina), as defined in the 1890s.
The first Europeans to see the river were Charles and William Archer, who named the river after the
governor of New South Wales when it was in the territory of New South Wales,
from of 1853 and
archers have seen the river since May
. at the town hall. The brothers and their band of servants were also the first Europeans to settle in the area in
, arriving at Gracemere, the site of their future farm, on 10 August 1855.
Mineral Wealth
The Kanuna gold rush in late 1858, about 60 km north of
Rockhampton, brought immediate residents to the young town. The
Queensland government, in cahoots with the British, made sure that official separation would
not happen. To this day, much of the mineral and pastoral wealth that feeds the commercial and industrial welfare. Although most of the thousands who arrived on Fitzroy's muddy, crocodile-infested coast expected to collect gold nuggets or be killed by the governments of Sydney and Melbourne, hundreds remain in Australia's largest northern city. "
Ludwig Letchart, a friend of the Archer brothers, named the main tributaries of the Fitzroy
Dawson, Comet, Mackenzie and Isaac, when they traveled to Port Essington in 18
-
5 and
heeded their advice to seek the confluence of these tributaries.
