History

Townsville Begins

Townsville was named after Robert Towns – the founding father of Townsville , a shipping magnate from Sydney.

Robert Towns who was in his 70s in 1864  worked with John Melton Black  from Woodstock Station to find a harbour closer to their stations than Bowen (Pt Denison).

At that stage all the wool & cattle produce was taken 200km to Bowen (then called Port Denison) and shipped out. One of the men in the search party was William Ross, he became the namesake of many of Townsville’s landmarks, including the Ross River.

They eventually found an area suitable for the new harbour. As John rode off to the land office in Port Denison, he instructed the remaining men to gather as many animals and set-up as many dwellings on the land as possible – a condition for the land claim to be successful.

They named the area Castletown after the large red granit hill that looked like a castle from the ocean.

John had to cross the flooded Haughton and Burdekin Rivers with his horse, spending one night in the fork of a tree. When he eventually got to the land agency office the man in front of him in the queue was trying to lay claim to the very country John had just ridden from, explaining that his stock was being driven from Rockhampton.

Because he had no dwellings or animals on the land, the clerk told him to come back when he did. Much to the Black’s relief he was able to lay claim to it a few minutes afterwards.

When the first governor of Queensland – Governor Bowen – visited the new North Queensland town, with Robert Towns, a meeting was held at the Criterion Hotel, which was right on the beach in those days.

It was then that the settlement was officially named & became known as Townsville in honour of Robert Towns who offered financial support to the new area.

Later John Melton Black & Robert Towns joined together in business to form “Towns & Co”

Townsville was originally laid out by John Black and had the CBD at Kissing point , later the Qld Government had a surveyor (” Stuart”) sent up to re design the CBD.

John Melton Black became Townsville’s mayor for a period before returning to England and his retirment. 

Townsville became an important shipping harbour (crude as it was then) after gold was dicovered in Ravenswood and the Charters Towers

Cobb & Co

Australia’s most successful coach company of the 19th century – Cobb & Co – expanded into Queensland from New South Wales and Victoria in 1865.

At its peak, Cobb & Co had a network of tracks that extended further than those of any coach system in the world. One of those tracks took people from Townsville to the heavily-populated goldfields of Charters Towers and Ravenswood in the 1870s.

According to hand-written notes*, a coach would leave from the Criterion Hotel – the first pub in Townsville – every Sunday and Wednesday at 1pm for Ravenswood and Charters Towers.

This journey would take 21 hours and stop overnight.

An express coach left every Thursday and returned every Sunday, taking just 15 hours with no stopover. These services were eventually increased to three times a week.

The horse-drawn buggies would pass through the area that is now Ross River Dam.

In those days there were two hotels (see hotels for more information) that were used for lunch stops for the thousands of passengers that passed through the now-deserted area and to change horses over.

The journeys were long and known to be dangerous.

The ground was bumpy so they would often lay melaleucas on sections so the wagons could roll over a smooth surface.

There was one section not far from the hotels where the wagon hit an uneven patch and tipped over, tossing out a mother and crushing her baby.

Other stories reveal how people would find dead bodies on the route – expired from hunger, dehydration or exposure – so they would dig holes and lay the deceased to rest, sometimes not before relieving them of their possessions.

Hotels

There were two hotels in the now Ross River Dam area explored by the cruise.

The Nancarrow’s Ross Crossing Hotel, built in 1868 when the track was first created to the Goldfields, and the much smaller Morgan’s Hotel.

According to historical accounts from the Kelso family, Nancarrow’s Ross Crossing Hotel was about 1km from the homestead on the same side of the river. The Morgan Hotel was opposite it on the other side of the dry river bed.

The Cobb & Co coach line would take passengers across the dry waterway, stopping at the Nancarrow’s overnight on the way back from the Goldfields and for lunch on the way out.

Looking at the hand-written itinerary for the coach trip, it would pull into a pub every 2-8 miles or so for most of the journey: An olden day pub crawl.

Homesteads

James and Mary Kelso were the first to claim the land near the now Ross River Dam.

James selected the plot with the assistance of the local Aboriginal people who showed them the highest and driest spot, something that proved handy in the 1946 flood.

He marked out approximately 1000 acres using his horse and watch. He then rode his horse 200km to Port Denison (now Bowen) to make a land claim.

It was named Laudham Park and was later expanded by another 1000 acres.

In those days to be able to claim land it needed to be shown that improvements had been made, it was lived on for a certain time and animals were being run.

The Kelso family had a small amount of cattle, but not enough to earn a living from.

James was a qualified blacksmith and would assist people passing through the area, eventually purchasing his own team and wagon to travel to the Goldfields himself with supplies.

Mary also set-up a dairy on the property to supplement their income.

They divided the new block of land into four parts and built a homestead that spanned across the corners of each section. They built four bedrooms – one on each segment of land – and had these occupied by family members until such time that it was deemed enough time had passed.

The house was then moved closer to the original homestead on the property.

Unfortunately these buildings no longer survive today, but Pop Sullivan is able to paint a clear picture of where they sat from his colourful descriptions.

There is still original-style barbed wire on the land around the dam, which is wrapped around vegetation.

When the exciting new product ‘barbed wire’ was invented, the Kelsos ordered a shipment of it.

They had so much they fenced off the entire thousand acre paddock with it and still had lots left over. Stories say that pastoralists from the area would come to visit “barbed wire paddock” to check-out the new fencing innovation.

The Kelso’s nearest neighbours were the Yutfay Chinese Market Gardeners over the other side of Ross River, which in those days was dry.

They had arrived to the area before the pastoral family and provided a handy source of fresh fruit and vegetables.

The stone house mystery

According to some historical accounts, Landers Hill was named after the earliest pioneers of the area.

It is assumed they were Irish, took up 3000 acres and began building a small stone house near the river.  The project was abandoned before it was complete, after the husband fell ill.

After he passed away, it is thought that Mrs Landers became the proprietor of the Towers Hotel, which is now the Mansfield Hotel, opposite the railway station in town.

*Source: The John Mathew Index to Townsville History, CitiLibraries of Townsville, Local History Collection.