QUEENSLAND. 123 



for agriculture — at least no agricultural settlement has taken place — and with 

 the exception of Clermont, a little town of about two thousand inhabitants, 

 which grew into some importance by means of mineral discoveries in its 

 vicinity, there are only bush townships of varying sizes in the central districts. 

 The thriving town of Gympie, with five thousand inhabitants, the second 

 gold-field of Queensland, and also the centre of a thriving and spreading 

 agricultural settlement, lies about seventy miles to the south of Maryborough, 

 with which it is connected by railway. 



The line of the Tropic of Capricorn runs close to the town of Rock- 

 hampton ; sub-tropical Queensland ends there. The first place of importance 

 on the coast going north is Mackay, a town of some three or four 

 thousand people, supported by a small rich district which has become the 

 chief centre of sugar cultivation in the colony. The Mackay district is in a 

 sense isolated, having little or no trade connection with the interior. Next 

 after Mackay comes Bowen, a sleepy, decaying settlement of some one 

 thousand inhabitants, occupying a most beautiful site on a sheet of water 

 land-locked by a ring of picturesque islands. There is no prettier town on 

 the coast of Queensland, no place which seems more fitted for the site of a 

 great city than Bowen ; but trade left it soon after its foundation, and it has 

 mouldered half-forgotten ever since. 



From Bowen northward the coast of Queensland is sheltered by the line 

 of the Barrier Reef and a long chain of romantic and beautiful islands. The 

 traveller on this coast enjoys a perpetual feast of the eye. On the one side 

 the islands in the line of reef present every variety of form and colour — the 

 green of the timber or vegetation clothing them, the varying lines of their fan- 

 tastic, weather-beaten, rocky cliffs, and the dazzling white coral sand of their 

 beaches. On the other side, the mountains of the coast range approach closely 

 to the shore, sometimes apparently springing upwards from the very beach ; 

 and their imposing masses, clothed with dense vegetation to the very summits, 

 smile rather than frown on the blue sparkling wavelets of the sheltered water, 

 which seems to lave their feet. At various points the mountains fall back, 

 opening, as it were, avenues to the interior of the country. At the entrance 

 to one of these openings is Townsville, the chief commercial centre and the 

 virtual capital of the north. This fast-growing city is built on the actual 

 sea-coast ; and though to some extent sheltered by islands, its harbour is 

 shallow and exposed. A breakwater, however, is being gradually made, and 

 in various ways an artificial harbour is being formed. Townsville, which now 

 contains probably a population of nine or ten thousand people, is the terminus 

 of the Northern Trunk line. Immediately to the west of it are the great 

 gold-fields of Charters Towers and Ravenswood, and the railway is being 

 pushed far to the westward, traversing the northern portion of the pastoral 

 plateau of the west, and tapping the verge of the great plains which slope 

 gradually to the shore of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Townsville promises to 



