Paved with gold

Before tourism and before sugar cane, there was gold —the shiniest part of the Douglas Shire’s rich history.

WORDS by Sara Mulcahy

If you’d been in Port Douglas in 1876, chances are you’d have been listening out for the phrase that’s been attributed to Mark Twain, Dr MF Stephenson and Bugs Bunny.

Gold was first discovered in Far North Queensland in 1873, when explorer William Hann reported finding deposits in the sandy bed of the Palmer River about 200km southwest of Cooktown. When a follow-up expedition of 110 diggers — led by prospector James Venture Mulligan — returned to Cooktown with their saddlebags packed with alluvial gold, the news sparked a rush of 30,000 European and Chinese gold diggers.

Hard on the heels of the Palmer River proclamation, Mulligan established a second camp on the Hodgkinson River, another 200km further south, in June 1876.
Many miners relocated from the Palmer River goldfields to the Hodgkinson field in the hope of making their fortunes. By 1877, two towns were servicing the new fields — Kingsborough and Thornborough — which were soon home to a fast-growing population, along with multiple hotels and stores.

Wet season floods and clashes with traditional owners, combined with the sheer distance made the journey between the Hodgkinson and the port at Cooktown treacherous. A new port was established at Cairns, however, this was also a steep and difficult trip, so bushman and pathfinder Christy Palmerston was tasked with finding an alternative track from Thornborough down the Great Dividing Range to the coast.

Following ancient Aboriginal walking tracks, Palmerston mapped out the Bump Road (now a challenging walk known as the Bump Track) that became the main access from the Hodgkinson goldfield to the port facilities at White Island Point. The wagon journey took four days.

White Island was officially renamed Port Douglas later that year, in honour of the then Queensland Premier John Douglas, and settled as the port of entry and exit for the Hodgkinson goldfield. The first stone jetty at Port Douglas was constructed at the end of Wharf Street by the Queensland Government.

Government offices, banks and a courthouse were established, and a lighthouse built on the Low Isles off the coast. It was a boom time, and Port Douglas quickly overtook Cairns as the main port for the goldfields.

In 1878, Willnetts North Queensland Almanac lists the population of Port Douglas as 400. By the early 1880s, it had swelled to 12,000. (The current number of permanent residents sits at 3,500, for context.) The main street was named Macrossan Street in honour of state MP John Macrossan. Dickson Inlet was named for the Colonial Treasurer James Dickson.

As more businesses moved from the Cairns area to Port Douglas, William Henry Buchanan was issued with a liquor license for what is now the Courthouse Hotel.
Four Mile Camp, now known as Craiglie, was set up as a village for the packers who loaded and packed goods for shipping, and the teamsters who drove the horse and bullock-drawn wagons up and down the Bump Road. It is reported to have hosted as many as 1000 animals at a time, serviced by blacksmiths, farriers and a saddlery. (Look out for the giant wagon wheels at the entrance to Teamsters Park, located along the Captain Cook Highway on the southern approach into Craiglie.)

The original St Mary’s Catholic Church opened in town and the Port Douglas Hospital was built where the Beach Club resort now stands on Davidson Street. The schoolhouse on Murphy Street (it’s still there today and, at time of press, on the market) opened in 1879, welcoming 55 pupils.

That same year, the number of licensed hotels in the district rose to 21 — 18 in town and three close to the Bump Road. But behind all this prosperity, bitter competition was brewing between the Port Douglas and the Cairns railway leagues in their bids to become the East Coast rail terminus.

The miners wanted a rail connection from the latest inland mining town of Herberton to the coast, and Cairns and Innisfail pitched against Port Douglas for the privilege. In 1885 Cairns was chosen as the terminus, effectively killing off any further development of Port Douglas.

And what became of the prospectors? As with most gold rushes, a few people made a lot of money and a lot of people made next to nothing. After a generally disappointing result at Hodgkinson, they packed up and moved on to try their luck at the next promising new FNQ gold rushes, at the Starcke River and Coen goldfields north of Cooktown and Alice River inland from Townsville.

There was a brief peak of renewed interest in the Hodgkinson fields during the depression of the 1890s, but soon after, the mining came to an end. Craiglie was deserted, and the population of the once bustling town of Port Douglas gradually dwindled until it became a quiet fishing village, population 250.

Is there still gold in them thar riverbeds? There are a few old gold-mining areas around the Palmer River and Hodgkinson goldfields where you can fossick on private land. You’ll just need a fossicking licence, the landowner's written permission to fossick on their property, and a whole heap of good luck.

Race wars

The goldfields were generally lawless places. Armed robberies, physical violence, protests and even murder were commonplace, and ongoing racial intolerance was a key part of prospecting life.

The gold rush attracted many Chinese people to Australia in search of fortune. Between 1874 and 1877, more than 20,000 Chinese immigrants arrived at the Palmer River, the majority from Guangdong Province. The Chinese miners would typically re-work the diggings of Europeans as they became impatient and moved on. They often worked in organised groups of up to 100 men, which yielded good results. Conflict often arose out of the European miners’ resentment of Chinese success.

In 1876, with the rush to the Hodgkinson River site, many Chinese miners travelled south. According to the 1886 census, almost two-thirds of the Douglas Shire’s population was of Chinese heritage.

European miners were angered by the increasing Chinese presence in the fields and often used verbal and physical abuse in a bid to drive them away. An ineffective police presence could/would do little to address the situation and racism and hate crimes against Chinese people often went unpunished.