Comparing the partitions of India and Ireland

Refugees board a train during the India-Pakistan partition era.

Across Ireland this year, there are 100 year commemorations to mark the two states formed at the end of the Irish War of Independence. Ireland was partitioned in 1921 and its border was set in stone in the coming years. Though largely rendered invisible in recent years, Brexit threatens to make the border real again. The border was a response of British imperial statecraft to an intractable religious conflict, so it was unsurprising the British would look to that solution when faced with an even bigger problem 25 years later between India and Pakistan, “the conjoined twins cursed at birth”.

Though I loved Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie’s account of that partition, I knew little else about it. Nor did I know much about the partition much closer to home. I was born in the south of the Republic of Ireland in the 1960s and Northern Ireland was strange and forbidding and mostly remote place with little to do my upbringing. Five hours away by road and light years away by attitude, Waterford was immune to the violence though I remember the black flags of grim-faced IRA Hunger Striker protesters in 1981. As the troubles worsened in the early 1970s and occasionally spilled over the border as it did with the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 1974 I took my grandmother’s dim view of the North. She wished a giant scissors would cut the two Irelands apart and send the North drifting off towards Scotland. It wasn’t until 1984 when I took a day trip to Belfast by train that the place became real to me and strikingly Irish, at that. That feeling has grown in recent years since the Good Friday agreement and I was surprised by the complete absence of the border when I drove across it in 2000 – the only clue was road signs changing from kilometers to miles. With the intractable Brexit issue and the growing Catholic population, perhaps a federal Ireland with power bases in Dublin and Belfast might be the long term future for the island.

I wondered whether federal power-sharing arrangement could possibly work for India and Pakistan given their cultural resemblances to each other despite a similar religious divide to Ireland. Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh’s The Partition of India (2009) said the 1947 Partition not only created the states of India and Pakistan but also split two provinces along Muslim and Hindu lines – Punjab in the west and Bengal in the east. As in Ulster, this was not just a colonial whim – a local majority carved out states that best suited them. Though the British also used this solution in Palestine around the same time, Talbot and Singh say they were reluctant to split India and only did so to avoid civil war.

The ethnic cleansing experience of partition does not solve problems, as Palestine’s resulting tragedy shows. In Ireland more than 500 were killed in the violence following partition and 10,000 became refugees, most from the Catholic minority. The death toll in India’s partition is much larger but disputed, anything from 200,000 to two million deaths. Fifteen million people moved in the largest displacement of the 20th century while Kashmir remains unfinished business for both states. Germany aside, partitions have been rarely reversed. India and Pakistan’s enmity is exacerbated by nuclear weapons, a problem shared by another partitioned Asian state: Korea.

At the end of World War II, India remained under colonial rule but it was only a matter of timing when that would end. Labour’s win in the UK 1945 election was helpful as they had good relations with India’s Congress Party. Congress was established in 1885 as the secular voice of all India. But the growing power of the Muslim League needed to be accommodated with its demand for a separate Pakistan. The empire endgame began with the Great Calcutta Killing in August 1946 climaxing in genocidal violence a year later as India descended into religious civil war. On June 3, 1947 Britain agreed to transfer power to two dominions, India and the Muslim-majority provinces (Punjab, Sindh, Bengal, Baluchistan and the NWFP). The British departure on August 15 left demarcation disputes and large-scale disturbances in the Punjab which resulted in large-scale migration on religious lines. The trouble in Bengal was slower to erupt but its migration lasted well into the 1950s.

Irish Taoiseach Éamon de Valera with Indian prime minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru during de Valera’s visit to India in 1948. (Irish Press).

Ireland’s Protestant population was also greatest in the North East but imagine what might have happened had Cork in the South West also had a Protestant majority. A Cork-Ulster alliance would have been inherently unstable. This is what happened in India, leading to a second partition of Bangladesh in the 1970s. Yet while Muslims had majorities in north-west and north-east India, the push for the first Partition came from the United Provinces where they numbered eight million, 15pc of the population, centred on Lucknow.

Here the Urdu-speaking landed gentry stood to lose most from a Hindu-dominated India. Most agricultural labourers did not have time to care about governance but Muslim separatism grew because the colonial state had categorised India by caste and religious identity since the census introduced in 1881. This led to separate provincial electorates for Muslims in 1909. In 1928 Muhammad Ali Jinnah proposed his fourteen points to safeguard Muslim rights in a self-governing India. His emphasis on strong provinces in a weak federation largely reflected the Punjabi dominated All-India Muslim Conference. Chaudary Rahmat Ali coined the term Pakistan in 1933 as “the land of the pure” consisting of Punjab, NWFP, Kashmir, Sindh and Baluchistan though he was ignored at the time.

Two factors brought Pakistan to the centre of the agenda. First was the lived experience of Congress rule after provincial autonomy in 1937; the second was the world war. Jinnah exploited both adroitly. In the 1937 election the Muslim League was eclipsed by regional parties in Punjab and Bengal but did well in Muslim minority provinces positioning itself as the safeguard of Muslim rights. Congress ruled seven of 11 provinces and ignored Muslim interests instead enforcing cow protection and the use of Hindi, just as the new Protestant state in Northern Ireland ignored Catholic demands. Indian Muslims exaggerated claims of oppression and gained wider support as a result. By 1940 they were calling for “independent states in which the constituent units would be autonomous and sovereign” in north-west and north-east India.

The British ignored their calls. When war arrived, Congress used it to advance their cause with the Non Cooperation (1939-42) and Quit India movements (1942) leading to violence. The Irish Free State, led by Éamon de Valera, also refused to cooperate with the Allies but two decades of de facto independence meant the British could only quietly fume at his decision. India was still British-controlled so they could and did arrest Congress leaders including Jawahartal Nehru. This left a vacuum for the Muslim League. The British saw Jinnah as a wartime equal to Gandhi (whom they dared not arrest) implicitly accepting the League’s claim to speak on behalf of all Muslims. The 1942 Stafford Cripps Mission had a proviso that no part of India would have to join the post-war dominion. This pleased Jinnah but an enraged Gandhi thought it was an invite to create Pakistan. After an impasse, the British called the 1945 Simla conference which collapsed when Jinnah insisted all Muslim members of the proposed Indian Executive Council should be members of his League.

Jinnah got his way scuttling any chance of unionist Muslims on the council. In the 1946 provincial elections they won 75 of the 86 Muslim seats. This was similar to Irish election results in 1918 and 1921 where hardliners on both sides strengthened positions against moderates. Jinnah’s influence with Britain diminished after the war yet Congress began to see partition as a heavy but necessary price of independence. They wanted the border set on their terms, similar to the Irish aims around the 1921 Peace Treaty. They believed partition would offer a peaceful solution to the violence that wracked India in 1946-47. In March 1947 Congress called for a splitting of Punjab if Pakistan was created. They were also pacified that Bengal’s largest city Calcutta was on their side of the border. Congress leader Nehru saw the Muslim League as hindering post-independence economic development. Britain gradually accepted partition but did not want complete Balkanisation – Sikhs, Pashtuns, Tamils and others wanting their own states would not be tolerated. The British tried a last ditch 1946 effort to impose an All-India solution with limited powers for the central government which the Muslim League cautiously supported. But when Nehru baulked at the three provincial groupings, the League withdrew support and an united India was dead. Both powers wanted a “right-sized state” to shape their own destiny. Jinnah reluctantly agreed to the sub-partition of Punjab and Bengal.

As in Ireland, a British-led Boundary Commission was a chaotic failure with local powerbrokers destroying attempts at diplomacy. When the British recommended joint sharing of Punjab’s intricate canal works, Jinnah said he’d prefer “Pakistan deserts than fertile fields watered by the courtesy of the Hindus”. Media rumours of the border position lay fuelled violence in the lead-up to partition and the Commission delayed announcing some Muslim-majority areas of Punjab would be awarded to India. A Punjab Boundary Force was no match for local warlords who took what the Commission denied them. Bengal’s partition was less acrimonious with both sides content to lobby for power post-partition, though the loss of 21 million people diminished Bengal’s voice in India. Some Bengal Muslims preferred their own sovereign state. Conflict between Bengali and Urdu Pakistan elites dominated east-west relations eventually leading to the second partition of 1971 and the creation of Bangladesh.

There were other complications. The largest princely state was Hyderabad, ruled by a Muslim nizam with an 85 percent Hindu population. The nizam favoured Pakistan but was landlocked by India and the problem had not been resolved by August 1947. India invaded Hyderabad as a “police action” in September 1948 while Pakistan was distracted by mourning after the death of founder Jinnah. That left Kashmir as the biggest sore. The 1846 Treaty of Lahore ended Sikh domination and handed power to a Hindu elite for a century, with the majority Muslim population reduced to a servile peasantry. Sheikh Abdullah called for Kashmiri independence but was imprisoned for two decades. Powerbrokers voted with India which resulted in hostilities between the two new states, UN intervention, and de facto division along the ceasefire line. Kashmir remains the unfinished business of partition.

Just as in Ireland, the Indian division of power was accompanied by massive dislocation. Communal violence had one major aim – to remove troublesome minority populations. A million people died with both sides happy to blame the other while authorities implicitly supported the violence. Women and children were deliberately targetted with police, soldiers and railway staff often divulging details of refugee trains to violent groups. Many women were killed by their own family, fearful of their “defilement” by men from the other side. Suicide, such as the death of 105 Sikh women who jumped into a village well, was considered an honourable response and the subject of community pride.

Indian partition was accompanied by the largest uprooting of people in the 20th century. In Punjab ten million people moved in either direction. Karachi tripled in size between 1947 and 1953. Many travelled to multiple places before finding a new home. The flight started later in Bengal, reaching a peak of 1.5 million in 1949. Calcutta’s population rose by 20 percent in five years and there was a further flight in 1971. By 1973 the city housed two million refugees, a third of West Bengal’s urban population. The migrations left an enduring legacy of religious and ethnic nationalism that still plagues the region.

Ireland is 25 years further along the partition journey. There is still much hatred in Ireland but a great deal of political civility. More importantly there is a will on the ground to treat with the other. Perhaps some Diwali or Ramadan Peace Agreement could get India and Pakistan to pull away from each other’s throat. That requires political leadership that does not appear to exist in either country, where it is too easy to don the nationalist mantle. It seems hard to imagine their borders ever disappearing. But if India is to realise its ambition to become a 21st century power in the mould of America, it must face up to demons on its own border and confront the reality of its lookalike neighbour.

There is a template for this. India has friendly relations with East Pakistan’s successor nation, Bangladesh, and they are the largest trade partners in South Asia. Inter-Irish trade is the main reason Northern Ireland is still in the EU Single Market. Trade, and perhaps the cricket beloved by both nations (though sadly not Ireland), may yet be the solution to the South Asian nuclear standoff.

Fool’s Gold: the story of Lasseter’s Reef

Harold Lasseter’s grave in Adelaide. Photo: Monument Australia

Gold has been an enduring feature of Australia’s story ever since the first finds near Bathurst, NSW in 1851. Despite fabulous riches uncovered at Ballarat and Bendigo, the story has been mostly of failure. Barry McGowan’s book Fool’s Gold tells some of the less inspiring but more human stories of unsuccessful Australian rushes where hope becomes desperation when gold is not found in payable quantities. In some Australian El Dorados the gold is not there at all such as McGowan’s centrepiece story, the mythical Lasseter’s Reef in the Northern Territory.

Lasseter’s Reef is named for Lewis Lasseter (1880-1931), for whom the highway to Uluru is also named. Lasseter worked at many occupations, marrying twice and fathering five children. He lived in England and America and was later a market gardener and road maintenance man in New South Wales. He worked on the building of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Canberra’s parliament house. Lasseter’s gold exploration was inspired by American Harold Bell Wright’s 1923 novel The Man with the Iron Door about prospectors in the Canyon of Gold, Arizona. Lasseter was so impressed he added Harold Bell to his name that same year.

In October 1929 Lasseter wrote to the minister of defence about a gold reef in central Australia. The letter said that for 18 years he was aware of a “vast gold bearing reef” in central Australia with assays from 22km of reef showing values of three ounces to the ton. Lasseter said he was there without water for four days and suggested an aerial survey of the headwaters of the Gasgoyne River (WA) for a gravitational pipeline to the reef. As a “competent surveyor” Lasseter offered to do the job for £2000 and suggested five million pounds would be needed to develop the reef.

The minister forwarded the letter to HW Gepp, chairman of the Development and Migration Commission. Gepp was already talking about an aerial and truck survey of the western MacDonnells with Dr Keith Ward, the government’s consultant geologist on the Northern Territory from 1925-1931. Gepp and Ward met Lasseter who told them the reef was in the western ranges 400km south-west of Alice Springs. Lasseter said the gold was in floaters (rocks or ground that appear solid but are unattached to the bedrock) and he found a considerable amount which he tried to remove until his horse died near Lake Amadeus, 50km north of Uluru. He said he took out a smaller quantity on foot. Lasseter would not disclose the exact location unless the government provided a water supply. The government men replied they could not guarantee that without establishing the field’s feasibility.

Gepp told the Minister the dispatch of a party to the reef was risky and should only be done as part of an organised prospecting campaign in Central Australia. He proposed to discuss it at the 1930 Geological Conference. Lasseter wrote again saying he would only seek payment if the assay lived up to claims. He wanted to lead an expedition by truck though he claimed he was in the Air Corps in the First World War (there is no record of him there).

Labor won the federal election in February 1930 and Lasseter wrote to new Home Affairs minister Arthur Blakeley to suggest equipping an expedition. Blakeley turned it down but the letter gave momentum to the proposed discussion at the June Geological Conference. With the Depression taking hold, a desperate government was keen to explore money making schemes and a new gold discovery could be “of particular national advantage.”

This momentum was too slow for the impatient Lasseter. In March he wrote a letter to Australian Workers Union boss John Bailey who forwarded it to Blakeley. Bailey suggested Arthur’s brother Fred Blakeley would be ideal for the job, Fred Blakeley was a highly regarded bushman and prospector who cycled Australia north to south in 1908. Arthur asked Fred if he fancied “a jaunt into Central Australia” saying they would get government support.

In April 1930 Gepp agreed to provide a truck and a team including Fred Blakeley. Lasseter would be paid the same as the others with an advance to work his claim. Fred Blakeley met Lasseter who told him he travelled the MacDonnell Ranges aged 17 at the end of a ruby boom. He said he got there via train to Cloncurry though this was around 1897 and the trainline did not arrive in Cloncurry until 10 years later. Lasseter said he found no rubies and intended to travel overland to Carnarvon, WA. He struck out west when he hit the reef. “Everywhere I examined I found gold,” he told Blakeley. He continued west through harsh country and was found almost dead nine days later. He and the surveyor who rescued him went prospecting three years later and found the reef a second time. They took samples but with supplies running out they went back to Carnarvon.

While Blakely saw the gaps in the story, he believed there was some truth to Lasseter’s claims. They agreed to a £50 share each and got four others to join in. The six men met in Bailey’s office to discuss the plan. Word got out and others clamoured to join the syndicate. By the next meeting 20 people showed up. Lasseter told similar stories to the other miners and speculators who grew excited about untold riches.

An exception was Australian aviator Charles Ulm who said Lasseter’s bearings put him in the Indian Ocean and the project was “too hazy” for investment. Nonetheless a company called Central Australian Gold Exploration (CAGE) was set up with £5000 capital. Thornycroft Motors donated a truck for six months, Atlantic Oil Company donated oil and petrol, and the railway provided free train transport. CAGE bought an airplane named Golden Quest piloted by journalist Errol Coote. The group included engineer and driver Philip Taylor, prospector George Sutherland and truck driver Fred Colson. Blakeley was the leader and Lasseter the guide. Aboriginal stockman Mickey joined the expedition at Hamilton Downs station, west of Alice Springs. Aboriginal Affairs was in Fred’s brother Arthur’s remit and he fielded letters from many worried by comments from Bailey that the expedition was “armed to the teeth”, a legitimate concern two years after the nearby Coniston Massacre. Blakeley said he had confidence in his brother and “none of the party would interfere with Aborigines”.

The party set out from Alice on July 21, 1930 travelling 400km west through tough country to an airstrip at Ilbilla. The plane crashed and the truck was damaged forcing Coote and Colson to return to Alice by car for spare parts. After a delay the rest of the party headed 200km west to Mount Marjorie where Lasseter told Blakeley they needed to go 240km south. This was not consistent with earlier statements. Lasseter admitted he lied on some points as he was suspicious of one of the party, though he did not say who. Blakeley began to feel Lasseter had never been there before. It heightened suspicions in Alice where a local thought Lasseter’s description of the area in the 1890s was nonsense. Lasseter was moody, secretive and distrustful leading to rows with Blakeley.

Lasseter gave new directions which meant returning to Ilbilla. There was also a newcomer, dingo hunter Paul Johns, who arrived with five camels and two Aboriginal helpers. Blakeley asked him to stay for a few weeks in case they needed him. Coote arrived by replacement plane but told Blakeley it did not have the range to continue further and needed to be refitted in Adelaide. Before he left again he took Lasseter in the air to find landmarks. On return Lasseter initially said nothing but under questioning from Coote said he had seen the reef from the air. He would not divulge where it was as he had no confidence in Blakeley or Colson. Coote did not tell the others.

When they got to the location Lasseter suggested, they were stuck in an eroded escarpment of hills and mesas which the truck could not handle. Lasseter changed his story again and said the reef was further south near the Petermann Ranges. Blakeley said they would have to backtrack 500km, the area was well prospected and was even further away from Carnarvon. With summer approaching Blakeley decided to end the expedition. They went back to Ilbilla where they located Johns and his camels. They agreed Lasseter would continue the expedition with Johns. After the pair left, the others were shocked to find Lasseter had telegrammed head office saying he had found the reef.

Blakeley went back to Sydney to inform directors of the mission’s failure. After seeing Lasseter’s telegram, some shareholders thought it was a Blakeley doublecross. Coote flew to Adelaide where he said Lasseter was excited during the aerial survey though it was 250km from where he said the reef was. Coote was asked to fly back to Uluru to find Lasseter. Taylor would go there by truck. Coote arrived at Uluru with a damaged plane and had to fly back to Adelaide for repairs. When he got back the directors’ instructions had changed; he was to collect Taylor and fly home. Lasseter was left to his own devices.

A few days later Coote was in Alice Springs when Johns arrived without Lasseter. Johns told Coote they headed west past the Petermann Ranges towards the Warburton Ranges but had a falling out and Lasseter stormed off. While Johns rested with the camels Lasseter returned after two days saying he had found the reef. Lasseter had samples but refused to show them to Johns. Johns called Lasseter a liar. They fought and then calmed down. The following morning Lasseter asked Johns to return to Alice for supplies. He would stay with the camels. He gave him a letter which Johns later opened. It said Lasseter found the reef and had pegged leases though it was not as rich as he thought.

The letter said Lasseter would return to Ilbilla and if Johns didn’t turn up he would go to Lake Christopher to meet a man called Johanson. Johns said Lasseter got hopelessly lost in waterholes near Kata Tjuta. A W. Johanson of Boulder, WA later claimed to have received a letter from John Bailey to get ready to join the expedition. No one in the expedition knew about Johanson or his relationship to Lasseter.

A plane rescue mission set out on December 15 but went missing. On New Years Day 1931 another aerial mission ran reconnaissance flights from Hermannsburg Mission. They found the missing men from the earlier flight rescue mission which crashed near Haasts Bluff but there was no sign of Lasseter. Evidence of Lasseter’s arrival at Lake Christopher was found with an inscription on a salt pan and a tree marked “Lasseter 2.12.30”. Bailey said Lasseter did not meet Johanson because the latter had been speared by Aborigines. Not long after, Johns’ camels bolted and Lasseter camped in a cave at Hull Creek in the Petermanns to vainly await rescue. Local man Bob Buck found footprints with the help of Aborigines and found Lasseter’s body at Shaws Creek.

Buck also found Lasseter’s diary buried in the ashes of the fire. From the embers he pieced together Lasseter’s last days. According to the diary Lasseter returned to Ilbilla. The diary said he pegged the reef but did not give a date or location. Lasseter said the Aborigines were “hostile” though they befriended him and caught the camels after they bolted. They also fed him nardoo (which kept John King alive in the Burke & Wills saga) but he could not digest it. He gradually weakened and became blind. The tribes weeped when he died. Among his last words in the diary were: “What good is a reef worth millions? I would give it all for a loaf of bread.”

With Lasseter dead, his reef became myth. Newspapers claimed there was an Aladdin’s Cave of wealth somewhere in the Red Centre. Despite the doubts and lies, some expedition members still believed Lasseter’s story. A second CAGE expedition in 1931 was equally fruitless. The same year Ion Idriess’s bestselling novel Lasseter’s Last Ride: El Dorado Found was an imaginative reworking of the story. Reviews lauded it as an exciting true story. Lasseter’s Reef dazzled prospectors throughout the 1930s though none found workings. A few doubters such as Michael Terry noted that 83 parties went through “Lasseter’s country” without a single authenticated gold discovery. Yet as late as 2013, there were claims people found Lasseter’s El Dorado on Google Earth.

Barry McGowan concludes the reef was a product of Lasseter’s feverish imagination. He noted Lasseter’s 1917 Army discharge said he had “marked hallucinations”. With his mood swings between optimism and distrustfulness, his ever-changing story and his tragic end, he was like Andrew Hume who told similar tales about Ludwig Leichhardt. Lasseter would probably now be diagnosed as bipolar. He was the victim of his own act of deception, though his fate spared him ridicule and harsh judgement. His death, McGowan concludes, transformed Lasseter and his reef into an enduring Australian legend.

To Maryborough by train

A couple of weeks ago I made the 250km journey to Maryborough for a mate’s 60th birthday while in Brisbane. Having flown down from Mount Isa, I didn’t have my car so I used Queensland Rail services, boarding the 4.55pm from Roma St to Bundaberg. That train was a pleasant experience which got me into Maryborough West around 8.25pm where a friend picked me up and took me the 10km or so into town.

The following morning I walked into town and spotted the first of Maryborough’s many heritage-listed buildings, the city hall. Maryborough was originally situated north of the Mary River with wharves established in 1847 to transport wool from Burnett sheep stations. In 1852 the town was transferred north where ships could better navigate the river. Maryborough was declared a municipality in 1861 and a timber town hall was built in 1874 on Kent Street. Maryborough developed rapidly for the Gympie goldrush in 1867. As Maryborough so did the demand for a new town hall, finally built in 1908 on the opposite side of Kent St. It was heritage listed in 1992 “demonstrating the growth of Maryborough in the early 20th century”. The day I passed it was used as a Covid mass vaccination centre.

The day I was there was a Thursday and the Maryborough City Markets were on at Adelaide St as they were every Thursday. at Lennox St in the city centre. The markets have been going since 1987 and visitors combine browsing with a heritage walk which starts at the next door town hall. As I found out, tomorrow was Maryborough Show Day so there was a particular holiday atmosphere in town that day.

Maryborough Post Office is another heritage-listed building at 227 Bazaar Street. It was designed by Queensland Colonial Architect Charles Tiffin and built in 1865-1866. This was in the middle of a thriving period for the town, after the Maryborough Sugar Company was set up in 1865 and gold was discovered in Gympie in 1867. It is the oldest post office known to survive in Queensland, and is one of three remaining masonry post offices from between 1859 and 1878. In 1869 a single faced clock, facing Wharf Street, was installed in the third level of the tower. The telephone exchange opened here in 1882.

Queens Park was established in 1860 and many of its beautiful huge trees are over a century old as they look down on the majestic Mary River. The river, named Moocooboola ( “river that twists and turns”) by the Kabi people, is responsible for the name of the city and its reason for existence. Early Europeans called it the Wide Bay River but in September 1847 New South Wales governor Charles FitzRoy changed the name for his wife Lady Mary Lennox. It was an ill omen for Lady Mary. Three months later, she was in a carriage when the horses bolted and crashed down a hill. The carriage fell on top of her. killing her instantly. The port opened the same year, fared better. The Mary has suffered many major floods over the years with the river peaking at 8.2m here in the 2011 floods.

Maryborough School of Arts is another heritage-listed building on Kent Street opposite the city hall. It was designed by John Harry Grainger and built from 1887 to 1888 by Jacob & John Rooney. It replaced the first Maryborough School of Arts, a small brick building built in 1861 soon after the establishment of a local School of Arts committee. The school of arts movement, also known as the mechanics’ institute movement, spread through the English-speaking world in the mid-nineteenth century. Public lectures were popular as a way of spreading scientific knowledge. Scottish emigrants brought the concept to Australia and most towns had their own school of arts for “the diffusion of Scientific and other useful knowledge as extensively as possible throughout the Colony.”

Maryborough Courthouse is a heritage-listed courthouse on Richmond Street. It was designed by Francis Drummond Greville Stanley and built in 1877 by John Thomas Annear for the Queensland Government, the first large court building designed for a rural town in Queensland. It was the forerunner for several other buildings in regional areas. The building is rectangular in form with corner towers and connecting verandahs, and was constructed in rendered brick, with timber work forming the verandahs. The building stands as part of the historic Wharf Street precinct. The courthouse has been used by the supreme, district and magistrates courts of Queensland since completed in 1878, making it the longest serving and oldest courthouse in use in Queensland.

From Queens Park a rail line was visible next to the river. I could also hear the toot of a steam train and a few minutes later it came into view down the track. A dedicated team of volunteers crew the Mary Ann which operates each Thursday along the riverside. The original Mary Ann was used to haul timber in the 1870s, named for the daughters of Scottish timber pioneers and the timber offcuts fuelled the engine. It ran on a 3’3 gauge, even narrower than the Queensland 3’6 gauge. The current engine is a replica built in the 1990s.

J E Brown commenced business as a provisions and victuals merchant in 1857 in Richmond Street. In 1879 he had this two-storey brick warehouse built and was designed by local architect James Buchanan. In later years, the premises were used for dances, balls, boxing tournaments, a restaurant, and currently houses the Maryborough Military and Colonial Museum.

Maryborough Heritage Centre is a heritage-listed former bank building at 164 Richmond Street. It was designed by George Allen Mansfield and James Cowlishaw and built in 1877 with goldrush wealth for the Bank of New South Wales. It is also known as National Parks and Wildlife Service Headquarters, Post Master General’s Department, and Telecom Building.

The following day was Friday and it was Fraser Coast show day. It seemed everyone in town was at the Maryborough Showgrounds to the west of the city. It was a typical boisterous show with all the usual ingredients. But after a while I became uneasy at so much close contact in these Covid times and went back to town.

This sculpture commemorates the work of Pamela Lyndon Travers, born Helen Lyndon Goff in Maryborough in 1899. P. L.Travers is most famous for the series of Mary Poppins children’s novels. Travers was an actress and journalist whose most abiding creation was the magical English nanny, Mary Poppins, famously played by Julie Andrews in the smash hit 1964 Hollywood film. Walt Disney’s daughters loved the novels when they were children, and Disney spent 20 years trying to purchase the film rights. Travers was an adviser in the production, but disapproved of the watered-down Disney Poppins character. She so hated the animation she ruled out any further adaptations of the series. At the premiere after-party she told Disney “The first thing that has to go is the animation sequence.” Disney replied, “Pamela, the ship has sailed” and walked away. Travers died in England in 1996 aged 96.

On the Saturday I went down to Anzac Park for the weekly local parkrun at 7am. The 5km track takes runners and walkers around the lovely Ululah Lagoon taking the pain off the exertion. The park also houses Maryborough golf club.

I had just enough time for shower and breakfast before getting a lift back to Maryborough West station for the 11.05am train back to Brisbane. This one was the tilt train originating in Rockhampton.

Unlike the trip up, the trip back to Brisbane was in full daylight so I was able to enjoy the scenery. A highlight is Mount Tibrogargan, one of the 13 peaks of the Glass House Mountains. Lieutenant James Cook gave them that name in 1770 because the peaks reminded him of the glass furnaces in his native Yorkshire. The range was formed as molten lava cooled to form hard rock in the cores of volcanoes 26-27 million years ago. Tibrogargan is the third tallest of the peaks. The name comes from the local aboriginal words chibur for flying squirrel and kaiyathin for biting. Tibrogargan was the father of all the other Glass House Mountains except Beerwah, his wife. Tibrogargan saw a rising of the waters from the sea, and called to his son Coonowrin to take his mother Beerwah to a safe place. However Coonowrin failed to do so, and in anger Tibrogargan clubbed himand broke his neck. Tibrogargan is said to have turned his back to face Coonowrin. We turned our backs on Tibrogargan as we tilted effortlessly back to Brisbane.