Original inhabitants, language and culture Evidence of human inhabitation of the Maryborough region stretches back to at least 6,000 years ago. The
Gubbi Gubbi (Kabi Kabi) and
Batjala (Butchulla) people are the original inhabitants of the region. The Gubbi Gubbi were described as an inland tribe of the Wide Bay–Burnett area, whose lands extend over 3,700 sq. miles and lie west of Maryborough. The northern borders run as far as Childers and Hervey Bay. On the south, they approach the headwaters of the Mary River and Cooroy. Westwards, they reach as far as the Coast Ranges and Kilkivan. The Batjala occupy the more coastal regions including
K’gari (Fraser Island). The Batjala and Gubbi Gubbi speak dialects of the
Dippil language, the Batjala dialect being spoken in the Fraser Coast region, while the Gubbi Gubbi dialect is spoken in what is now the
Gympie and
Sunshine Coast regions. The escaped convict James Davis lived among various clans of the Gubbi Gubbi.
The arrival of the British British navigators
Matthew Flinders in 1802 and William Edwardson in 1822 were the first Europeans to take detailed surveys of the
Hervey Bay coastline. They both noted that the native population living on its shores appeared numerous. The first British people to live in the region were escaped convicts from the
Moreton Bay Penal Settlement. Convicts
Richard Parsons and John Graham both briefly lived with local Aboriginals during the late 1820s.
James Davis, however, lived with several Gubbi Gubbi clans from 1829 to 1842. He became a member of their society and was given the name Duramboi.
Colonisation and conflict After these initial explorations,
pastoral squatters started to enter the region looking to establish
sheep stations. The first of these was Mynarton Joliffe who, under the employment of the prosperous squatter John Eales, overlanded 16,000 sheep and set up the
Tiaro property in 1843. Aboriginal resistance was fierce, shepherds and livestock were killed, and Joliffe had to abandon the area within eighteen months. During this time,
Commissioner of Crown Lands,
Stephen Simpson visited the area and determined that the junction of two waterways (later known as the Mary river and Tinana Creek) would be a suitable place for a township. Maryborough itself was founded in 1847 by George Furber who established a small wool depot on the banks of the river. A year later Edgar Thomas Aldridge with Henry Palmer and his brother Richard E. Palmer constructed several permanent buildings and in 1849 a post office, petty sessions court and police station overseen by
John Carne Bidwill opened. Edmund Blucher Uhr established a
boiling down facility in 1850 and John George Walker started a
boatyard not long after. The site for the township was laid out by the government surveyor H.H. Labatt in 1850 and the first land sales occurred in January 1852. The name Maryborough was derived from the
Mary River which itself was named in 1847 after Mary Lennox, the wife of
Charles Augustus Fitzroy who was the
Governor of New South Wales at the time. Aboriginal resistance remained determined with numerous Mary River squatters and their shepherds being wounded or killed. Within weeks of his arrival, George Furber was seriously wounded by local Aboriginal people, as were other newly arrived colonists such as Alexander Scott. Furber would later shoot dead the Aboriginal man who tried to kill him outside a store in Maryborough. The body of the man was then taken by the local Aboriginal tribe to a location about half a mile away, where it was cut up, roasted, and eaten. In November 1850, after receiving intelligence of the murder of a shepherd and the loss of a flock of sheep, the
Native Police started to enter the area. Lieutenant Richard Marshall with the assistance of Mary River settlers such as John Murray and Henry Cox Corfield, conducted expeditions to find the stolen sheep. In 1851, the Commandant of the Native Police,
Frederick Walker, was called in to apprehend a number of Aboriginal men who had committed criminal acts on the mainland, and were hiding out on
K'gari. Walker sailed with three sections of troopers down the Mary River. After landing at K'gari, the men who were guarding the boats saw a group of Aboriginal men in a stolen boat, which was then later captured. Another stolen boat was observed and shot at, with the Aboriginal crew escaping to a nearby island. While the men camped, the Aboriginal's tried to ambush them, with two of them were killed in the engagements. It was later discovered that the Aboriginal's had partly eaten one of the bodies. Another section captured a number of people while another section followed other inhabitants across to the east coast where they escaped into the ocean. In 1856, a Native Police barracks was constructed on the outskirts of the town at Owanyilla. In early 1860, Lieutenant
John O'Connell Bligh and his troopers conducted an early morning raid on a group of Aboriginal people, killing at least two and wounding many others, in the streets of Maryborough. The townspeople gave Bligh a sword thanking him for his actions. By the late 1860s Aboriginal resistance to colonisation in the Maryborough district had been defeated with the survivors existing in poverty as fringe-dwellers. Many of these people were forcibly transferred to an isolation camp on K'gari in the 1890s and later shipped to Far North Queensland to the
Yarrabah facility.
Sugar The early Maryborough economy was centred around livestock farming, logging of forests, and the boiling down of animal carcasses to make
tallow. In the late 1850s the soil along the Mary River was deemed ideal for the cultivation of
sugarcane and in 1859 Edgar Thomas Aldridge was able to grow and produce a world-class experimental crop. Seeing the profitable potential, many influential local landholders such as Henry Palmer and John Eaton formed the Maryborough Sugar Company in 1865. Farmers switched to growing cane and the first Mary River sugar refinery, known as the
Central Mill, was built in 1867 by Robert Greathead and Frederick Gladwell. At this time, other sugar plantations in Queensland were importing cheap, sometimes
blackbirded labour from islands in the South Pacific. The planters along the Mary River also used this type of labour and the first shipment of 84
South Sea Islander workers arrived in Maryborough in November 1867. They came aboard the schooner
Mary Smith, owned by Robert Greathead, with 22 of the labourers being engaged by the Maryborough Sugar Company. Concerns were raised about whether the Islanders on the
Mary Smith understood the work contracts and if the pledge to return them would be honoured due to the lack of an interpreter. It was also alleged that the captain sold the Islanders to the colonists for £9 a head, while a missionary noted that the Islanders were unlikely to understand why they were taken. In 1869,
Robert Tooth and
Robert Cran bought up a number of plantations in the region and established the
Yengarie Sugar Refinery. They became the local dominant sugar manufacturer with the Maryborough Sugar Company becoming insolvent. By the end of the 1870s, Robert Cran and his sons had taken control of operations under the name Cran & Co.
Economic and civic expansion An unnamed Catholic School had opened by February 1858. Teaching was undertaken by lay teachers as there were no Catholic religious orders in Maryborough at that time. It closed in 1888. Maryborough was proclaimed a municipality in 1861, and became a city in 1905. During the second half of the 19th-century, the city was a major
port of entry for immigrants arriving in Queensland from all parts of the world. Maryborough Central State School opened in 1862. Circa 1874/75 it separated into Maryborough Central Boys School and Maryborough Central Girls' and Infants' School. In 1878 the Girls' and Infants' School separated into Maryborough Central Girls' School and Maryborough Central Infants' School. On 29 July 1932, Maryborough Central Boys School and Maryborough Central Girls School were closed and combined to become Maryborough Central State School. Maryborough Central Infants State School closed on 12 December 1986. It was a timber building in the Gothic style, capable of seating 200 people on open benches. The architect was Reverend Thomas Holme and the builders were Messrs Hart and Marshall. Prior to the opening of the church, Wesleyan services were initially held in a store in Adelaide Street and then in the Maryborough School of Arts. By August 1882, the church building had become too small and started to show signs of decay, so the southern corner of Adelaide and Alice Street (that is, on the same side of Adelaide Street) was purchased to construct the new church (). In February 1883, the site of the 1864 church was offered for sale, as the 1864 church was to be relocated to the rear of the new church to be used as a Sunday school hall. The foundation stone for the new church was laid on Tuesday 27 February 1883, and the
British ensign was waved from the
finial of the new church's
spire on Friday 22 June 1883 to signify the completion of the highest point of the building. On Sunday 16 December 1883, the new brick church was officially opened and consecrated, as part of a program of church services, public lectures, tea-meetings, and concerts to celebrate the occasion. The church participated in the 1977 amalgamation that created
Uniting Church in Australia. It was demolished some time after 1982. In 1880 the
Sisters of Mercy arrived in Maryborough and re-opened the school on 1 April 1880 as St Mary's School. A memorial hall was added in 1921; it was designed by
POE Hawkes. Maryborough Boys Grammar opened in 1881 and Maryborough Girls Grammar opened circa 1882. In 1936, the
Queensland Department of Education took over both grammar schools and created three schools: Maryborough Boys State Intermediate School, Maryborough Boys State High School, and Maryborough Girls State High and Intermediate School. In 1952 Maryborough Girls State High and Intermediate School were separated into Maryborough Girls State Intermediate School and Maryborough Girls State High School. In 1964 the two boys' schools amalgamated to become Maryborough Boys State High School and the two girls' schools amalgamated to form Maryborough Girls State High School. In 1974 the boys' and girl's High Schools were amalgamated to form Maryborough State High School. Newtown Maryborough State School opened on 19 July 1886, but it was renamed Maryborough West State School later that same year. On Wed 21 December 1887 St Thomas Anglican Church was officially opened at 197 Pallas Street (). The church was erected by
Edgar Thomas Aldridge, of
Baddow House in memory of his wife Maria who died on 17 March 1886. On 3 September 1888, the
Christian Brothers established Sacred Heart College for older boys, leaving St Mary's School to educate all younger children and the older girls (with no further need for the lay Catholic school). Australia's only outbreak of
pneumonic plague occurred in Maryborough in 1905. At the time Maryborough was Queensland's largest port—a reception centre for wool, meat, timber, sugar and other rural products. A freighter from Hong Kong, where plague was rampant, was in the
Port of Maryborough about the time that a wharf worker named Richard O'Connell took home some sacking from the wharf, for his children to sleep on. Subsequently, five of the seven O'Connell children, two nurses, and a neighbour died from the disease. There were no more cases but the ensuing fear, panic, and hysteria totally consumed the town, and a huge crowd gathered to witness the family's house being burnt to the ground by health officials. A memorial fountain was built in the grounds of the City Hall and dedicated to the nurses, Cecelia Bauer and Rose Wiles. The foundation stone of
Maryborough War Memorial was laid on 22 May 1921 by Lieutenant Colonel
James Durrant. It was dedicated on 19 November 1922. The Andronicus Brothers - Jim and George, formerly from the Greek island of
Kythera, established the Café Mimosa in Kent Street, Maryborough in the 1920s. Café Mimosa had a reception lounge above the café large enough to host sporting teams, wedding receptions, musical events and the Philharmonic choir during its practice sessions. Maryborough Special School opened on 1 January 1969. The Maryborough Library opened in 1977 and underwent a major refurbishment in 2011. The Maryborough Toy and Special Needs Library opened in 2006. In 1979, the desire for Catholic
co-education resulted in the amalgamation of St Mary's School and Sacred Heart College to create St Mary's Primary School (the primary school for boys and girls) and St Mary's College (the secondary school for boys and girls). St Mary's College opened in 1983. ==Demographics==