Photo: Gladstone Ports Corporation
The Port of Gladstone is Queensland's largest multi-commodity port and the fifth largest multi-commodity port in Australia. It is the world's fourth largest coal exporting terminal. It is located about 525 kilometres north of Brisbane at Latitude of 23°49.61'S, Longitude 151°34.6’E. It is owned and managed by Gladstone Ports Corporation, which is a statutory corporate body of the Government of Queensland.
Major exports include coal, alumina, aluminium, cement products and liquid ammonia. Coal makes up 70% of the total exports from the port. Each year 50 million tonnes of coal passes through the port. Major imports include bauxite and petroleum products as well as general cargo in containers. =he port consists of a number of wharves and terminal facilities. Auckland Point was where coal exporting began in 1925 and later live horse exports occurred in the mid-1930s.=Barney Point was used to export coal from Moura. The facilities here were incorporated into the Port of Gladstone in November 1998.
The first berth at Fisherman's Landing was completed in 1980. A second berth was built in the 1990s and this area is earmarked for future expansion. Boyne Wharf is used by the Boyne Island aluminium smelter and was opened in August 1982. Two berths at South Trees have been used by Queensland Alumina Limited. RG Tanna Coal Terminal, currently the largest by volume was opened in 1997 and is used primarily for the export of coking coal and other metallurgical coal to Japanese, Korean, Indian and Chinese steel mills. RG Tanna Coal Terminal receives coal from 17 mines within the southern Bowen Basin via two rail supply chains (Blackwater and Moura). The terminal consists of three bottom dump rail receival stations, 22 stockpiles, 4 berths and 3 shiploaders.
All shipping to and from the port is through Gladstone Harbour which has two channels to the Coral Sea; the northerly one is between Curtis Island and Facing Island and the southerly one is between Facing Island and Boyne Island.
Being a port city, Gladstone's local commerce is primarily industrial-based and include large-scale industrial plants include alumina refineries, aluminium smelting, heavy chemicals and shale oil. Due to its close proximity to the Southern Great Barrier Reef and the Capricorn Bunker group of Islands, Gladstone has also become a popular destination for holiday makers and sea changers alike.
Gladstone is a major stop on the North Coast railway line, with many long-distance passenger trains operated by QR TravelTrain stopping in the area. Freight trains also pass through the region. Gladstone is serviced by the Gladstone Airport with daily flights to the state's capital city Brisbane and other locations around the state. A train station is serviced by the famous QR Tilt Train and other state trains.
The town was named after the British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone. It has a 19th-century marble statue of him on display in its town museum. In a career lasting over 60 years, he served for 12 years as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, spread over four non-consecutive terms (the most of any British prime minister) beginning in 1868 and ending in 1894. He also served as Chancellor of the Exchequer four times, serving over 12 years.
Heron Island
Gladstone is the set-off point for dive trips to the Capricorn Bunker group, snorkelling in deepwater coral lagoons, personalised reef fishing tours, or the simple pleasure of watching turtle hatchlings enter the water for the first time. Island destinations include Fitzroy Reef, Heron Island, Lady Musgrave Island, North West Island, Boyne Island and Wilson Island.
Heron Island is a coral cay located near the Tropic of Capricorn in the southern Great Barrier Reef, 72 km north-east of Gladstone. The eastern half of the island is protected and forms part of the Capricornia Cays National Park, with a permanent ranger's station onsite. The island has a holiday resort.
Off the central Queensland coast between Rockhampton and Gladstone lies Curtis Island. The north-eastern end of this large island is Curtis Island National Park. A variety of vegetation types grows in the park from heath, grassland, stunted paperbark woodland and open eucalypt forest to extensive patches of dry rainforest. An historic lighthouse is located at Cape Capricorn.
In May 1770, HMS Endeavour, under the command of James Cook, sailed by the entrance to Gladstone Harbour under the cover of darkness. Matthew Flinders, during his 1801–1803 circumnavigation of Australia, became the first recorded European to sight the harbour in August 1802. He named the harbour Port Curtis, after Admiral Roger Curtis, who aassisted Matthew Flinders with repairs to his ship, HMS Investigator, in Cape Town a year earlier
Before European settlement, the Gladstone region was home of the Gooreng Gooreng, Toolooa (or Tulua), Meerooni and Baiali (or Byellee) Aboriginal tribes. John Oxley conducted exploration of the harbour and surrounding countryside in November 1823. Oxley was dismissive of the region, noting the harbour was difficult to enter, the countryside was too dry, and the timber useless for construction purposes. Nevertheless, in 1847 the British attempted to establish the new colony of North Australia at Port Curtis.
Nevertheless, in 1847 the British attempted to establish the new colony of North Australia at Port Curtis. Colonel George Barney was chosen to lead this experiment in colonisation and his expedition was eventful. On 25 January 1847, the Lord Auckland, carrying 87 soldiers and convicts, arrived off the southern entrance of Port Curtis and promptly ran aground on shoals off the southern tip of Facing Island. The settlers spent seven weeks on the island before being rescued by the supply ship Thomas Lowry and delivered the intended site of settlement, the region now known as Barney Point. On 30 January at a proclamation ceremony, Barney was sworn in as Lieutenant Governor of the colony of North Australia.[11] The convict settlement lasted barely two months and cost the Imperial government £15,000. A change of government in Britain ordered the withdrawal of Barney and the settlers. However, interest in the region remained.
By 1853, Francis MacCabe was surveying the site of a new town on the shores of Port Curtis under the protection of several detachments of Native Police. Maurice O'Connell was appointed government resident the following year, resulting in an influx of free settlers as land became available throughout the region.
Until recent times the opinion generally prevailed that the Island of Santo - the chief island of the New Hebrides - was the Great Southland Land discovered by Portuguese explorer Pedro Fernandez De Quiros in May 1606, and that Espiritu Santo's Big Bay was where De Quiros set up camp. A map drawn by cartographer Don Diego de Prado of 'The Great Bay of St Philip and St James in Espiritu Santo', published in 1608, is a reasonably accurate representation of Big Bay, however most descriptions of the locality found in many narratives of the expedition are inconsistent with the Island of Santo and its Big Bay. On the other hand these descriptions are found to accurately fit in with the claim of Port Curtis, Gladstone and the adjoining Queensland coast.
Describing the country he had discovered, De Quiros wrote: "The greatness of the land newly discovered, judging from what I saw, and from what the captain, Don Luiz Vaez de Torres, the Admiral under my command, reported to your Majesty, is well established. Its length is as much as all Europe and Asia Minor as far as the Caspian and Persia, with all the islands of the Mediterranean and the ocean which en-compasses, including the two islands of England and Ireland. That hidden part is one-fourth of the world, and of such capacity that double the kingdoms and provinces of which your Majesty is at present the Lord could fit into it, and this without any neighbourhood of Turks or Moors, or others of the nations which are prone to cause disquiet and unrest on their borders." That sounds more like a description of the Australian mainland than the coasts of Vanuatu.
Within the bay where the Spanish explorers stayed, they found a splendid harbour, to which they gave the name of Vera Cruz, capable of safe anchorage for 1000 vessels. No such harbour is to be found at Santo Bay but there is one on the closest coast to Vanuatu on the Australian mainland - Port Curtis.
Map of Espiritu Santo's Big Bay, by de Quiros
Map of Port Curtis and Curtis Island
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