How people understand the landscape.

‘Maps break down our inhibitions, stimulate our glands, stir our imagination, loosen our tongues’ thus spoke Carl Sauer in an essay entitled Education of a Geographer in 1956.

From the 1820s, scarcity of good land led pastoralists to establish runs on the Darling Downs and east of Moreton Bay.

The 1928-29 map ‘Preliminary plot of Queensland section of Geological map of the Commonwealth of Australia’ is a good illustration of the state of the technology of map creation at the time that it

During the late 1850s, pastoralists in New South Wales were pushing the boundaries of settlement ever northward throughout what would become the new colony of Queensland.

The gold mining town of Paradise once stretched for more than a kilometre along the southern bank of the Burnett River in Central Queensland.

At the outset Queensland’s most valuable resource was land.

Every stage in the mapping of Queensland reflects both the changing perceptions of the country, and the state of contemporary technology.

Queenslanders, it could be argued, have a predilection for catchy slogans. This distinctive character has long been promoted and exploited by the State’s tourism authorities.

Environmental perceptions are seldom straightforward.

The popular national travel magazine Walkabout (current 1934-74, 1978), produced by the Australian National Travel Association in Melbourne, contained many stories on Queensland.