Queenslander (Brisbane, Qld. : 1866 - 1939), Thursday 27 February 1936, page 51


From the News of 60 Years Ago

(A Review of The Queenslander of February 26, 1876.) Mosquitoless Oxley—Municipality of Roma—Toowoomba's First Casting—Wallum Flats—Lost Man's Ordeal—Rural Vandalism.

The steamer Hibernia, laying the submarine cable from Sydney to New Zealand, arrived at her destination, Blind Bay, on February 16.

• ? • Our Oxley correspondent writes: "We hear of the remarkable abundance of mosquitoes at Sandgate and along the coast generally this year. It is a curious circumstance that this district was never known to be so free from them; indeed, we have a pleasant and plentiful lack of all varieties of Insect plagues this season." • * * A petition was published in Saturday's "Government Gazette" from householders in Roma praying for that town to be constituted a municipality. * ♦ • The first castings in iron were made in Toowoomba on Wednesday afternoon at the foundry of Messrs. Griffiths Brothers, in Ruthven Street. ♦ • • A man who disappeared from Maryborough recently while in a halfdemented condition was found on February 7 at a little station called Burgowan, 18 miles from the town, down the river. He was little the worse from his experience, although

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the place where he was discovered is "wallum country." Our Maryborough correspondent, in describing the incident, says: "The country between the town and the coast consists largely of wallum flats. For the benefit of readers who are not acquainted with wallum, I may say that it is a plant which grows like the South American thistle, to a height of 7ft. or Bft. It is generally found on extensive swampy flats, or on poor sandy or clayey soil, often rotten, and it sometimes covers the ground quite thickly. A man on foot lost on a wallum flat is in a dangerous position, for his view is closed in by the tall vegetation, and the dead level country affords no landmarks. Being wretchedly grassed, wallum flats, even in the neighbourhood of thick population, are seldom frequented by cattle, and a wanderer consequently has a poor chance of being discovered by a chance horseman." ♦ ♦ ♦ The first issue of the "Bundaberg Mail" (formerly the "Mount Perry Mail" and published on that field) appeared on February 17. * • * The tender of Anderson and Ryan has been accepted for excavating the site for the new telegraph offices, adjoining the General Post Office in Queen Street. • • ♦ A man named Bradley, who was lost in the bush last month, between Stoodleigh and Glen Prairie, near St. Lawrence, for seven days, when found had been six days without food, with the exception of two small mushrooms he had found in his wanderings. Bradley was much exhausted when discovered by Mr. John Randall, manager of Stoodleigh. but at the station he soon recovered from the effects of his fasting, the first use he made of his returning strength being given to the tragic task of digging the grave of the man who had saved him from a miserable death; for Mr. Randall expired very suddenly on January 23 while engaged in drafting cattle at the yards during mustering operations. • • ♦ A soiree was held at the Presby

terian Church, South Brisbane, on Thursday evening to bid farewell to the Rev. Alexander Hay, who has accepted a call from the Presbyterian Church at Rockhampton. * ♦ « * It is well known to those who have visited Cowarral (writes our Rockhampton correspondent) that the Alexandra palm (Ptychosperma Alexandras) flourishes there. The luxuriance and beauty of this palm on several creeks in the neighbourhood have been a great attraction in years past to pleasure tourists, but now, through wanton recklessness on the part of road or survey parties located on these creeks, they are fast disappearing, and are likely soon to become a thing of the past. It is a sin and a shame to see a palm so much admired and valued the world through being so wantonly destroyed. No one here has any authority to prevent it, but if the Government would only brine this palm under the same restrictions as the Bunya Bunya pine and the Queensland nut, there would then be some hope of saving it from utter extermination; but at the rate they are being cut down now it is to be feared that nothing would be left but seedlings to protect. * * * Mr. Samuel Stevens writes to cor-, rect an error which was unwittingly made in last week's "Queenslander" in a paragraph on the "Stephenstown" school, owing to a similarity of names. He says, inter alia: "Mr. T B. Stephens never owned a foot of land at the Fourmile Camp, on a portion of which the school-house is built. I bought it from the Government, and, at the request of several of my neighbours, gave a piece for a school site. At a meet-ing held at Mr. F. Wecker's residence on March 22, 1875, S. Fraser, Esq., M.L.A., in the chair, it was decided, among other matters, that the name of the locality, together with the proposed primary school, should be Coorparoo, that being the native name for Nor-man's Creek, which is in the immediate vicinity. The name was accepted by the late Board of Education, and, we trust, whan we advance to the dignity of a post office, it will be ac-cepted by the Government as our dis-tinguishing title.