A Thousand Miles Away: A History of North Queensland to 1920 by Geoffrey Bolton

Book Description

Secondhand. Good condition. Wear to book corners and edges. Foxing to tail foredge. Mark on top foredge. Previous owner has signed inside blank page and front cover. Dust jacket has wear at edges and a small tear to top front cover. Dust jacket is now enclosed in protective cover. Interior and binding are still very good.

North Queensland is the most successful example in the British Commonwealth of a tropical region settled by Europeans. Here, the Australian way of life has been transplanted almost intact. But one hundred years ago, when North Queensland was settled, it was taken for granted that white men could not work in the tropics.

Sugar plantations were founded on imported Pacific Island labour. Meanwhile, inland North Queensland was developed by squatters and miners whose way of thinking differed widely from that of the planters. How could these two traditions coexist within a single community? How was the prosperity of North Queensland reconciled with the White Australia policy?

In the first two generations of settlement, from 1861 to 1920, these questions were posed and answered. Professor Geoffrey Bolton draws on sources ranging from government departmental reports to the reminiscences of long-term residents to trace the social, economic, political, and human story of the early settlement of North Queensland. (book flap)