Boomtown: Runaway Globalisation on the Queensland Coast
272
Boomtown: Runaway Globalisation on the Queensland Coast
272Hardcover
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780745338279 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Pluto Press |
| Publication date: | 10/15/2018 |
| Pages: | 272 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.25(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.90(d) |
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CHAPTER 1
A City No Longer in Waiting
Looking back over the years and remembering what the Gladstone harbour looked like with its endless miles of mudflats, and viewing it as it is today, it surely should bring forth exclamations of amazement at the transformation. Where once was mud and mangroves is now a vast area of reclaimed land, bristling with industry both large and small, a monument to man's progressiveness and ability to tackle problems big by any standard.
— William R. Golding (1979: 353)
Gladstone is a busy node in the global resource economy; it is Queensland's largest multi-commodity port and the world's fourth largest coal port. (The largest is Newcastle, New South Wales.) Since the beginning of industrialisation, the city has epitomised global overheating processes (Eriksen 2016a), namely a series of converging forms of accelerated change in the domains of identity and culture, climate and the environment, as well as economy and finance. While economic globalisation and capitalist growth economies based on fossil fuels explain the development of Gladstone, the environmental implications – both locally and globally – of its industries are evident and will be dealt with mainly in the second part of this book. The fast growth of the city leads to concerns about its character as a moral community, the relationship between old-timers and newcomers, and the hinges connecting the past to the present. This is the subject, especially, of chapters 3 and 4. In this chapter, I describe the development of Gladstone from cattle station and fishing village via fledgling port to industrial hub, retelling a narrative of modernity, progress and industry which remains crucial to the collective self-understanding of modern society as such – yet one which today is stumbling and stuttering somewhat, and thus has to be recontextualised and reframed in the light of contemporary climate change and other forms of environmental destruction.
* * *
Located just south of the tropic of Capricorn, the port of Gladstone lies between Bundaberg and Rockhampton off the Bruce Highway, more than 500 kilometres north of Brisbane and more than 800 kilometres south of Townsville, along a stretch of country road dominated by eucalyptus forest and sparse human activity, serving as a reminder that Australia remains a thinly populated continent. In spite of its economic importance, Gladstone is relatively unmarked in operative Australian geography. Signposts along the highway indicate distances to many cities, and the nearest smaller towns, but Gladstone does not appear on road signs until just before the exit at Benaraby some 25 kilometres from the city.
Nobody, it seems, wants to go there unless for work. Environmental activists further north or south may say, dismissively, that people move to Gladstone exclusively for the money, sometimes adding that they can only bear to live there for a few years. The assumption is that it is an unpleasant, polluted city lacking the picturesque coastlines, inviting beaches and clean air of other cities on the Queensland coast. It has become synonymous with industry and pollution; as a city councillor told me, 'Gladstone is too often in the [national] news for the wrong reasons,' meaning that it was only featured whenever there was an environmental problem, or scandal, reaching the headlines.
At the same time, Gladstone embodies a history and a present that lies at the core of contemporary Australian identity and its contradictions, and of industrial modernity as such. The most authoritative history of Gladstone is the Rockhampton-based historian Lorna McDonald's book with the telling title Gladstone: City That Waited(McDonald 1988), but the most prolific local historian was William (Bill) R. Golding (1890–1985). Golding, fondly nicknamed 'Mr Gladstone', was a towering public figure in his own right: a member of the city council for decades, mayor (1967–73) and board member of the Harbour Authority (later Gladstone Ports Corporation, GPC) from 1932 to 1979, serving as its chair from 1959 till his retirement. Golding's six self-published books on the history of Gladstone drift seamlessly between autobiography and industrial history, from personal reflections to detailed accounts of politics and industrial development, in which he himself played a major part.
Growing up at a time when Gladstone was decidedly a forgotten, stagnant billabong in a remote part of Queensland, Golding reminisces that when he was 'fourteen and a half years of age [in 1904], Dad said that as I apparently had learnt all that the school could teach, I could leave school, which I did' (Golding 1979: 286). Upon his second election as alderman in the town council in 1930, Golding reminisces that:
in the course of being congratulated by Mayor Ferris when I took my seat at the table, he said that I had come into the council when practically all the work had been finished. What he was actually referring to was that in that year Goondoon and Auckland Streets had been bitumenised, or rather were in the process of being done [sic]. Well, I have been in the council more than 40 years since then, and though the volume of work which has been carried out has been enormous, I have learned that no council ever catches up on its responsibilities, at least not in a growing town like Gladstone. (Golding 1979: 295)
The mayor at the time would have been unaware of the forces set free through coal-fuelled transnational capitalism, where change, growth and development would become the secular religion of many societies, including Australia. Golding would himself live to see Gladstone being transformed from a small, rural coastal town into a trading port and, finally, an industrial hub of national – indeed transnational – significance. Upon his retirement, he was well aware that changes would continue, being a fully modern person with change and progress in his bones.
THE FIRST CENTURY
The story of European settlement in Central Queensland until the latter half of the twentieth century can in some ways be read as a potted version of the history of Europeans in Australia in general, minus the convicts. In remote Queensland, Europeans were thin on the ground, often isolated not only from Europe but also from the larger settlements in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania, and sources are unanimous that they felt forgotten and abandoned. They mainly dealt with the traditional landowners, the Aborigines, as one would with wild animals threatening to attack people or damage crops, and it was only with the advent of air travel that they felt fully integrated into the modern world. The fragility of the early settlements in Central Queensland, aborted attempts and thwarted hopes, are reflected in historical narratives about Gladstone as a city that finally flourished against all odds. Although Gladstone looks programmatically towards the future, not the past, there is a strong interest in local history, especially among long-standing residents.
The first Europeans to set foot in Port Curtis (later Gladstone) may have been the cartographer Matthew Flinders and his men, who briefly landed in the area in 1802. Only in 1823 did Europeans return, in the shape of the land surveyor John Oxley, who decided that the area was unsuitable for a convict settlement. However, two decades later, in 1846, William Gladstone, then colonial secretary, decided that Port Curtis should be populated by a mixture of 'expired convicts' from Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) and newly arrived convicts from England. He appointed Lieutenant-Colonel George Barney as the administrative head of the new settlement.
Accordingly, the first proper European colonisation was intended to happen in 1847, when the Lord Auckland, captained by Barney, brought a group of 56 colonists to Port Curtis, whose deep harbour was recognised as an asset. Indeed, following a suggestion from William Gladstone, Port Curtis was at the time a candidate for the capital city of all of Northern Australia, including contemporary Queensland and the Northern Territory. However, Barney's ship stranded, and although the crew was rescued, the project was abandoned, and no penal colony was established. Around the same time, a sprinkling of pastoralist squatters arrived from the south, but officially, the port area was settled only in 1853, led by Governor Charles Fitzroy, who named the town, optimistically, Gladstone, by which time its namesake was no longer colonial secretary. The first semi-permanent housing in Gladstone, preceding Fitzroy, has been described as 'a hut erected by a party of young men from Maryborough, who, having heard descriptions of Port Curtis, had determined to be the first on what appeared to be a favourable field of settlement' (Golding 1979: 9).
The early European immigrants met already settled people in the region, probably the ethnic groups now known as the Tulua/Toolooa, Goreng-Goreng and Baiali/Byellee, whose descendants remain attached to Central Queensland. Relying on trade in meat and livestock as well as fishing, the fledgling town of Gladstone – with a few streets and fewer permanent buildings – officially became a port in 1859. Yet, there were promises of profits through transnational trade already then. The first mob of cattle, consisting of 250 animals, had been shipped to New Zealand in 1856. Mail service with the neighbouring towns of Maryborough and Rockhampton was established in 1859.
As in many other parts of Australia without a convict population, prospects of finding gold attracted people to relocate, in addition to raising livestock, which in this region mainly meant cattle. Gladstone benefited little from these opportunities. Gold was found on the banks of the Fitzroy River near Rockhampton in 1858, drawing people further north. There was a minor gold rush near Calliope to the west in the early 1860s, leading to the consolidation of that town. Until well into the twentieth century, dreams of gold remained a magnet in the region, but none of the findings would benefit Gladstone, the rich gold deposit at Mount Morgan being closer to Rockhampton. Although little gold was found, many of those who came to Gladstone at the time stayed, and the population grew, if slowly. In 1862, a wharf was built; in 1863, Gladstone became a municipality (although the population barely exceeded 200), and by 1868, the port exported cattle, wool, sheep and gold. The imports, as Golding (1973: 26) drily notes, made the settlement a drinker's paradise 'if there ever was one', consisting largely of alcoholic beverages in his record. It should be added that the gender balance, as elsewhere in the colony, was markedly skewed.
The population of Gladstone reached 500 in 1888, two years before Golding's birth. A vibrant city it was not, but it would grow steadily in the next decades, relying mainly on meat export, fishing and crabbing for local markets and the excellent port facilities. Coal was brought to Gladstone from Newcastle (NSW).
Around the turn of the twentieth century, Gladstone slowly turned into a town proper. Profiting from new technology, a meat-processing facility was opened in 1896, a butter factory in 1905. Rail links with Brisbane were established in 1897 and with Rockhampton in 1903, and a steamer began to operate between Rockhampton and Gladstone, plying the shallow waters of the Narrows separating Curtis Island from the mainland. At the same time, minor gold rushes in Langmorn, Raglan, Targinnie and Many Peaks in the Upper Boyne Valley attracted newcomers not intent on becoming graziers.
The meatworks, which would operate until 1963, did not provide a secure income. In its early days, it employed 120 men for three months a year, and it remained a strictly seasonal employer until the end. Other precarious livelihoods also appeared. In the early decades of the twentieth century, several hotels and boarding houses were built, some of them short-lived, such as the Battery Hotel in Targinnie, which only lasted from 1901 to 1917; while the Grand Hotel on Goondoon Street, dating from 1897, is still operating today. There was even an embryonic tourist industry before the Second World War, with Christian Poulson opening his Grand Hotel on the tiny, but unspoilt and picturesque Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef, a popular destination even today.
* * *
Before industrialisation, the story of Gladstone is one of farming and pastoralism, shipping and mining, thereby embodying two key figures in most standard narratives of Australian national character and history, the grazier and the miner. Indeed, two influential – and controversial, for opposite reasons – Australian historians, who otherwise represent very different views of the country's history, not least concerning the settlers' relationship to and treatment of the Aborigines, converge on this issue. As regards mining, the conservative historian Geoffrey Blainey (1994) concentrates on wealth creation and the peopling of the continent, while the postcolonial socialist historian Stuart Macintyre (2004) explores the consequences of the current mining boom. Regarding frontier settlers with their animal herds, both historians agree on their significance while giving different interpretations. Indeed, Macintyre shows that quite a few of the early settlers combined pastoralism and mining for a livelihood. Both the grazier and the miner opened the outback to settler colonisation, both extract value from the land, but while the former attempts to enter into circuits of indefinite reproduction, the latter removes the valuable substance from the land once and for all.
Although it is a major coal port, mineral wealth in the Gladstone region is limited, apart from the Callide coalfield near Biloela, about 85 km west of the city. Coal was found there as early as 1892, and indeed, coal was already known to exist in the region in 1844. Commercial exploitation of Callide coal nevertheless began only in the mid-twentieth century, the mine opening in 1944 following the building of the Gladstone–Biloela main road (or highway, as it is officially called). After years of political stalling, a period when the region actually relied on imported coal, the first shipments of Callide coal finally arrived at the wharf in 1946, following a government order of 30,000 tonnes of Callide coal. A local businessman, Leslie Thiess, returned from negotiations with Japanese buyers in 1960 with a contract for between 300,000 and 500,000 tonnes of coal, 'seventy years after Otty and Petersen sank their picks into this coal on the banks of Callide Creek away back in 1892' (McDonald 1988: 318). Coal from the larger mines in more distant Moura subsequently began to arrive, still by truck, in 1961, as Gladstone was on the brink of becoming an international coal port, gradually being integrated into an economic system at a transnational scale.
Throughout the history of the Gladstone region, many have tried their hand at mining, the high risk being counteracted by the possibility of fast wealth. Instead of producing mineral wealth itself, however, the region now began to profit from that extracted in the interior of Queensland. This required an upgrading of the port facilities.
The jetty at Auckland Point on the northern tip of the town had been built as early as 1885, mainly for shipping cargoes of horses and cattle. Political decisions, doubtless helped by efficient lobbying from competitors, delayed its expansion, the Queensland government preferring to build deep-water ports further north by the estuary of the Fitzroy River. In 1956, the jetty was finally expanded just a few years before the decision that would change Gladstone forever, namely the construction of the world's largest alumina refinery on its outskirts.
QUEENSLAND ALUMINA LTD AND BEYOND
When my husband and I arrived here, in the 1970s, there were essentially two kinds of people here, namely those who worked for QAL or at the power station, and everybody else. Everybody else meant, in this case, motorbikes, dogs and pregnant women.
— Jenny (teacher)
In December 1963, Swift's Meatworks closed its doors for the last time. The meat-processing plant had existed since 1897; it had gone through ups and downs, a decided upturn being the great spam boom of the Second World War, when Allied troops in the Pacific required a regular supply of tinned meat. The closure came as a shock to many Gladstonites, to whom the meatworks was an important element in the local identity. As some of my elderly informants point out, there were rumours about the vacant lot becoming an ugly and decrepit ruin, good jobs lost forever in the region. These rumours persisted in spite of the fact that it had already been decided, and announced, that a bigger and better employer was about to take over the property and turn it into an industrial powerhouse. When the meatworks closed and was demolished, the plot and some adjacent land had already been purchased by the mining company Comalco (later Rio Tinto), which immediately set about building what would become the world's largest alumina refinery (QAL, Queensland Alumina Ltd). Employing 2800 men in the construction phase, QAL opened in 1967, followed in the next year by the opening of a railway extension connecting the port of Gladstone to the Moura coal fields, and an expansion of the port itself with the construction of a coal terminal at Barney Point between the city centre and QAL.
(Continues…)
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Copyright © 2018 Thomas Hylland Eriksen.
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Table of Contents
Preface Prologue: The High Point of Extractive Industrialism Part I: Citrus, Altius, Fortius 1. A City No Longer in Waiting 2. Australian Identity and Its Double Binds 3. Change in Their Bones 4. The Boomtown Syndrome and the Treadmill Paradox Part II: Clashing Scales 5. Green Voices 6. Dredging the Harbour 7. Slow-Burning Overheating at the East End Mine 8. The Demise of Targinnie 9. Clashing Scales: Globalisation, As we Know It Epilogue: a Boomtown in Decline Appendix 1 Appendix 2 Bibliography