Conflict

Location plan, Mt Etna Fertilisers, 1924. This map displays the extent of mining leases taken over the Caves area as early as 1924 and shows Mount Etna in the centre of the map on mining lease R444. The map appeared in the Prospectus of the Mt Etna Fertiliser company when they issued a call for investment. The company noted that, ‘From the small beginning the business has greatly increased, other leases being obtained from the Crown, particularly Mt. Etna proper, with very large caves and with enormous quantities of Guano and Limestone'. These enormous quantities of limestone would continue to be sought after when other mining companies came to Mount Etna. And it was between cavers and miners that conflict would arise at Mount Etna. From Prospectus: Mt Etna fertilisers Ltd, Brisbane, 1924, Collection of the John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland

Union camp, Barcaldine, 1891. Located at the head point of the central railway, western Queensland, Barcaldine became a focal point of conflict during the shearers’ strike of 1891. Up to 1000 unionists camped outside the town at Lagoon Creek. On the lookout for ‘trouble makers’, armed troopers camped in the town and guarded the rail head. This painting was discovered in the office of the Australian Workers Union and depicts life at the Lagoon camp. Tents line the banks of the creek while men are standing around fires conversing or simply enjoying a relaxing pipe. In the bottom left corner a library tent is shown with a sign out the front. In the distance the town and an artesian drilling derrick are visible. Little is known about the artist, ‘Chapman’, and whether the painting is an accurate depiction of the camp or based on second hand accounts, but it remains one of the few artistic representations of the places created out of the shearers’ strike. Collection of the John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland

Plan of Olsen’s Cave, 1903. J. Christensen leased the ‘cave property’ of 80 acres with the intention to excavate guano from the caves and sell it as a fertilizer because of its high phosphorous content. This plan was drawn by H. Buch from surveys he and Christensen made of the caves. Cathedral Cave, marked ‘F’ on the map, was a ‘beautiful cave’ that contained ‘the Font’ and ‘the Pulpit’ which were two large stalagmite formations. Christensen observed, ‘At first sight, the caves appear most irregular in their formation, but a glance at the accompanying map shows them generally to run in parallel direction from north-west to south-east.’ He was also aware of the significance of the limestone in the caves, the commodity over which the major confrontation would occur, writing, ‘The limestone, which presents a grey, weathered surface, shows in the fracture a light grey colour, interspersed with pink and reddish brown, of the nature of marble.’ J. Christensen, ‘Olsen’s caves, near Rockhampton,’ Queensland government mining journal, 14 November 1903

Farnborough (Iwasaki) resort, surge and flood levels, 1976, sheet 1. This surge and flood level map was completed in March 1976 by engineers Cameron, McNamara & Partners for the design and development of the Iwasaki resort. The map marks the significant places that were already at Farnborough: the ‘hut’ in the southeast corner, the ‘Boys Plains’ and the levee. Abutting the Coral Sea, the map marks the significant water data that were needed for positioning the resort, from south to north: freshwater flood level that reached 2.68 m in 1956, storm tide that hit over two metres in two locations in January 1976, the flood that reached 3.6 m in January 1974, and the sites further north that were affected by the 1976 storm tide. The 1976 water-activity was caused by ‘Cyclone David’ which crossed the Queensland coast south of Mackay in early January 1976 and caused damage to many houses in Yeppoon. As can be seen, in some of the blank spaces of this map contours were not possible to record because the ‘dense vegetation’ was impenetrable for the engineers. Collection of the Queensland State Archives