In Adventure in watercolour: an artist’s story (1948), Queensland painter Kenneth Macqueen (1897-1960) called for art that walked ‘steadily and simply and, by its very truth to the environ

Australia, anywhere you want to be, AusFilm, 2006

1 January 2006
30 September 2010
30 September 2010

Selling Queensland as an International Production Location

Since the opening of the Gold Coast film studios, many films and television dramas have used Queensland places to ‘stand in’ for somewhere else; or as some imagined fictitious place. The Gold Coast hinterland has been ‘imagined’ as Mexico, South East Asia, Timor, North Carolina, and Montana, USA. Gold Coast’s beachside suburbs have doubled as Malibu, California, Hawaii, Florida, and Sydney; as well as representing the Gold Coast in Coolangatta Gold, Getting Square, Blurred, Goodbye Paradise, Walk the Talk, and television programs H20: Just Add Water and The Strip. Fraser Island played Fraser Island in Eliza Fraser, but it has also played the part of the Caribbean in Fool’s Gold; and when you look closely at Spooky Island in Scooby Doo it is possible to make out Tangalooma, Moreton Island. On the other hand, films such as Peter Pan, Ghost Ship and Fortress have story settings that are almost entirely recreated in Gold Coast sound stages. This map encapsulates the ambitions of the Australian film and television industry to imagine Australian landscape as a variety of story settings. It was created by the marketing agency AusFilm on behalf of a consortium of Australian businesses, regional authorities and state governments focused on attracting international production to Australia. 'Australia, anywhere you want to be', AusFilm, 2006

There is a certain frisson of recognition when places entwined in one’s personal life are suddenly there on the screen as story settings in features or television dramas.

Plan of the River Brisbane by John Oxley, 1825

Brisbane River Brisbane, QLD
Australia
6 February 1825

Location

Brisbane River Brisbane, QLD
Australia
Albemarle Street London
John Murray

Copyright © Collection of the National Library of Australia, Map NK 3275

Plan of the River Brisbane &c by John Oxley, Surveyor General of New South Wales. Published 6 February 1825 by John Murray Albermarle Street London. Insets show the Mouth of the River, and Chart of Moreton Bay with the Brisbane River. Oxley names the area to later become Mount Coot-tha, 'Glen Morrison Range'. Collection of the National Library of Australia.

Plaque to Stinson crash, O'Reilly's Guest House, Lamington National Park, Beaudesert Shire, 1978. The plaque documents the air crash on 19 February 1937 of the 'City of Brisbane' with the deaths of Rex Boyden, Beverley Shepherd, James Westray, Roland Graham and William Fountain, the survival of Josiah Binstead and John Proud and the role of Bernard O'Reilly in locating the site. Slide by John Boult, Collection of the Centre for the Government of Queensland.

Copyright © John Boult and Collection of the Centre for the Government of Queensland, 2010

Plaque at the site of the Stinson airplane that crashed February 1937, Lamington National Park, Beaudesert Shire, 1978. Slide by John Boult, Collection of the Centre for the Government of Queensland.

Copyright © John Boult and Collection of the Centre for the Government of Queensland, 2010

Electoral Districts of Warrego and Mitchell

Mitchell, QLD
Australia
1 January 1865

Location

Mitchell, QLD
Australia
Brisbane
Government Printing Office
30 miles to 1 inch

Electoral Districts of Warrego and Mitchell from Office of the Surveyor General, Queensland, 'Atlas of the Colony of Queensland, Australia', Brisbane, Government Printing Office, 1865. Described in the Government Notice of 1 February 1866: 'MITCHELL AND WARREGO DISTRICTS. Scale, 30 miles to 1 inch ; complete as above. Price 1s.'

Knowledge through the landscape.
How people remember the landscape.
How people have imagined Queensland.
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