Tropical North Queensland

Cairns

Cairns, named after Queensland's second Irish born Governor, Sir William Wellington Cairns, was established in 1876 to serve the mining industry. Trinity Inlet was chosen as the Hodgkinson Goldfield's first port because the inlet was already known to beche-de-mer fisherman, William Smith, a packer on the goldfield, who organized one of the first expeditions in search of a dray road to the coast.

Kuranda

Kuranda was surveyed in 1888 in anticipation of the development that would accompany the arrival of the railway. 

Two surveyors by the name of T.Behan and G.D.Edwards surveyed the town. 

On 23 Oct 1888 Thomas Behan filed the survey of a town near Middle Crossing and filed the name Kuranda. His assistant Edwards is said to have suggested the name but had actually suggested Kurunda… it is a word from the Burnett River tribes and Edwards left as naming many other words also in the dialect of his southern tribe, for example; Coondoo, Toree, Meeroo, Barang which are street names in Kuranda.

Edwards had picked up their dialect after he had been ship wrecked in the Wide Bay area and had lived with the Aboriginal tribes of the Burnett area.

Edwards was given to correcting with some asperity, everybody who called it Kuranda.