Hervey Bay History

Hervey Bay (pronounced 'Harvey bay') was discovered by Captain James Cook in 1770 whilst travelling the east coast of Australia. He wrongly assumed that Fraser Island was joined to the Australian mainland and the sheltered waters behind it were a bay. The waters of the Great Sandy Strait are very shallow and he did not proceed far enough south to find the passage between Fraser Island and the coast. He named the bay "Hervey's Bay" after Lord Augustus Hervey an admiral of the Blue, the Earl of Bristol and Captain Cook's boss.

In fact he was some 6 km offshore as he sailed north. This did not stop him naming the bay after the 'English Casanova', Augustus John Hervey, a sailor of some note who acquired a fierce reputation as a womaniser.

Matthew Flinders passed through the area twice. In 1799 Flinders sailed around Fraser Island entering the bay and going ashore at the present site of Dayman Park. He was the first European to step ashore at Hervey Bay.

It is one of the ironies of history that Flinders, who returned to the area in 1802 on his historic circumnavigation of the Australia, did not locate the Fraser Island Straits on either of his voyages.

The first settlement of Hervey Bay occurred in the 1850s. Hervey Bay was originally part of a cattle station, the Toogoom Run, which was settled in 1854. The first permanent white settler at Hervey Bay was Boyle Martin who, with his wife and child, arrived in 1863. He worked cutting timber and it is suggested that he was the first person to grow sugar cane in the area. By 1859 the first subdivision of land around Hervey Bay took place.

Later in 1802 Matthew Flinders arrived and set about mapping Hervey Bay in more detail. The first European recorded as having set foot on Hervey Bay's foreshore was a man by the name of Boyle Martin in 1863. However, before this time, land between River Heads and Toogoom had been leased to William McPhail and Michael Sheehan and land at Booral to J. Aldridge.

In the 1870s many Scandinavian settlers moved into the area and for a short time Hervey Bay became known as Aarlborg. At this time the area was basically used for dairy farming. In the 1880s sugar was introduced to the area and the Kanakas were brought from the South Pacific islands to work on the sugar plantations.

In 1896 the Bay was connected to Maryborough by railway and in 1917 (progress wasn't exactly rapid) the Urangan Pier was completed and Urangan became an important port for the export of sugar.

The attractions of the area were obvious. The fishing was good, the place was quiet, the weather was excellent, the area around the bay was flat and accessible. All these factors quickly led Maryborough businessmen to take up large waterfront blocks of land for weekend retreats. A number of villages began to develop throughout the area and were individually named: Polson's Point which became Point Vernon; Barilba which became Pialba; Torquay; Urangan; and, Gatakers Bay.

It was not until September 1977 that the combined villages were declared the Town of Hervey Bay and the area was finally named a city in February 1984.

Today Hervey Bay is a rapidly expanding city near the top of the list of fastest growing cities in Australia.

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