Islander sawmillers who worked there, but their search
for fishing spots soon led to the discovery of the fertile
sandbars and deep drop-offs of the Round Hill estuary.
In 1878 a Gladstone publican named Daniel Clowes
and his son William – both keen fishermen – took up
a lease on 12 square miles (31sq.km) of coastline that
stretched south from Round Hill Head along a beautiful
sandy beach. Clowes named his selection Agnes Water,
after a cargo schooner that had disappeared in Bustard
Bay a few years earlier. He put in stockyards and ran it
as a cattle property, but after Clowes died in 1891, the
lease and its makeshift buildings became a place for
fishermen and their families to let off steam.
In the early years of the new century the Clowes
homestead burnt to the ground and the property was
more or less abandoned. But the more adventurous
farmers and graziers from the Miriam Vale area be-
gan making summer expeditions to the coast. One of
these was the family of Bill and Kate Jeffery, whose son
Arthur later became the area’s foremost historian. He
wrote his memory of the first Agnes expedition, made
when he was just five years old, in 1913: “Setting out
from Miriam Vale after midday in a procession headed
by one horseman, followed by three buggies, one sulky
and draught horse and a spring cart loaded with the
heavier supplies... spent the first night at Ten Mile Creek
and the party was thrilled the next afternoon to have
their first glimpse of the ocean through the trees of the
Agnes range.”
The Jefferys and their travelling companions cleared
a track from Agnes Water Station to Round Hill Creek,
where they set up camp next to the beach. Within two
years, the first holiday shack would appear at Round
Hill Creek, and by the 1930s the Jeffery men would
build the second.
While Arthur Jeffery was serving with the AIF in the
Middle East during World War II, his younger brother
Tom farmed bananas and citrus in the fertile soil of the
family property near Miriam Vale, selling much of the
produce to the US military base in Brisbane. Tom and
his wife, Beth, moved to Agnes Water with their young
and growing family in 1951, Tom taking up the leases
on both the 1770 and Agnes Water camping grounds
that his father had held.
After the war, Arthur went to work at the Mount
Isa Mines, then built a house next to his brother’s at
Agnes Water and turned it into a museum. Perpetually
barefooted as he combed the beaches and scoured the
forests for treasures, he gathered a unique collection
of local flora, fauna and artefacts, to which he added
mineral samples he’d collected around Mount Isa, and
journals of the early explorers that he’d photocopiedMarch. April 99The journals of James Cook
and Joseph Banks were of
particular interest.
Tourists explore the museum in the
lighthouse keeper’s residence at Bustard Head,
a fascinating day trip from 1770.Paperbark Forest Walk in Reedy Creek Reserve, just
south of Agnes township. One of many delightful
walking tracks that surround the town.