G
IVEN THE dramatic bushfire
season we’ve been having, now
seems the right time to look at
this distinctively Australian word. And it
is distinctive. What we call a bushfire is
called a “wildfire” everywhere else in
the world. The name we’ve adopted
comes from the Aussie habit of
constructing expressions using the
word “bush” or tacking on other words
to “bush” (as in a “bush so-and-so”).
There was a phenomenal explosion of“bush” words that now fills no fewer
than 36 pages of the second edition of
the Australian National Dictionary. As for
bushfire itself, this was first recorded in- It turns up in the Sydney Monitor
that year, the following year in the Perth
Gazette, in 1841 in the Launceston
Courier, and so on through the decades
and around the country. It seems poet
Dorothea Mackellar could have added
“land of bushfires” to her “land of
droughts and flooding rains”.
By Kel R ichardsBUSHFIRE
PHOTO CREDITS, FROM TOP: CHRISSIE GOLDRICK; DOUGLAS SHIRE HISTORICAL SOCIETY INC.W
ITH ITS WHITE timber shed
shimmering against blue
skies and rainforest-clad hills,
the old sugar wharf on Dickson Inlet
in Port Douglas is an eyecatching sight
for tourists returning to the town’s sleek,
modern marina each afternoon after ex-
cursions to the Great Barrier Reef.
Port Douglas, in far north Queensland,
was established in 1877 after gold was
discovered nearby. The town grew rap-
idly as a port and administrative centre and by 1880 boasted
14 hotels. But the boom was short-lived and Cairns became
the regional hub after it was selected as the terminus for a
new railway line in 1886. Port Douglas continued as a port
for the burgeoning sugar industry centred around Mossman,
21km to the north, and in 1904 £3000 was allocated for the
construction of a public cargo wharf near the mouth of a
creek on Dickson Inlet. Completed in 1905, it was 14 x 32m,
set well out into the main channel and reached by a stone
causeway and wooden trestle along which ran a railway track.
It was extended in 1924 and its storage shed repositioned
along the eastern edge and lined to hold bagged sugar. All
sugar trade ceased in 1958 due to the advent of bigger cargo
ships, which were unsuited to Port Douglas’s shallow channels.The wharf briefly functioned as a
seafood restaurant between 1968 and
1972, and in 1977 the location was
earmarked for redevelopment that in-
cluded land reclamation works. On
the wharf’s eastern side these works
led to demolition of the timber trestle and covering up of
the stone causeway with dredge spoil. In 1979 renowned
underwater photographer Ben Cropp took out a 20-year
lease on the building and ran it as a shipwreck museum.
Among artifacts displayed, there was ballast from Cook’s
Endeavour (see page 84) and cannon balls from Flinders’
Investigator. The shed was also modifi ed to include living quar-
ters for Cropp and his wife.
The wharf was heritage listed by the National Trust in
1983 and by the Queensland Heritage Register in 1992. After
Cropp’s lease ran out, the local council carried out restorations,
and today the sugar wharf is an event venue popular with
wedding parties using the nearby St Mary’s By the Sea chapel,
which was moved to its current position in 1988.SUGAR WHARF,
PORT DOUGLAS
Bulk sugar was loaded onto lighters at
Port Douglas and taken to Cairns where it
was transferred onto bigger international
cargo vessels for export, as depicted in this
scene from the late 1940s.Port Douglas
QLD
TRACES
22 Australian Geographic