Maryborough - A Social History 1854 -1904

Betty Osborn and Trenear DuBourg (1985)

Hardback; 420 pp (inc. appendices, notes, index, & bibliography); 162x242 mm illustrated.

$35 plus postage

Maryborough began as a gold town in 1854 and, despite grinding water problems, survive to become an important town of the Victorian era.  With no river (only the Four Mile Creek - and the main drain), Maryborough at first carted its water from Carisbrook, four miles away.  From a tent and slab settlement, it grew into a bustling borough, eager to exert its authority and anxious to obtain the district gaol and courts.

Bushranging menaced the Maryborough district in the fifties and early sixties only to disappear with the spread of the railways.  A recognised rail junction, Maryborough was seen to be important when its magnificent second railway station was built in 1891.  Other public buildings of substance were also built in the late seventies, the eighties and nineties, giving an air of elegance and permanence to the town.  Gold mining continued to support the town into the twentieth century.

The authors have given a picture of Maryborough from the earliest rough life on the diggings when a full-scale rebellion was narrowly averted over an incident at Tipperary Hill, to life at the turn of the century when a more sophisticated society had developed.  It was still a man's world, though, and women played little part in public life and received scant recognition for what they did.  Maryborough has clung to its name despite a suggestion from Maryborough, Queensland, in 1896 to consider changing it!  Commissioner James Daly named Maryborough after his home town in Ireland, which had received its name from Queen Mary I.