The subject of this paper is music in Queensland, rather than Queensland music. Although we speak readily enough, and unselfconsciously, about Queensland literature or Queensland art, the idea of ‘Queensland music’ (suggesting that there is something distinctive about music composed here) sits uncomfortably to those of us who are not Queensland composers-and even to some who are. I will not be concerned in this paper with distinguishing between the original and the derivative in Queensland musical culture. Rather, I begin from the premise that Queenslanders — like people elsewhere — have developed a unique set of cultural interactions with music, reflecting our particular history and social conditions. In this understanding of music, performance has as much social and cultural significance as composition.

On the fortieth anniversary of the publication of Russell Ward's Australian Legend, it is timely to evaluate the strength of the bush legend in contemporary Australia. One way of doing this is to consider how elements of the legend have been taken up in tourist products and this study, which takes up on an earlier study undertaken in 1988 (Trotter, 1992), looks at the impacts the Australian Stockman's Hall of Fame and Outback Cultural Centre in Longreach (the Hall) has had on the town, the region, and broader spheres. Also celebrating an anniversary in April — its tenth — the Hall has, over the decade, become a significant outback tourist site; and the journey there has acquired almost pilgrimage status. It has put Longreach ‘on the map’; and it has also provided a model for towns and regions aspiring to a ‘heritage-led’ economic recovery.

The Cane Toad Times — Australia's Humour Magazine was published in two volumes. Volume one was published in the late 1970's and volume two between 1983 and 1990.

The first volume of The Cane Toad Times was approximately seven issues and appeared between 1977 and 1978. It was published by Planet Press in Brisbane and in the words of the editors of volume 2, it was “…a funny little folded thing filled with naughty cartoons and scribblings founded somewhere 1976ish by our foretoads…” (CIT Issue 10 1986, p.4) Matt Mawson, who supplied the cover graphic and some illustrations for the first issue described “the original prime movers (as) John Jiggens and John Reid, the Planet Press anarchists” (1997). Volume one was first issued in May 1977 and was sold locally at events such as 4ZZZ-FM market days, but “the early Toad was squashed on the road of life by a big truck with Negative Cash Flow Ink written on the side.” (#10 1986, p.4)

In the late nineteenth century, railway mania overtook Queensland, with every community seeking to replace the coach or horse-and-buggy with the train. The demand for a rail service was especially strong in the south-east corner of the Colony for two main reasons: firstly, the coastal strip was rapidly gaining popularity as a holiday resort, and a faster, more comfortable means of travel was needed to replace the journey by coach; and secondly, the hinterland river flats and lower valleys of the McPherson Range were proving to be very productive agricultural and dairying districts, and farmers needed the railway to transport their produce to city markets.

Ravenswood is approximately 125 kilometres inland from Townsville. In the early 1900s, it was among the top gold producers in North Queensland. Now, in the 1990s, after several decades of limited activity, Ravenswood gold mining has undergone a revival. This paper will explore the history of Ravenswood from its inception to the present day, emphasising the importance of technology to the progress of the goldfield. Special attention will be drawn to the New Ravenswood Ltd. Company (1899–1917), which combined innovative technology with an effective management, thereby creating an unprecedented level of prosperity in the town of Ravenswood.

The development of architecture follows many strands but increasingly the value and role of the discipline in relation to culture identity is questioned. Whilst it may be accepted axiomatically that architecture reflects cultural mores, with the development of commercialisation and materialism, the question focuses on how to create an architecture that reflects the locale, its peoples, its history and most of all its life styles. An architectural direction that reflects the region is perhaps more likely to succeed in this respect. Yet what are the tenets of regionalism and how can these be reflected in an authentic local architecture?

With the rise of economic globalisation and the increasing power of supra-national forces (particularly major corporations), the capacities of national governments to regulate economic development have declined. However, the role of sub-national governments, particularly state governments, has grown, as national governments have looked to local and regional areas to achieve greater international competitiveness (Harding 1996: 645–647). Major corporations operate according to a global, ‘borderless’ rationale, while local and regional policy makers are very much bound by their spatial location (Keating 1993: 376–378). This paper assesses the capacities of state governments and local communities within a globalised economy to regulate development. It focuses on tourism in Queensland and Hawaii, through an examination of the careers of the initiators of the largest tourism developments in the two states — Keith Williams in Queensland and Christopher Hemmeter in Hawaii. Each has become a tourist icon in his respective state. Whereas Williams has a public image as a dogged pioneer and builder, Hemmeter's public image is of a restless cosmopolitan designer. The paper evaluates their two careers within the context of the contrasting approaches to regulation of tourism development in Queensland and Hawaii.

On 5 May 1897, just over a century ago, the Queensland International Exhibition opened in Brisbane. This, the seventh international exhibition to be held in Australia, was Queensland's contribution to the great series of world expos that followed London's famous Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851. The exhibition also marked Queensland's recovery from a disastrous depression of the early 1890s, proclaiming to the world that Queensland was now on a steady path of progress. Contemporaries viewed the exhibition with mixed feelings: to some it was a ‘dazzling display’; to others ‘a frost’ (a nineteenth-century term for ‘a fizzer’). ‘Frost’ or not, the event was soon forgotten after it closed three months later, and hardly rated a mention at the time of its recent successor, World Expo '88.

An examination of the Presbyterian ministry in colonial Queensland is a revealing exercise. It tells something of the nature of a very significant class in colonial society, the clergy, who acted as the “public intellectuals” of their age. It aids the assessment of the extent to which the Presbyterian Church remained an immigrant Scottish institution. It also provides some insights into the causes of the differences of style observable in Presbyterianism from state to state, suggesting a relationship to differences over Church union in the 1970s.