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In the forty years after Federation the most noticeable incursion of new settlers were the Soldier Settlers who came to the Boyne Valley after the war. Fifty-four families, with little or no farming experience attempted to farm very small areas. Before long most of them moved to more lucrative and certain incomes elsewhere. There were still two newspapers though The Advocate had been replaced by the Daily Times. The Commonwealth Bank of Australia, the Bank of New South Wales and the Queensland Bank all had branches in town; and there were two private hospitals and a chemist. Shops were numerous, and seem to have been larger. Friends store was well established, serving a much greater clientele than the town and there was a Cash & Carry, several butchers, bakers and car dealers. In a sign of real maturity in the town, the Post Office Directory lists a 'French Beauty Saloon' (though for 1939 it mentions only nine women by name). In short, everything was in place for the town to deal with the next wave, a population increase that was occasioned by the Second World War. Source: gragm.qld.gov.au/media/1017/waves-of-settlement-1901-1939...

South Trees is a coastal suburb facing the Auckland Channel, a waterway separated from the Coral Sea by Facing Island. The suburb consists of three non-contiguous areas of island, including the land around Parsons Point to the west of the South Trees Inlet and two islands within the South Trees Inlet, the northern one called South Trees Island while the southern one is unnamed.[3] The suburb is used only for industrial purposes. In the Parsons Point area is the Queensland Alumina Limited refinery with a footprint of 80 hectares (200 acres) of a 3,050-hectare (7,500-acre) site. There is a causeway bridge from Parsons Point to South Trees Island where the refinery's wharf and storage facility is located. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Trees,_Queensland

Gladstone was originally known as Port Curtis, which was named by Matthew Flinders in 1802 after Sir Roger Curtis who had been Commandant at the Cape of Good Hope when he had called there for victuals and resupply. Port Curtis enjoyed a brief three months of temporary settlement as the administrative centre of the colony of North Australia (1847). George Barney (Barney's Point, Gladstone) commanded the settlement but a change of government in England led to its disbandment. Within a few years pastoral occupation of the hinterland brought about pressure for the port to be a livestock shipping outlet. In 1853 the town of Gladstone was surveyed and the first sale of town and suburban allotments took place the following year. Gladstone served well as a harbor, but the absence of plentiful water and agricultural land hindered its development. A gold rush at nearby Canoona (1858) then overshadowed Gladstone for a period. Although declared a municipality in 1863, Gladstone's growth was slow: a customs house was erected in 1860, the first school in 1864, a Presbyterian church in 1869 and Catholic and Church of England churches in 1874. Gladstone's wharves were at Auckland Point (named after the ship Lord Auckland that brought the first European settlers in 1847), where Auckland Inlet enters Port Curtis. The short waterway involved navigating a strait that was obstructed by submerged rock and passable only at high tide. Intermittent blasting and dredging went on until the 1890s in an attempt to improve access through the passage, with less than adequate results. Funds were spent on alternative harbors at Port Alma and Rockhampton, leaving Gladstone's population convinced they were being unfairly overlooked. Gladstone remained convinced that it had the best potential shipping harbour in central Queensland. The state government appointed the Gladstone Harbour Board in 1914, and the town formed its own Gladstone Harbour League to lobby the Railways minister for fairer haulage rates and for freight from surrounding shires. Progress was slow, and the town's economic mainstays remained the Port Curtis dairy factory (which achieved maximum production during the 1940s-50s) and the meat works. Tourism was still a distant prospect, although Heron Island emerged as a local holiday destination in the 1930s. Flying boats, bound for Singapore and connections to England called at Auckland Inlet from 1935 and a land aerodrome, jointly backed by Gladstone and Calliope Shire, opened in 1956. Source: www.queenslandplaces.com.au/gladstone