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Beaudesert is a rural town and locality in the Scenic Rim Region, Queensland, Australia. Beaudesert is located on the Mount Lindesay Highway, some 70 kilometres (43 mi) south of Brisbane. The surrounding countryside includes numerous valleys leading up to the ranges dividing Queensland and New South Wales with creeks running through them and accompanying mountain scenery. The town was originally set out in a grid pattern; however, several of the streets followed cart tracks. The area was originally settled for growing cotton and sheep. However, the area is also notoriously short of water and the cotton was not a successful crop. Hoop pine was very successfully collected from the area. In 1863 the cotton workers were indentured labourers from the South Sea Islands, the first such use in Queensland. In the 1880s, the Cobb & Co stagecoaches ran between Beaudesert and Jimboomba. Even though the area was known as Beau-desert (beautiful desert), the droughts and the floods were continuous problems in the area. In times of flood, houses, animals and people were washed away. The damage caused by floods is often recounted in historical documentation. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaudesert,_Queensland

Mount Crosby is a semi-rural outer western locality in the City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The locality of Mount Crosby is bounded to the south-west and south by the Brisbane River (known by locals as the "Devil's elbow"), to the south-east by Mount Crosby Road and a second section of the Brisbane River, and to the north by Lake Manchester Road and Swensons Road. It is 22 kilometres (14 mi) south-west of the Brisbane CBD. Mount Crosby has the following mountains: - Holts Hill, 65 metres (213 ft) above sea level - Mount Crosby (also known as Mount Belle Vue), 183 metres (600 ft) above sea level  The Jagera Aboriginal people inhabited areas in Mount Crosby and they had ceremonial grounds on the slopes of Mount Elphinstone and at Bellbowrie.[7] John Oxley explored the Brisbane River in September 1824. He and Lieutenant Butler climbed the mountain (now known as Mount Crosby) naming it Belle Vue Mountain. The origin of the current name is uncertain, but there are two theories. The first theory is that first farmers to take up land in the area came from Crosbie-on-Eden on the England-Scotland border and they named the mountain Mount Crosbie. The second theory is that a gold prospector George Crosby worked here in the early days. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Crosby,_Queensland

An ox-wagon or bullock wagon is a four-wheeled vehicle pulled by oxen (draught cattle). It was a traditional form of transport, especially in Southern Africa but also in New Zealand and Australia. Ox-wagons were also used in the United States. The first recorded use of an ox-wagon was around 1670,[citation needed] but they continue to be used in some areas up to modern times. Bullock wagons were important in the colonial history of Australia.[2] Olaf Ruhen, in his book Bullock Teams remarks on how bullock teams "shaped and built the colony. They carved the roads and built the rail; their tractive power made populating the interior possible; their contributions to the harvesting of timber opened the bush; they offered a start in life to the enterprising youngster". Bullocks were preferred by many explorers and teamsters because they were cheaper, quieter, tougher, and more easily maintained than horses, therefore, making them more popular for draught work.[3] Frequently comprising long trains of bullocks, yoked in pairs, they were used for hauling drays, wagon, or jinker loads of goods and lumber prior to the construction of railways and the formation of roads. In the early days the flexible two-wheeled dray, with a center pole and narrow 3-inch (8 cm) iron tires was commonly used. The four-wheeled dray or box wagon came into use after about 1860 for loads of 6 to 8 long tons (6.7 to 9.0 short tons; 6.1 to 8.1 t) and was drawn by 16 to 18 bullocks. A bullock team was led by a pair of well-trained leaders who responded to verbal commands as they did not have reins or a bridle.[4] The bullock team driver was called a bullocky, bullock puncher, or teamster. Many Australian country towns owe their origin to the bullock teams, having grown from a store or shanty where teams rested or crossed a stream. These shanties were spaced at about 12-mile (19 km) intervals, which was the usual distance for a team to travel in a day.[5] Source: www.wikiwand.com/en/Ox-wagon

Romeo Watkins Lahey (1887-1968). Founding President (1930) of NPAQ, Engineer, Businessman, Timber merchant, Veteran of WW1 and WW2, Conservationist, National Parks Advocate, Founder of the ‘Save the Trees’ campaign in 1946. ‘In October 1915, he delivered a lecture to the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia Queensland Branch titled ‘Some reasons why national parks should be established in Queensland, with special reference to Lamington National Park’, and called for other large areas to be preserved as national parks as well as an extension of the state forest system. While enlisted in WW1 with the 11th Field Company Engineers AIF, Lahey continued to steer discussion about the park’s management, protection of all species, its access, and the naming of locations (he suggested Aboriginal words be used as placenames.’This year the lecture will be delivered by NPAQ Councillor, Steve Noakes who is also Chairperson of Binna Burra Lodge and also a member of the Tourism and Protected Areas Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and a member of the Royal Geographical Society of Queensland. Steve’s address will comment on key issues and themes from the past half-century of expert speakers who have delivered the Romeo Lahey Memorial Lecture and some of the major current issues facing Queensland’s national parks. The Lecture this year will also reflect on the end of another Lahey legacy. It comes some two years after the central heritage lodge and pioneer cabins at Binna Burra were destroyed at the early stages of the six months of the Black Summer Australian bushfires. The original building at Binna Burra was Leighton House built in Canungra in 1902 and owned by the Lahey family. In 1934 it was transported piece by piece on horseback up the track to Mt Roberts and remained at the Binna Burra Lodge reception and lounge until it was burnt down in the bushfires on Sunday 8 September 2019. The ‘Black Summer’ bushfires across Australia saw over half of the 366,500 total hectares of the Gondwana World Heritage forests destroyed or damaged. Source: npaq.org.au/rhl/