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The sugar industry spurred Mossman's development. Two galvanized iron hotels were moved to Front Street from Craiglie in 1894, to become the Royal Hotel and Mossman Hotel, and the Queens Hotel was built in 1896. Mossman was linked to Port Douglas by a tramway in 1900 (sugar was shipped from Port Douglas from 1897 to 1958), and a tramway depot was located at the corner of Mill and Front Streets, near the Mossman Triangle. The town had five hotels by 1910, including the Exchange, Mossman, Royal, Post Office, and Queens. After the 1911 cyclone damaged buildings in both Mossman and Port Douglas, businesses and government buildings located at Port Douglas gravitated to Mossman. One of the early sugar suppliers to the Mossman Central Mill was Denis O'Brien, whose wife Teresa ran the first Exchange Hotel. O'Brien operated a hotel in Cooktown with Teresa from 1874, moved to Port Douglas in 1877, and opened the North Australian Hotel (now the Central Hotel). In 1893 O'Brien selected land near Mossman.[10] He grew sugar and was a director of the Mossman Central Mill, with his son Edward Joseph O'Brien (one of eight children) later serving as chairman of directors for many years. FW Buchanan built the first Exchange Hotel for the O'Brien's c. 1896, and Teresa O'Brien is listed in the 1897 Pugh's Almanac as running the Exchange Hotel in Mossman. In 1904 the eldest O'Brien daughter, Kate, married Daniel J Kirwan, who became the licensee of the hotel in 1905, the year Denis O'Brien died at his property "Finlayvale". The Exchange Hotel was originally one storey, but had a second storey by 16 March 1911 when a cyclone destroyed the upper floor. The hotel was repaired and continued to serve the town, despite being damaged again in a 1920 cyclone. Licensees of the hotel between 1914 and 1932 included EJ O'Brien, Sarah Ann Agnew, William Hyslop, Ellen Maud Petersen, Helena Norman McKenna, Teresa Nugent (nee O'Brien), and Ellen Constance O'Brien. Source: www.wikiwand.com/en/Exchange_Hotel,_Mossman#/History

Townsville’s former Customs House is located on the corner of Wickham Street and The Strand. Completed in 1902, the building was designed by George David Payne of the Government Architect’s Office in the Queensland Department of Public Works. Payne was a London-trained architect who had emigrated to Australia around 1887. Payne designed an impressive Romanesque-style building with a semi-circular corner entrance and low tower for shipping observation. The two-storey, L-shaped building was designed to suit the tropical climate with high ceilings and fanlights to maximise airflow and broad, colonnaded verandahs to provide shade for the interior rooms. Tenders for construction were called in early 1900 with the tender of £26,642 submitted by Brisbane contractors Messrs Crawford and Cameron being accepted in March 1900. The building was constructed of local bricks from the North Queensland Brick and Pottery Company and faced with granite quarried at Cockle Bay, Magnetic Island. The roof tiles were manufactured locally, and timbers sourced from throughout north Queensland, such as cedar and silky oak, were used internally. The ground floor plan included a circular entrance hall, a Long Room with a public counter and work area, general offices, storerooms, two safes, two small strong rooms, and a large office for the Sub-Collector of Customs. The upper floor was designed to house offices for the Deputy Registrar, Harbour Master, and Stamps and Titles offices. A large strong room with a fireproof door was located at the end of the Titles office. The Strand frontage contained two entrances for access by the public, while the Wickham Street elevation contained two private entrances. One private entrance was for the exclusive use of the Sub-Collector of Customs, while the other was for the use of boarding officers and tide waiters. Although intended as functional plans, Payne’s hand-coloured drawings are also visually very beautiful. Subtly different colours have been used to represent the different external building materials of granite, brick and stone. Interestingly, Payne’s signature does not appear on the plans. The only signature discernible on the Townsville Custom House plans are that of A.B. Brady, the Queensland Government Architect. Though Payne was obviously a talented architect, at this time he was just one of a number of draftsmen who worked for the Department of Public Works, so his drawings were signed by the senior officer, Brady. Source: jculibrarynews.blogspot.com/2020/05/50-treasures-townsvil...

Arthur Dixon, an official in the Union Bank, came to the region in 1868 from Yatala in South Australia. He purchased a block of scrubland on the Albert River from Captain Thomas Smales who had operated a ferry in the region in the 1860s but had moved to Cabbage Tree Point. Arthur Dixon named the property Yatala after his previous home in South Australia. In 1874 Arthur Dixon died and William Witty purchased the property. He continued to use the name Yatala for the plantation and sugar mill which he worked in conjunction with his existing plantation Yellowood. Yatala is located about three kilometers south of Beenleigh and, in the days of the large sugar plantations, was the mail and business center for the immediate area. In 1871, Thomas Hanlon built his hotel at Yatala on the coach route to Nerang and close to the wharf site used by local steamers traveling up and down the Albert River. In the same year, Yatala saw the formation of the Agricultural and Pastoral Society of Southern Queensland. Downstream from Yatala, on the Albert River, lies the Beenleigh Rum Distillery which was officially founded in 1884 and is Australia’s oldest registered distillery. By the early 20th century, the sugar plantations were cut up into smaller farming blocks and the village of Yatala, halfway between Brisbane and the Gold Coast, captured passing trade by offering amenities to travelers including a hotel, pie shop, and fish shop. In 1965, the Pacific Highway bypassed the area. Despite this change to the transport route and fluctuations in business activity, by the 1980s, Yatala had developed as a commercial and light industrial area Source: www.goldcoaststories.com.au/yatala/