Hughenden A Potted History
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elcome to the Hughenden region, with over 41,000 km² of diverse landscapes and history dating back over 100 million years.
Station was later sold to Ernest Henry’s cousin Robert Gray in 1865 for £4,999. Gray stocked Hughenden Station with 3,000 sheep.
Explorers William Landsborough and Frederick Walker were the first to lay their eyes on the vast open grassland downs to the south and the harsh basalt country north of Hughenden. These explorers were on a rescue mission for the ill-fated Burke and Wills. Reports from Landsborough’s journal sparked much interest in the rolling grasslands that seemed to go on forever.
Mrs Gray, who came to live on the property, was the first European woman on the Flinders River.
A blazed historical coolabah tree stands proud as a testimony to the discovery of this region by these two famous explorers.
By the following year, a store, a blacksmith and a butcher shop joined the hotel. After 1887, Hughenden began to grow again, as it became an important railhead for the Great Northern Railway.
First settlement was on Hughenden Station by Ernest Henry in 1863, so named from the Tudor Manor house of his grandfather in Buckinghamshire, England. Hughenden
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FLINDERS SHIRE GUIDE
The establishment of the township of Hughenden itself did not take place until 1876. In that year, Robert Gray allowed a friend by the name of William Mark to build a hotel to cater for the travellers passing through to the Cloncurry mining area.
Settlement on the banks of the Flinders River, Queensland’s longest river, would have been a feat in itself. The river, which flows into the Gulf
