A Short History of Australia by Ernest Scott

Settlement at Moreton Bay--Its abandonment--The Gladstone Colony at Port Curtis--Separation of Queensland from New South Wales--The new colony proclaimed--Its boundaries--Bowen's governorship.

The first settlement at Moreton Bay was founded in September 1824, under the command of Lieutenant Murray of the 40th (South Lancashire) regiment, principally as a place of punishment for convicts who had committed offences after transportation to Australia. But Governor Brisbane also had in view the preparation of the country by convict labour for habitation by a farming class. The establishment of penal depots at points favourable to cultivation was, he considered, 'the best way of paving the way for free populations.' The rough labour of clearing and of making highways would thus be done at little cost. It is hardly doubtful, however, that from the point of view of pioneer development the experiment was expensive out of proportion to the beneficent results obtained from it. The convicts did clear the site of Brisbane town, where the Quaker philanthropists Backhouse and Walker, who visited the penal settlements in 1836, found 'some fine cleared and cultivated land on the south bank' of the river.