Bowen, Queensland
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Bowen is a town and Local Government Area on the eastern coast of Queensland, Australia.
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Geography
Bowen is located on the north-east coast of Australia, at exactly twenty degrees south of the equator. In fact, the twentieth parallel crosses the main street. Bowen is halfway between Townsville and Mackay, and 1,130 kilometres by road from Brisbane. (To give an idea of the scale of the state of Queensland, Canberra is closer to Brisbane than Bowen is, and Melbourne is closer to Brisbane than Cairns is).
The town of Bowen sits on a square peninsula, with ocean to the north, east, and south. On the western side, where the peninsula connects with the mainland, the Don River's alluvial plain provides fertile soil that supports a prosperous farming industry.
View from Flagstaff Hill
The surrounding Bowen Shire covers an area of 21,085 square kilometres and includes the principal towns of Bowen and Collinsville, plus the smaller townships of Mount Coolon, Scottville, Heronvale, Merinda, Gumlu, and Guthalungra. The Bowen Shire is bounded by Wangaratta Creek to the North, Greta Creek to the South and the Inland Highway in the West. The Shires of Burdekin, Dalrymple, Belyando, Nebo, Mirani, Mackay and Whitsunday all border the Shire of Bowen.
Weather
The town of Bowen is in the dry tropics. This means it has all the warm sunny weather of a tropical climate, but it's much dryer than one would expect for tropical beaches overlooking the Great Barrier Reef. This is why Bowen is home to the Dry Tropics Research Centre.
At Bowen's latitude, the Trade Winds provide a pleasant breeze. In summer the hottest part of the day is usually about 9am and then the wind kicks in and keeps you cool. It's not unusual in summer for Bowen to be a good ten degrees cooler than Brisbane, which is a thousand kilometres closer to the south pole.
The warmest month is January, with an average maximum temperature of 31 degrees Celsius (88 degrees Fahrenheit). The coolest month is July, with an average maximum temperature of 25 degrees Celsius (77 degrees Fahrenheit) and an average overnight minimum of 14 degrees Celsius (57 degrees Fahrenheit).
Demographics
The Bowen Shire as a whole has a population of 12,518 (2001 Census). There are approximately 9,000 people in Bowen and 2,000 living in Collinsville and Scotsville.
Economy
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The Big Mango
Bowen enjoys a diversified and prosperous economy based on agriculture, fishing, tourism, and mining. For several winter months, Bowen supplies about 75% of Australia's tomatoes. The tastiest mango in Australia is the variety known as the Kensington Pride, which is popularly called the Bowen Special mango. Bowen's unusually dry climate for a tropical location, plus its fertile alluvial soil, makes it the ideal place to grow a wide variety of small crops, including tomatoes, rockmelons (i.e., cantaloupes), and capsicums (i.e., green peppers). Outside the alluvial plain, much of the Bowen Shire is used for beef cattle.
Bowen is Australia's largest exporter of live tropical fish for the restaurants of Asia. If you walk into an upscale restaurant in Tokyo or Hong Kong and spot a tank full of large reef fish, there's a good chance it came from Bowen.
Just north of Bowen is the Abbot Point coal loading port. Coal mined inland of Bowen in Collinsville and other towns in the Bowen Basin is brought by rail to a deepwater pier to be loaded on bulk carriers. Coal is exported mainly to Europe and Japan.
Bowen also has an evaporative salt producing facility. That is, it uses only seawater and sunlight to make salt, without burning fossil fuels. This is only possible because of its dry tropical climate. Most of the table salt used in Australia comes from Bowen.
Government
The Bowen Shire's local government consists of a popularly elected Mayor, and a Shire Council consisting of eight councillors. The Shire is divided into three wards (for Bowen, Queens Beach, and Collinsville). Bowen and Queens Beach each elect three councillors and Collinsville elects two.
Bowen's current Mayor is Michael R. "Mike" Brunker.
History
Bowen was founded on the same day the American Civil War began, 12 April 1861. At 4.30am in Charleston, South Carolina, when the Civil War's first shots were fired at Fort Sumter, it was 1.30pm in Bowen and the settlers were just finishing lunch after proclaiming the new town.
Bowen is Queensland's oldest town north of Rockhampton. It was founded before Townsville, Mackay or Charters Towers and has a colourful past.
Captain James Cook named Cape Gloucester on his epic voyage of exploration up the Australian coast in 1770. This "cape" turned out to be an island, and Gloucester Island dominates the view from Bowen's eastern beaches. Behind the island is a bay that forms an excellent port, which the town came to be built around. This bay was eventually discovered in 1859 by Captain Henry Daniel Sinclair, in response to a reward offered by the colony of New South Wales for finding a port somewhere north of Rockhampton. Sinclair named Port Denison after the colonial governor of New South Wales.
Two years later, Sinclair led one group of settlers by sea, and George Elphinstone Dalrymple led another party overland from Rockhampton. They met on 11 April 1861 at Port Denison and founded the town of Bowen on the next day, 12 April 1861, the same day the American Civil War began. By this time, the separate colony of Queensland had been established, and the town was named after Queensland's first colonial governor, Sir George Ferguson Bowen.
Incidentally, the separation of Queensland from New South Wales meant that Sinclair never did claim the reward for discovering the port. The NSW authorities said it was no longer their concern, and the new Queensland administration had never offered any reward and wasn't going to pay for someone else's promises. So Sinclair went back north to seek his fortune in the town he had helped to create.
Two years later in 1863, the new settlers discovered a sailor, James Morril, who had been shipwrecked 17 years previously just to the north of Bowen. Morril made his home in the new town, and his grave is still to be seen in the Bowen cemetery.
Bowen's subsequent history is too event-filled to adequately describe here, but suffice it to say that grew into a bustling port and farming community. The coral reefs around Bowen have several shipwrecks, including the "Gothenburg" which sank in 1875 with a loss of more than 100 lives. Numerous relics of Bowen's history, from the Aboriginal past onwards, are on display at the Bowen Historical Society's museum.
During World War 2 Bowen hosted an air force base, flying PBY Catalina flying boats to search for enemy ships and submarines. Bowen was bombed by carrier-launched aircraft in 1942. A museum at the local airport has displays of the wartime events in Bowen, and includes the largest ship model in Australia.
Events
Horseshoe Bay
From 27 December 2003 to 7 January 2004 Bowen hosted the Australian National Sabot Championship.
Annual events include the following:
- May - Collinsvile Catfish Classic
- June - Gumlu Capsicum Festival
- June - Bowen Annual Show
- July - Bowen Multicultural Festival
- September - Bowen Family Fishing Classic
Tourism
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Kings Beach
Bowen is on a peninsula, with ocean on three sides. This gives eight beaches surrounding the town, namely Kings Beach, Queens Beach, Horseshoe Bay, Murrays Bay, Greys Bay, Rose Bay, and the Front Beach. There is also the clothing-optional Coral Bay.
These are all very different in character. Kings Beach and Queens Beach are very long beaches, so long that if you stand on one end of Queens Beach the other end is over the horizon. Kings Beach has a magnificent view of nearby Gloucester Island, and is so pristine that if you go there, you're likely to be the only people you see there. Horseshoe Bay is a magnificent beach with the whole coconut tree tropical paradise ambience. Murrays Bay is even more of a coconut tree paradise, if you can find it. There is a walking track along the hills between Rose Bay, Murrays Bay, and Horseshoe Bay. There is fringing coral reef offshore of those three as well as Coral Bay, which is a clothes-optional beach.
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Queens Beach
If you're driving along the Bruce Highway along the Queensland coast, you have to come off the highway and into the town to get to the beaches. You know you're near Bowen when you pass the Big Mango.
For up-to-date information, please see the Bowen Tourism website in the external links section below.
Entertainment
Bowen boasts a cinema, the Summergarden Twin Theatre, and a nightclub (the Opera) plus eleven pubs. It also offers four motels and seven caravan parks. There is also an excellent golf course that overlooks Queens Beach.
Colleges and universities
Bowen hosts the Barrier Reef Institute of TAFE. A two-hour drive to the north takes you to Townsville's James Cook University. A two-hour drive to the south takes you to the Mackay campus of Central Queensland University.
Sister cities
Bowen has a sister city in Japan, Oseto-cho in Nagasaki Prefecture.
External links
- http://www.bowentourism.com.au/
- http://www.bowen.qld.gov.au
- http://www.walkabout.com.au/fairfax/locations/QLDBowen.shtml
- http://www.barrierreef.tafe.net
- http://www.bowenshs.qld.edu.au/
- http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/rlq/4791.html
- http://www.bowenss.qld.edu.au/bowen_history.htm
- http://www.darwen.org/
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