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It might have seemed a canny investment at the time, but what was prime waterfront land in the town of Yaamba 160 years ago now lies at the bottom of the Fitzroy River.
Key points:
- Livingstone Shire Council has written off unpaid rates for the riverbed blocks after failing to find any descendants
- They are an example of what Australian town planners call "the ghosts of planning"
- Sections of their street were subsumed over the past 160 years as the river changed course
Back in 1858, Rockhampton businessman Edmund Henriques was among those who snapped up one of these four blocks in Bourke Street, Yaamba, 40 kilometres north of Rockhampton.
In recent decades, despite being fully submerged, the blocks have been valued at up to $2,500 by Livingstone Shire Council.
At a meeting last month, council wrote off $77,500 in unpaid rates for the riverbed blocks after failing to find any descendants, or "beneficiaries", of Mr Henriques and other investors – despite considerable investigation.
The Yaamba land is an example of what Australian town planners call "the ghosts of planning".
A paper delivered to the Planning Institute of Australia said these are "invisible towns and subdivisions across the nation which never realised the ambitious plans laid down by a hopeful government or entrepreneur".
While such lots are registered at the titles office, there are no constructed roads, services, buildings or fences, and often no survey pegs.
Planners refer to these places as historic lots, historical subdivisions or paper subdivisions.
In Yaamba's case, the 1858 town plan included about 500 lots that failed to meet expectations of a development boom, with most streets left vacant and largely forgotten — until now.
Secrets submerged
Longtime Livingstone resident Glenda Mather, a shire councillor, said sections of Bourke Street had been subsumed over the past 160 years as the river changed course and at least a dozen major floods came and went.
She said a review by council officers into long-term outstanding debts identified a hopeless situation for the four lots.
"Mother Nature has no mercy," Cr Mather said as she looked out over the submerged land during a visit to the town.
"No doubt the officers looked at the sensible approach and the council agreed to the recommendation that we forgive the rates and wipe it off."
Rockhampton District historian John Fletcher said Yaamba had been an important pioneering settlement in the 1800s.
"It was a major centre because it was the main crossing over the Fitzroy River on the road north and there was no bridge over the river in Rockhampton until 1881," he said.
"They used to swim the horses over and float the drays [large transport carts]."
Yaamba's strategic importance grew in the 1920s with the construction of a pumping station that supplied fresh water to Rockhampton.
The pumping station was replaced by a larger water treatment plant in 1971.
The town's population has since dwindled to about 50, and the impressive pump building stands abandoned as a relic of the town's place in the region's history.
Mr Fletcher said Central Queensland was "dotted with ambitious plans for pioneering towns that never amounted to much or were now abandoned".
He said Princhester, another 40km up the Bruce Highway from Yaamba, was one of those ghost towns.
The first town lots in Princhester were sold in June 1862 but the town gradually faded away despite a few minor gold rushes there in the late 1800s.
A newspaper report from 1883 said the gold was found just below Princhester Station on the north bank of the creek near Dead Man's Hill, named after an unknown traveller died there in 1879 and was buried on the spot by a Constable Clements of the Marlborough police.
About 40 prospectors descended on the town but found little gold, with the paper's correspondent speculating that there might soon be "a rush back to town".
Mr Fletcher said there was a "swag" of undeveloped ghost towns around the Rockhampton district, as well as west on the Dawson Highway in the Banana Shire.
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