Normanton misses out

WITH the end of the month of August fast approaching, it would appear that Normanton has missed out on the publicity for a very special event – its Sesquicentennial Celebrations.

Normanton, the most well-known of our “Gulf towns” and the home of the world famous Gulflander rail motor, was proclaimed in August 1868 – 150 years ago.

Settlement on the site, on the banks of the Norman River, had begun some 12 months earlier when settlers chose the spot in preference to Burketown (established in 1866) upon the Albert River, a place that had instances of outbreaks of exotic diseases – cholera and typhoid etc.

Normanton initially provided access and supplies to the very large grazing properties in the Gulf area. Later it became a port for the export of copper ore from the mines at Cloncurry and even, some 20 years later, as a facility servicing the needs of the Croydon Goldfields.

Much of the town is now heritage listed and a ride on the Gulflander, on its weekly journey between Croydon and Normanton, is a tourists’ delight. John Walters, Whitfield 1833: British Parliament bans slavery

throughout the British Empire. 1910: Montenegro is proclaimed an

independent kingdom under Nicholas I. 1917: Ten suffragists are arrested as they picket the US White House1985: Launch of Aussat, Australia’s first domestic communications satellite. 1996: The 1981 marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, launched amid pomp and pageantry, ends with a rubber-stamp divorce. 1999: A space capsule bearing the last full-time crew to inhabit Russia’s ageing Mir space station lands safely on the Kazakh Steppe. BIRTHDAYS: Shania Twain (above), US singer (1965-); Jason Priestley, US actor (1969-).