If only Mr Bruce could see it today

Queenslanders might not think much of it, but Harry Bruce would be proud.

The man the highway is named after is largely forgotten by history, but Harry Bruce, the Queensland Works Minister in the Depression era, could not have entertained what his namesake would develop into when the Bruce Highway, then just a gravel track between Rothwell on the Redcliffe Peninsula and Eumundi on the Sunshine Coast, was officially opened on December 15, 1934.

As Sean O’keeffe writes in The Great North Coast Road: The Early Development of the Bruce Highway and features of its Cultural Landscape, it was the people of the Sunshine Coast rather than the state’s capital who got the road going.

O’keeffe says that by 1888, a weekly Brisbane steamer was bringing tourists to Caloundra for camping, fishing and shooting, and by 1908, Noosa was the favourite seaside resort of many “Gympie-ites as well as many residents of Brisbane”.

But by 1905, the Automobile Club of Queensland (the forerunner of the RACQ) was formed, and by 1910, the first cars were arriving in Nambour.

By 1927, the Maroochy branch of the RACQ was looking at private enterprise to fund a road as car registrations surged in the 1920s, and doubled from 8000 to 17,000 between 1921 and 1923 alone.

The Great North Coast Road Committee formed in July 1928, and was the driving force behind the Bruce Highway. After June 1932, when Labor’s William Forgan Smith won government and spent big on public works to alleviate Depression-era unemployment, that committee had secured Mr Bruce’s support.

By 1942, the highway was sealed between Rothwell and Eumundi, and service stations, roadside attractions and motels started to appear, creating their own cultural impact on a state that was starting to get on the move’.

Caravan parks followed in the 1950s as tourism boomed, and today the highway, for all its faults, extends all the way to Cairns.