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The countryside was infested with brigalow trees, as well as eucalyptus and yellow wood trees
(whose leaves were poisonous to cattle), and it was inundated by periodic floods. The worst
infestation was that of the prickly pear cactus that had spread like a plague over gjuch of
Queensland by 1900. It drove some graziers off their land and resisted all attempts at extinction.
By 1925, millions of acres of land were affected. But in that year a foreign caterpillar was found
that consumed the cactus, and the eggs and offspring of a South American moth called
cactoblastis cactorum were distributed in the infected areas. Within seven years the voracious
little caterpillars had eaten and destroyed all the prickly pear that had covered some 50 million
acres. The reclaimed land was ripe for development and cattle and horsemen once more ranged
at will.
The Big Bend country was first made available - 'proclaimed' - in 1854. Among the early
settlers who rode out with their bullock teams, horses, sheep or cattle to make their homes and
livelihoods in this wilderness were several Scottish families: the Archers, Beatties, Diamonds and
Grahams. Some were initially drawn to Queensland by the Canoona gold-rush in 1858, and
among the thousands of gold prospectors who came north to try their luck was the first known
owner of Honeycombe, a 28-year-old Scotsman, Peter McDonald.
His father, Alexander McDonald, a Scottish Highlander, had settled in New South Wales about
1824, farming at Campbelltown, southwest of Sydney. Peter, born in 1830, was the fourth of
12 children. When gold was found in 1851 at Ophis, Bathurst, Ballarat and Bendigo, he joined
the diggers for a year or so before becoming a farm manager near Geelong. The Canoona gold-
rush then brought him to Queensland, where apparently he struck very lucky indeed. For in
January 1861 he married Julia Ayrey back in Geelong and then began buying up various crown
lands west of Rockhampton as they came on the market. He based himself at a homestead
called Yaamba on a freehold property that he named Yemeappo. From there he rode out to
inspect and lease various properties, paying the Queensland government up to £27 a year for a
block of unstocked land 25 miles square. In 1862 he is said to have acquired 40 such leases,
including Junee, Coonee, Columbra, Fernlees (north of Springsure) and Honeycombe.
In his diary on 10 July 1862 he wrote: 'Paid note to Treasury enclosing £27-10-0 for
Honeycomb and Marinlia'. This included a £12-10-0 deposit for the 25 square miles of
Honeycomb(e) - although the official grant of the lease was not made until 1 January 1863.
Improvements were required by law to be made to every block. In 1863, although such
improvements cost Peter McDonald £300, the total worth of all his properties was some
£3,300. He was a very rich man before he reached the age of 34.
Another rich man in the neighbourhood, who lived very simply at Apis Creek, an outback
station east of Honeycombe and across the Mackenzie River, was a former bushranger, Frank
Gardiner.
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An ex-convict, his most famous exploit was the robbery of the gold escort at Eugowra, west of
Orange in New South Wales, in 1862. He and his gang got away with £14,000 in gold and
bank notes; two policemen were killed. Accompanied by the wife of a former friend - her name
was Kitty Brown - he headed north, and seeking some respite from pursuit, as well as some
obscurity and security, he opened a general store at Apis Creek under the name of Christie. It
prospered, and he acquired a local reputation of fair and honest dealing. But someone
eventually recognised Christie as the outlaw 'Darkie1 Gardiner. The police trapped and arrested
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