Crossword-Solution: BUNDABERG 9 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 15

The explorations which he had hitherto accomplished were sufficient to convince Hunter that he had under him an officer from whom good work could be expected, and, the Reliance not being required for service, he readily acquiesced when Flinders proposed that he should take the Norfolk northward, to Moreton Bay, the "Glasshouse Bay" of Cook, and Hervey Bay, east of Bundaberg.

There were certainly other towns in the north of Queensland--Mackay for instance--which enjoyed the advantage of being nearer the capital, and so obtaining more consideration from the Treasury; but Bowen, although six hundred miles from Brisbane, was the most thriving town in the north, and affected a haughty indifference to her rivals for supremacy, such as the “sugar” growing towns of Bundaberg and Mackay to the south, and the vulgar, upstart, and newly-founded Townsville to the north.

According to official figures, the number of islanders in Queensland increased in 1895 from 7,853 to 8,163, of whom nearly two-thirds are in the districts of Mackay and Bundaberg; all are employed on the cultivation of sugar, with the exception of a few at Thursday Island, who are engaged in the bêche-de-mer and pearl-shell fisheries.

There are also the thriving little towns of Bundaberg, at the mouth of the Burnett river, the outlet for a rich tract of agricultural land, and Gladstone, a few miles to the south of the mouth of the Fitzroy.

Rockhampton was then the most northerly port of entry; the site of the present town of Bundaberg was virgin forest, the entrance to the Burnett River from Hervey Bay being as yet unknown; Mackay, Bowen, Townsville, Ingham, Geraldton, Cairns, Port Douglas, Cooktown, and the Thursday Island settlement were non-existent; and of the coast waters beyond Keppel Bay little more was known than the narratives of Captain Cook and Lieutenant Flinders at the close of the eighteenth century disclosed.