Central Queensland Territorial Separation League
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The Central Queensland Territorial Separation League was formed in Rockhampton in 1889 with the aim of agitating for separation of the Central Queensland region from the (then) colony of Queensland. The Separatists’ main complaints were the perceived under-representation of the Central region in the colonial Parliament, located in Brisbane, some 700 kilometres to the south of Rockhampton, and the use of Central Queensland taxes and finances to fund the Queensland Government.
Agitation for the division of Queensland into two or three smaller colonies had been a political question in the colony ever since Queensland separated from New South Wales in 1859. Earlier, unsuccessful, political movements for Central Queensland secession from Queensland had been launched in the 1860s and 1870s.
George Curtis (1845-1922), a prominent Rockhampton auctioneer and landholder, became the first president of the CQTSL and was elected to the Queensland Legislative Assembly (the lower house of the Queensland Parliament) in 1893 where he used his position to agitate for the aims of the CQTSL in Parliament.
The CQTSL’s campaign was ultimately unsuccessful. When the Australian colonies federated in 1901, the new nation’s Constitution placed the power to further divide colonies (or States as they now became) in the hands of the parent colony or state, with no avenue for referral to the British Government.
Further movements for the establishment of a new state in Central Queensland, with Rockhampton as the capital, occurred in the 1950s.
