Introduction

We have just emerged from over two years of intense activity to self-publish our Townsville’s history and heritage book. The book is called A Glimpse of Townsville History and Heritage (see below for details). We have also self-published a separate photobook called Townsville Heritage – Through a Lens.

The journey

This journey commenced in 2015 when we drove from Maroochydore to Townsville to support my parents. We adopted a theme of taking photographs of heritage-listed buildings as we drive up the coast. This trip identified Gympie, Maryborough, Rockhampton and Townsville as the towns with the best heritage-listed buildings. The result of this trip was our eBook entitled Queensland Coastal Towns – A Road Trip.

At this time, we were focussing on international travel and had produced small travel eBooks about Barcelona, Istanbul, Bucharest, Budapest, and The Isle of Skye. Further trips were planned to Prague (2016) (eBook) (Print) and Athens (2018) which also resulted in small travel eBooks. Our next trip was going to be to the UK and Cornwall in particular, but you guessed it – COVID19 intervened and shut down international travel.

Consequently, we shifted our focus to home, and the heritage-listed buildings of Gympie (2021), Maryborough (2022), and Townsville (2024), Rockhampton is next!

Focus on Townsville History and Heritage

Our focus on Townsville history and heritage intensified in 2022, 2023 and the first half of 2024. We visited Townsville for at least two weeks in each of these years taking photographs around town and researching in the town library. These activities were supported by visits to the State Library of Queensland on at least six occasions.

As with each of our history and heritage books, the core has been the heritage-listed buildings listed in the Queensland Heritage Register with its details regarding each building. Significantly, it has invaluable accounts of the history associated with each building and the town. This information provides a starting point for our research.

It is an intensive process that requires focus to self-publish a book.

Our Townsville history and heritage books

As mentioned above our self-published books about Townsville are:

  1. A Glimpse of Townsville History and Heritage.
    Further details can be found on our website – Townsville History and Heritage. There are two versions of this book: A Standard Colour Version and an Economy Colour Version which can be purchased at Blurb by clicking the following links: The Standard version and the Economy version.
  2. Townsville Heritage – Through a Lens (A Photobook)
    Further details can be found on our website – Townsville History and Heritage. At present there is only a Standard Colour version available for purchase at Blurb: The Standard Colour Version.
  3. It should be noted that there are PDF versions available for each of these books. These are shown in each of the purchase links above.

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