Around the middle of 2012, I set out to write something about The North.
Since then, a great deal of water has flowed under several bridges.
After many twists and turns, that vague and undefined ambition has coalesced into four main strands accompanied by a tranche of reference material.
While I have called it The North, and there is some overlap across the border into the Northern Territory, the subject under discussion is Queensland's northern half.
It started as an attempt to get a handle on The North, as I have known it. But I can't make sense of the past sixty-odd years without considering the hundred-and-sixty-odd years of the region's migaloo history.
And that doesn't make sense without some understanding of the physical and human environment the people who came here after April 1861 encountered.
Those who arrived in The North brought their historical baggage with them.
Their experiences were shaped by an environment that had, in turn, been shaped by those who came before them.
Those First People encountered a physical and natural landscape formed over aeons.
So, faced with questions about where the story starts, it seemed logical to go back to the beginning and work forward.
