Blighted Paradise: Colonial Visions of Northern Australia will be a key event in the 2001 Centenary of Federation celebrations, which mark the hundredth anniversary of Australian nationhood. Drawing on public and private collections in Australia and Europe, this exhibition will give visitors to the Rockhampton Art Gallery for the first time a comprehensive pictorial history, from 1770 to 1914, of life in northern Australia, a vast region stretching north of the Tropic of Capricorn across Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland.

The exhibition will be on display at The Rockhampton Art Gallery from 12 October 2001 to 25 November 2001.

The exhibition will trace the paths of early explorers of the 18th and 19th centuries in northern Australia -- from the famed navigator and explorer, Captain James Cook, who in 1770 landed at Endeavour Bay and on Possession Island, to Matthew Flinders (1802), Edmund Kennedy (1848) and A.C. Gregory (1855-56). Through a selection of coastal profiles, landscapes, seascapes, botanical and zoological illustrations as well as pictures of people and events, the exhibition will also examine other European travellers' and settlers' responses to the new tropical land.

Works of art on display will range from pencil sketches and watercolours completed on location in northern Australia to major oil paintings (executed, in some cases, upon the artist's return to Europe). Featured artists include William Westall, Ferdinand Bauer, Sydney Parkinson, Thomas Baines, Richard Beechey, Oswald Brierly, Isaacs Walter Jenner, Phillip Parker King, Ellis Rowan and Owen Stanley.

Organisation: This exhibition is organised by the Rockhampton Art Gallery, Queensland. Lisa Loader is the exhibition curator.

Rockhampton (population 65,900): Gold nuggets built her, beef cattle feed her, countless painters and potters have been attracted by her charms. About 40 km inland from the Capricorn Coast and with Queensland's largest river, the Fitzroy, winding through her heart, she sits astride the Tropic of Capricorn on a flat plain, flanked by the rugged Berserker Range with its spectacular limestone caves. One of Australia's most charming tropical cities, Rockhampton, with its many fine Victorian-era buildings offers a feast of architectural delights. Among the historic buildings, in the city centre, and gracefully lining Quay Street on the southern bank of the river, are the copper-domed Customs House and colonnaded Cattle House, built when the city was the prosperous hub of the central Queensland gold rushes for 30 years.

The city's other attractions include an Aboriginal cultural centre, excellent parks and gardens, Archer Park Railway Station (an engaging railway history museum) and the Rockhampton Art Gallery. The art gallery has a fine Australian art collection, which includes striking paintings by such famed artists as Arthur Boyd, Russell Drysdale and Sidney Nolan, depicting portraits of strong individuals, landscapes and imaginative, figurative and abstract subjects. These images, with their combination of the visionary and the realistic, suit a city, and its central Queensland region, used to being a leader in the beef cattle industry, mining, education and other fields.

Rockhampton proclaims itself the "beef capital" of Australia -- it's said there are more than two million cattle within a 250-km radius of the city -- and large statues of Brahman, Braford and Santa Gertrudis bulls mark the northern and southern approaches to the city. As you'd expect, the city's eateries serve some of the best steaks you'll come across.

Rockhampton was established as a river trading port in 1853 by the Archer brothers, the first white settlers in the region. The port's growth was boosted by a minor gold rush at Canoona in 1858, but the real boom began with the discovery of rich gold and copper deposits at nearby Mt Morgan in 1882. Rockhampton soon developed as the major trading and administrative centre for the central Queensland region.

The historic, heritage-listed town of Mt Morgan is 38 km south-west of Rochampton on the Burnett Highway. It offers a number of well-preserved turn-of-the-century buildings, an interesting historic museum and a tour of the former mine site.

Yeppoon is a relaxed beach township 43 km north-east of Rockhampton. It's the main centre on the Capricorn Coast. Heading north from the seaside town, there are state forest parks and one national park in the hinterland, and eight km north of Yeppoon on the coast, is the Capricorn International Resort. Heading south seven km, boats to Great Keppel Island leave from Rosslyn Bay.

Great Keppel Island is 13 km off shore and is a popular destination for day trips, offering white, sandy beaches, good snorkelling, an underwater observatory, and a number of bushwalking tracks.