Clermont, Queensland

A quiet and attractive town on gentle slopes near the volcanic Peak Range. After gold was found in 1861, the area was inundated with prospectors and the township that sprang up became the first inland white settlement north of the Tropic of Capricorn. The town has managed to survive by servicing the local pastoral industry, but has also suffered the brutal force of nature on a number of occasions. Over the years, cyclonic floods have destroyed property, washed homes away and taken the lives of many townspeople.
Location: 106 km north of Emerald on the Gregory Highway; 760 km north of Brisbane.
Origin of name: named by surveyor Charles Frederick Gregory (1825-1870) in December 1863, as Oscar de Satge (1836-1906) pastoralist and politician, was at that time the lessee of the Wolfang pastoral run here. De Satge's family was associated with the town of Clermont-L'Herault in France.
Brief history: The first European through the area was Ludwig Leichhardt who, in 1845, sighted the mountain tops of the Peak Range, naming them after members of his expedition. Nine years later, Charles and Wiliam Archer explored the area in detail, recognised its potential as grazing land and made a land claim in 1856. Meantime Jeremiah Rolfe had become the first white settler. Some shepherds found gold at Hoods Lagoon in 1861. It was inundated with prospectors and the township that sprang up became the first inland white settlement north of the Tropic of Capricorn. A year later, copper was found to the south of the settlement. Both the copper and gold had run out by the 1890s but not before ugly racial riots between Chinese and European miners led to the Chinese being removed from the fields in 1888. In 1891, a Shearer's Strike spilled over into Clermont and 400 troops had to be called in to protect non-union labourers from striking shearers.
The town has managed to survive by servicing the local pastoral industry, but has also suffered the brutal force of nature on a number of occasions. Over the years, cyclonic floods have destroyed property, washed homes away and taken the lives of many townspeople.
Places of Interest: Peak Range (Wolfang Peak volcanic plug); Epping Forest National Park; Mazeppa National Park; Willandspey Environmental Park; St Mary's Roman Catholic Church (1890); Carinya homestead '(1912); Blair Athol Coal Mine; Clermont Museum; mining ruins of Copperfield (4 km south) and Miclere (31 km north)