The Leap is a coastal rural
locality
Locality may refer to:
* Locality (association), an association of community regeneration organizations in England
* Locality (linguistics)
* Locality (settlement)
* Suburbs and localities (Australia), in which a locality is a geographic subdivis ...
in the
Mackay Region
The Mackay Region is a local government area located in North Queensland, Queensland, Australia. Established in 2008, it was preceded by three previous local government areas with modern histories extending back as far as 1869.
It has an estima ...
,
Queensland
)
, nickname = Sunshine State
, image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = Australia
, established_title = Before federation
, established_ ...
, Australia.
In the The Leap had a population of 642 people.
Geography
The locality is bounded to the north-west by Constant Creek and to the north by its mouth () into the Coral Sea
The Coral Sea () is a marginal sea of the South Pacific off the northeast coast of Australia, and classified as an interim Australian bioregion. The Coral Sea extends down the Australian northeast coast. Most of it is protected by the Fre ...
. Sand Bay is offshore ().Bruce Highway
The Bruce Highway is a major highway in Queensland, Australia. Commencing in the state capital, Brisbane, it passes through areas close to the eastern coast on its way to Cairns in Far North Queensland. The route is part of the Australian Na ...
enters the locality from the south-east ( Farleigh) and exits to the south-west ( Hampden). The North Coast railway line follows a similar route to the north of the highway but there are no railway stations on that line serving the locality.cane tramways
The rail network in Queensland, Australia, was the first in the world to adopt narrow gauge for a main line, and now the second largest narrow gauge network in the world, consists of:
*the North Coast Line (NCL) extending from Brisbane to R ...
in the locality to transport the harvested sugarcane to the sugar mill for processing.
History
The Leap is named for a historical event in which it is widely believed an Aboriginal woman carrying her three-year-old child leapt off a cliff to evade capture by the Queensland Native Police in the 1860s.
An estimate of approximately 200 Aboriginal men, women and children are believed to have resided in the Mandarana area at the beginning of the white settlement advancing on the area with pastoral leases north of the Pioneer River.
The North Coast railway line reached The Leap in 1924 with the area being served by the following now-abandoned stations (from south to north):
* Wundaru railway station ()Queensland Government
The Queensland Government is the democratic administrative authority of the Australian state of Queensland. The Government of Queensland, a parliamentary constitutional monarchy was formed in 1859 as prescribed in its Constitution, as amended fr ...
did not find the claims to be proven and decided in 1988 to sell the land and kept the proceeds.
Heritage listings
The Leap has a number of heritage-listed
This list is of heritage registers, inventories of cultural properties, natural and man-made, tangible and intangible, movable and immovable, that are deemed to be of sufficient heritage value to be separately identified and recorded. In many ...
sites, including:
* Bruce Highway (): The Leap Cane Lift
Attractions
A sculpture representing Koweha, holding a shawl, was erected outside a local hotel in the area, circa 1980s.
References
Further reading
*
*
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Mackay Region
Coastline of Queensland
Localities in Queensland