Surat

History

Mandandanji (also known as Mandandanyi, Mandandanjdji, Kogai) is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken by the Mandandanji people. The Mandandanji language region includes the landscape within the local government boundaries of the Maranoa Regional Council, particularly Roma, Yuleba and Surat, then east towards Chinchilla and south-west towards Mitchell and St George. The first documented British exploration of the area was the expedition led by New South Wales Surveyor-General Sir Thomas Mitchell in 1846. Pastoralist squatters soon followed in 1848 with Joseph Fleming establishing the Talavera station and Thomas Simpson Hall forming the Surat, Colgoon, Weribone and Yamboucal stations along the upper Balonne River. Hall and Fleming faced considerable resistance from the local Mandandanji to their occupation of the land, and had to maintain a force of twelve armed men against the "native blacks". Fleming, who was the brother of John Henry Fleming, the main instigator of the Myall Creek massacre, named his property Talavera (a famous battle of the Peninsular War) due to his battles with the Aborigines there. It is unknown why Hall called one of his properties Surat but it was possibly named after the city of Surat in India. Due to patrols of the Native Police, local Aboriginal resistance had ceased by 1852. Thomas Davis, the father of Steele Rudd the writer, lived in Surat in the early 1850s and recalled the fearful and unjustified slaughter of Aboriginal people resulting from these patrols, even though he actively participated in some of them. One of the last mass-killings in the vicinity occurred a kilometre downstream from Surat in May 1852, where a massacre of peaceful Aboriginal workers on Hall's Yamboucal station was perpetrated by Native Police troopers led…

Geography

The town of Surat is on the Balonne River, approximately south of Roma on the Carnarvon Highway in South West Queensland. It is west of Brisbane. There are oil fields further south. Surat has a humid subtropical climate bordering on a subtropical semi-arid climate (Köppen: Cfa/BSh) with hot, wetter summers and quite mild, drier winters. The town is sunny, with 159.0 clear days and 62.9 cloudy days per annum. The wettest recorded day was 2 May 2010 with of rainfall. Extreme temperatures ranged from on 3 January 2014 to on 29 May 1987.

Most-observed species

• Magpie-lark

  Grallina cyanoleuca (Latham, 1802) · Aves
  80
• Noisy Miner

  Manorina melanocephala (Latham, 1801) · Aves
  75
• Sulphur-crested Cockatoo

  Cacatua galerita (Latham, 1790) · Aves
  67
• Torresian Crow

  Corvus orru Bonaparte, 1850 · Aves
  67
• Willie-wagtail

  Rhipidura leucophrys (Latham, 1802) · Aves
  63
• Whistling Kite

  Haliastur sphenurus (Vieillot, 1818) · Aves
  59
• Apostlebird

  Struthidea cinerea Gould, 1837 · Aves
  58
• Crested Pigeon

  Ocyphaps lophotes (Temminck, 1822) · Aves
  56