Cover image courtesy of Wikipedia
The Queensland Day S. is comparatively new to Australian racing, first run in 2007 and won by Reigning To Win (King Of Kings {Ire}). In fact, the race should hark back to the year 1859, which played host to the event that it now commemorates.
The Queensland Day S. is named after Queensland Day, which occurs each year on June 6. The date marks the occasion when Queensland officially separated from the colony of New South Wales, or, officially, the date in 1859 when Queen Victoria signed the Letters Patent, formally declaring the new colony.
At the time, the states of Australia were known as ‘colonies’, and the new border between New South Wales and Queensland, which had caused much discontent, was agreed at 28 degrees south, being the circle of latitude that is 28 degrees south of the equator.
While June 6 is upheld as the date on which Queensland was excised, it wasn’t actually legal until December 10, 1859, when the Letters Patent were published in the very first edition of the Queensland Government Gazette. On that date, the proclamation was read at Adelaide House, Queensland’s first Government House and now The Deanery on Ann Street, Brisbane.
The first edition of the Queensland Government Gazette, publishing the Letters Patent that made Queensland's separation from New South Wales legal in December 1859
Gossip was rich around Australia’s other colonies about how Queensland would fare on its own. One of the hot takes was that the new colony was so sparsely populated that it couldn’t possibly sustain itself, that Queensland, ‘possessed of a population not exceeding 25,000 inhabitants, could not be, in the first place, capable of self-government’.
But even the smallness of the population wasn’t the issue. It was Queensland’s vastness that was the problem.
‘Its laws will have to rule men living in unapproachable deserts. Its police will require to be as numerous as that of New South Wales if it is to reach the remote and widely diffused population. Of course, the thing is impossible.’
Queensland's first Government House on Ann Street, now The Deanery in downtown Brisbane | Image courtesy of Wikipedia
Except that it wasn’t. With its population of 5000, the new colony of Queensland spread out its bounties from Brisbane and it thrived.
It didn’t prove a folly ‘to have given to 25,000 people a territory so vast’, and predictions of needing to fill that territory didn’t come to pass. Much of it was grazed or planted, until Queensland became a vital production cog in the Australian wheel.
Queensland was a self-governing colony from 1859 until 1901, after which it became one of the six founding states of Australia on January 1, 1901. Queensland Day has been officially celebrated in the state since 1981, and it took a further 26 years for its stakes race to appear on the racing calendar.
The Proclamation of Queensland from December 1859 | Image courtesy of the State Library of Queensland
At first, the Queensland Day S. was a Listed event over 1400 metres, but since 2014, it has been run over 1200 metres. It honours probably the key moment above all key moments in the history of settled Queensland.
