QueenslandThe Greatest Hits

We may as well start with the one that backfired. In 1935, 102 cane toads were let go in the cane fields near Cairns to eat the beetle wrecking the sugar crop. The toads ignored the beetle, bred like mad, and hopped their way across the north. Queensland's most infamous export, and a permanent lesson in unintended consequences.

Two delicious foods started here. The lamington was reportedly the work of the chef to Lord Lamington, Governor of Queensland around 1900, who dipped leftover sponge in chocolate and coconut. The macadamia is a Queensland rainforest tree and the only native Australian plant ever turned into a commercial food crop sold around the globe. Add XXXX, Bundy rum and Ginger Beer and you have a full Queensland fridge.

Banjo Paterson wrote the words at Dagworth Station near Winton in 1895, and the song had its first public airing at the North Gregory Hotel in town. Australia's unofficial national anthem is a Queensland number through and through.

The Reverend John Flynn's dream of a “mantle of safety” over the outback birth the first Flying Doctor flight from Cloncurry in 1928. A century on, the RFDS is still the reason a station hand 800 kilometres from anywhere can get a doctor in a life threatening emergency.

The national carrier was born in the bush. Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services started up in 1920 with its first home in Winton, then Longreach. The Q stands for Queensland. The Qantas Founders Museum at Longreach reminds people of its roots.

The Bundaberg boy known as “Hustling Hinkler” flew solo from England to Australia in 1928, a feat people had said was impossible, in a tiny Avro Avian. He cut the previous record in half. Bundaberg has a museum and still keeps his house, shipped brick by brick from England as momument to Bunderberg's most famous son.

Professor Ian Frazer and his team at the University of Queensland did the work behind the HPV vaccine, the world's first vaccine designed to prevent a cancer. A Queensland lab has spared millions of women from cervical cancer. Few inventions save so many lives.

Before the white suits and the falsetto, Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb were three kids who emigrated to Redcliffe in 1958 and started singing at the local showgrounds. The Bee Gees went on to sell more than 100 million records, and Redcliffe has built the Bee Gees Way to remind everyone where they originated.

Toowoomba gave the world Geoffrey Rush, who won an Oscar for Shine. The Gold Coast gave it Margot Robbie, plus a film industry that has shot Thor, Aquaman and the Pirates of the Caribbean on Queensland sound stages and beaches. Hollywood on the Gold Coast.

Greg Norman, the Great White Shark, came out of Mount Isa to spend 331 weeks ranked world number one. Karrie Webb of Ayr became one of the greatest women golfers ever. And in 2022 Brisbane's Cameron Smith won the Open at St Andrews, the oldest prize in the game. Three Queenslanders, the top of the golfing world.

Susie O'Neill of Mackay, “Madame Butterfly,” ruled the pool through the 1990s. Anna Meares of Blackwater became a queen of the velodrome. Brisbane hosted the 1982 Commonwealth Games and gave us Matilda the winking kangaroo, the Gold Coast followed in 2018, and the Olympics is still to come.

Before he conquered Celtic and Tottenham, Ange Postecoglou built something beautiful in Brisbane. His Roar played a slick, possession-obsessed style the fans christened “Roarcelona,” strung together a national-record 36 games unbeaten, and won back-to-back A-League titles in 2011 and 2012. The first they ripped back from two goals down in the dying minutes at Suncorp, then took on penalties. The best club football this country has produced, made in Queensland.

The most famous bad luck in Australian motorsport. Leading at Bathurst in 1980, Brisbane's Dick Johnson hit a boulder near the top of the mountain and wrote off his Falcon. Ordinary Australians jammed Channel 7 switchboards to donate money to rebuild the car, Ford matched it, and a wrecked privateer came back to claim the Australian title at Lakeside infront of 20,000 fans.

No list of Queensland sport is complete without “The King.” Wally Lewis ran the Maroons through the 1980s with a swagger that made Lang Park his throne room, and he set the template for everything Origin became. The cauldron, the contempt for New South Wales, the determination Queensland would win. That is Wally.

Then Queensland did the unthinkable and won eight State of Origin series in a row. Smith, Slater, Cronk, Thurston and Lockyer turned the Maroons into the most dominant team in the history of Origin. New South Wales spent the better part of a decade getting beaten by people who grew up north of the Tweed. And Greg Inglis.

Brisbane's first premiership. In the 1992 grand final the Broncos beat St George 28 to 8, Steve Renouf gliding away for the try of the day and Allan Langer lifting the Winfield Cup in his first year as captain. The trophy came north for the first time.

Five 500cc world championships in a row, the toughest, most dangerous class in motorcycle racing, won by a kid from Brisbane on a screaming two-stroke Honda. Doohan broke his leg so badly doctors talked about amputation, and then he came back and beat everyone for half a decade.

The first tie in the history of Test cricket happened at the Gabba in December 1960, Australia against the West Indies. Joe Solomon's run-out off the second-last ball left the scores level with no result, something that had never happened in 83 years of Test matches. Brisbane gave cricket a moment it had never seen.

Sixty-eight years. That is how long Queensland chased the Sheffield Shield after joining the competition in 1926, finishing second more times often in agonising circumstances. In 1994-95, under Allan Border, the Bulls thrashed South Australia by an innings and the longest wait in Australian cricket ended at last.

The Rockhampton Rocket is the only player, man or woman, to win all four grand slam titles in a single year twice. He did it as an amateur in 1962 and again in the open era in 1969, against the best the world. There is a stadium in Melbourne named after a kid from central Queensland, as it should be.

A club built from the rescued remains of Hopeless Fitzroy Lions cobbled together with the Bad News Bears went to Melbourne and won three premierships in a row. The first three-peat in AFL for two decades, and it was the Banana Benders who didn't even play the game. Two decades on, Lions made the MCG in September their home again, lost the 2023 grand final by a kick, then came back and thumped Sydney to win the 2024 flag before backing it up again in 2025.

The best NRL Grand Final moment of them all? The North Queensland Cowboys' last-second try tied the 2015 grand final against the Broncos but Johnathan Thurston's sideline conversion to win it hit the post. The game went to golden point and JT slotted the field goal. A first premiership for the far north and and a boast the Cowboys will forever hold over the Broncos.

The night the whole thing was born. For the first time Queenslanders who had been lured south came home to play for the Maroons, and Arthur “Artie” Beetson captained the side against his own Parramatta teammates. He thumped one of them inside the first half. Queensland won 20 to 10, Lang Park shook, and the great sporting rivalry began.

Twice a Queensland fight rewrote the country. In 1891 the shearers downed tools at Barcaldine, gathered under the Tree of Knowledge, and lit the fuse for the Australian labour movement; the world's first Labor government sat in Queensland in 1899. A century later Eddie Mabo took his people's land rights to the High Court. In 1992 the judges overturned terra nullius and recognised native title. Two moments that changed the nation's workplaces, laws and its conscience.