MODERN CAIRNS

The Cook Highway to Port Douglas was opened in 1933 and two years later the Barron hydroelectric scheme was switched on for Cairns and its suburbs. The port was kept busy with exports. In 1932 sugar was the dominant product, representing in value 62% of the total throughput. Next came butter (10%), maize (6%), timber (5%), tobacco (5%) and minerals (4%). Cairns Timber Ltd had a sawmill and veneer manufacturing plant. Cairns City Council administered an area of 37.5 sq km, enclosed by Cairns Shire (renamed Mulgrave in 1940). In 1942 Australian and American armed forces began a three-year occupation of Cairns and its hinterland. A Catalina airbase operated from Trinity Inlet. The evacuation of population, wartime and manpower restrictions and a hangover of austerity measures hampered postwar recovery, but optimism had returned when Cairns was described in the Australian Blue Book in 1949: By 1971 Cairns' population was nearly 33,000. A drive-in cinema opened in 1961 and parking meters were installed in the business area in 1965. The menace from stingers and jelly fish at the beach was reduced by the Tobruk memorial baths (1962) at North Cairns. Tourism changed from 'Sunlander' rail journeys to fly-in/fly-out excursions. United States service personnel, who remembered their Atherton Tableland days, returned in the 1970s to experience Barrier Reef, rainforest and resort stop-overs. Domestic tourism also grew, and the Cairns international airport opened in 1984, supplanting Townsville as the gateway for Japanese tourists. From 700 motel and hotel rooms in the 1960, Cairns had 6500 rooms in 1987. The Harbour Board had reclaimed mudflats and mangrove foreshores since the 1950s with hardly a murmur of opposition. But proposals to recover land off the Esplanade and to develop Admiralty Island in the Inlet were overturned by determined protest. The Marlin marina (1987) was followed by extensive refurbishment of the Esplanade foreshore during 2003-06 with a swimming lagoon, parkland and recreation facilities. By the 1980s Cairns had a metropolitan feel as shopping moved into the suburbs. A drive-in shopping centre was opened in Earlville (1980) and Smithfield (1986). Neglect of central city retailing was corrected by the opening of Cairns Central Shopping Centre in 1997, with over 180 outlets including a department store, discount department stores and supermarkets. Cairns Central is positioned four blocks away from the Abbott Street precinct, but it adjoins the main railway station and to that extent occupies a central location. Despite Cairns' sprawl over the hills and ranges, the central city has kept some prime functions. It has the base hospital, the convention centre (1997), and education complexes, including St Monica's in Abbott Street and St Joseph's/Augustine's (1927, 1930) in adjoining Parramatta Park, and Cairns High School (1924). The City Council outgrew their office space in Abbott Street and built a new civic centre in Portsmith in 1976. In 1995 the Council amalgamated with Mulgrave Shire, and in 2008 Cairns City was enlarged again by amalgamation with Douglas Shire to form Cairns Regional Council.