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Why was our town named after a British man who never set foot in Australia, and a man who, according to many of the official and authoritative published accounts of the time, was intellectually feeble and of unattractive and dull disposition?

During research for the 150th anniversary of Cardwell’s settlement, we believe we uncovered the fascinating story that lies behind some of these highly questionable and obviously unfair portrayals of Viscount Edward Cardwell. A calm and quiet man by all accounts, but apparently also serenely fearless and clearly a non-conformist, Edward Cardwell overturned aristocratic tradition and privilege as Britain’s War Minister in the mid 19th century.

He abolished the system of purchase in the Army’s commissioned ranks, by which wealthy and privileged men bought and sold their rank and promotion as military officers. Cardwell’s changes required that promotion within the British Army’s commissioned ranks be based instead on merit, founding traditions which endure today.

He introduced six year terms of service for military men, and began the system of pensions for long term service. For the first time he established a genuinely professional British Army, but how he achieved this is equally as fascinating and far from fully documented.

His Army Regulation Bill of 1871 rocked the British establishment, was bitterly opposed by the Duke of Norfolk who was Commander-in-Chief of the Army, and was thrown out of parliament by the House of Lords in London. Yet, against this immense and powerful opposition, Edward Cardwell as Britain’s War Minister, persuaded Queen Victoria to use her royal warrant to sign his bill into law.

Edward Cardwell, later elevated to the House of Lords himself, was War Minister for six years from December 1868, which reminds us that his landmark military reforms and achievements came after Queensland’s Governor, George Bowen, named our township in honour of Viscount Edward Cardwell in 1864. And these military reforms, whose far-reaching legacies continue today, were only some of the influential achievements of Edward Cardwell which, in turn, suggest that Governor Bowen was perhaps a man of some foresight himself.

We grew to like Edward Cardwell during our research for this exhibition, and if you visit Cardwell and wish to know more, you can watch our video presentation at the J. C. Hubinger Museum at Cardwell’s Visitor and Heritage Centre.

Meanwhile, we wonder if the poverty of acclamation for Lord Cardwell’s 19th century landmark achievements, as implied in the formal records of the time, is a reflection of the unwelcome impact his changes had on the exclusive privileges of powerful and important Britons of that era!

When Yasi was upgraded to a category five cyclone about eight hours before its eventual tumultuous landfall near Cardwell on Wednesday evening, February 2, 2011, life became a voyage into the unknown for local residents.

No one living had experienced such extreme natural climatic torment. The Bureau of Meteorology would later bracket Yasi with three other cyclones to devastate Australia’s tropical east coast, as one of the four most intense cyclones in recorded history: a cyclone named Mahina that wiped out a pearling fleet killing hundreds of seamen in Princess Charlotte Bay in 1899, two un-named 1918 cyclones that devastated Mackay (January) and Innisfail (March), and Yasi in 2011.

The last surviving Cardwell resident known to have lived through the 1918 cyclone which devastated Innisfail and caused massive destruction to Cardwell, Maureen Massey (nee Hubinger), had died at age 95 in the year leading up to Yasi.

Because of its severity and the damage it caused, few precise readings of Yasi’s power are known, but there are some very accurate measurements and indications.

A barometer at Tully Sugar mill recorded rare low atmospheric pressures suggesting wind gusts of around 285 kilometres per hour, by 9 am the following morning 24 hour rainfalls commonly totalled more than 400 millimetres and up to 471 millimetres at South Mission Beach, and a tidal surge exceeding 5 metres was recorded by a government storm tide gauge at Cardwell.

The surge, about half an hour after midnight (on February 3) raised the level of the ocean 2.3 metres above the highest normal tide, and fortunately occurred when the normal ocean tide was falling and scheduled to be near it’s lowest point that night.

Maureen Massey was too young in 1918 to remember the March cyclone that year, but her older brothers, especially Noel, told many times how the sea had washed in across the highway and into the front yard of Hubinger’s 1912 home at 67-69 Victoria Street a few doors removed from, and in the same block as the Marine Hotel.

Evidence shortly after Yasi indicated the level of the surge around Hubinger’s home (severely damaged but then still standing solid) was around half a metre deep.

First hand evidence of Yasi’s extreme power is rare because all but a handful of townspeople from Cardwell to beyond Mission Beach had evacuated, and the blinding combination of wind, water and debris at the storm’s peak occurred during the night, and while those enduring its terror were hunkered down out of harms way.

Cardwell’s current museum building, in which the town’s World War One honour roll still stands, was around 25 years old at the time local men and women left the district to serve in the Great War in Europe.

The heritage-listed museum of today was then the administration headquarters in the Cardwell Shire and the Shire Hall, the venue in which formal ceremonies and social activities, both celebratory and solemn, were held.

The call to fight in Europe in 1915 and during the following three years, was answered by 28 men and women, which represented seven percent of the local population of around 400. If a similar proportion were to respond today, the young men and women departing for foreign battlefields would be well in excess of 700.

To honour those from Cardwell and district who served in that war, an interactive honour roll was unveiled in the Museum on Anzac Eve 2015.

People now visiting the Cardwell museum can not only inspect the marble honour roll where it was erected in 1922 but also read the stories of each of those 28 service men and women simply by touching their names on the interactive computer screen.

At the 2015 unveiling ceremony, a book titled Streets by the Sea – a Cardwell chronicle, authored by Helen Pedley whose research included the stories of each of the service men and women, was also launched, and can be purchased via our website.