For over 30,000 years the Caloundra area was home to the Kabi Kabi peoples. The rich lands and the natural exercise of his lifestyle caused early explorers to comment on his exemplary health and stature. It was also noted that they were friendlier and treated the women of the group better than the Port Jackson tribes. The Bonyi Bonyi (Bunya Nut Festival) was held every two to three years when larger than usual harvests bought tribes hundreds of kilometers away to celebrate, do business, settle disputes and find mates, as well as share the large walnut crops.
While the Dutch, Portuguese and French probably mapped the coastline around Stradbroke during the middle decades of the 16th century, Lt. Cook and Banks arriving in 1770, Banks noting Pumicestone Passage (thinking it was a river) and Cook naming it the Glasshouse Mountains charting them as a reference point for future visitors. Commenting on the way the sun reflects off the rocks early in the morning, he named them after the furnaces at the glassworks in England.
The first recorded European to walk through this area was Matthew Flinders, who sailed from Port Jackson Settlement (Sydney). Mooring his sloop at the southern end of Bribie Island, he noticed that the beach was littered with large piles of pumice and, thinking the pass was a river, he named it Pumice River.
Despite a small fight with the locals at a place he called Skirmish Point, he would later comment on how friendly these natives were. Seven years later he returned and with two sailors and Bongaree, his native friend and guide, sailed up Glass House Creek and scaled Mount Beerburrum. It is also said that on his way back to the ship he traded goods with the local tribes and ate roast black swan. Matthew Flinders circumnavigated Australia to give it its current shape and was the first person to ever call it Australia. The Moreton Bay (Brisbane) settlement provided the first long-term white inhabitants as runaways fled into the bush and were eventually taken in by the Kabi Kabi. The first, James Davis, escaped from Moreton Bay six weeks after arriving. He was adopted by Pambi Pambi, a Kabi Kabi chief who considered him a reincarnation of his dead son and named him Duramboi. His escape partner was also protected until he desecrated a grave and was killed. Duramboi was accepted and moved freely with various groups until in 1842 he and a serial fugitive, David Bracewell or ‘Wandi’, were found by Andrew Petrie who convinced them to return to Brisbane as the penal colony had closed. Petrie himself was a free immigrant who moved to Moreton Bay and saw it as the last frontier where he could make a name for himself. His report to Governor Gipps in Sydney resulted in the ‘Bunya Proclamation’ later in the year, which denied European entry to all areas in which Bunya trees grew. It also meant that the Aborigines could continue their way of life in peace. Queensland gained independence from New South Wales in 1859, and the first sitting of parliament revoked the Bunya Proclamation.
In 1863 Caloundra had its first European residents when a funeral party from the immigrant ship ‘Queen of the Colonies’ was separated from the ship and washed up on Moffat Beach. While trying to raise the boat, the dead woman’s husband was caught by sharks and the boat sank. They were found divided into two groups approximately fifteen days later. This incident was reported in the Brisbane press and attracted much interest in the Caloundra area.
Caloundra was officially developed for timber harvesters and settlers in 1868, but the area’s first private residence, built for Brisbane politician Robert Bulcock, was not completed until 1875. A hill on this block provided one of the highest points of the area and here build an observation tower to get an early warning of the dreaded Russian invasion. This hill was also in a better position than had been reserved for a lighthouse and was later donated by him to be used for the first and second headlight. William Landsborough would soon buy land near his own with money given to him by the government in gratitude for his many explorations of the country.
Navigating the pumice river in his boat ‘SALLY’, John Bingle is credited with proving that it was not a river but a passage to Deception Bay.
Dickie Beach was named after a German-built steamship that ran aground during the storm that also brought the great flood of 1893 to much of south-east Queensland. All lives were saved, but the ship was unable to refloat and the wreckage remains a feature of the beach. The engine was salvaged and placed on another ship, while the propeller is now mounted on a monument further back on the beach. Caloundra received its first and second Queensland lighthouses five years later.
After two schoolteachers drowned in Kings Beach, ropes and buoys were installed for the safety of bathers. It wasn’t until fifteen years later that Kings Beach could boast the first lifesaving club in Caloundra. Two notable aerial adventures occurred in the years on either side. In 1926, a pleasure flight attempted to land at Kings Beach. The sand was very soft, the wheels sank and the plane sank leaving it almost vertical in the sand and in 1928 Bert Hinkler ran over it during his record breaking solo flight from England to Australia.
A surge of development in 1935 saw an all-weather gravel road connecting the new Bruce Highway to Caloundra, shops opened, Norfolk Pines planted on the waterfront, and a movie theater (Amusu) opened to serve residents and the growing tourist trade. .
During the Second World War Caloundra was made a restricted zone and houses and buildings were seized and barbed wire defenses were installed. Being a gateway to Brisbane, the area was fortified with mounted guns on Battery Hill (between Dickie Beach and Currimundi) and the heads at either end of Kings Beach.
Fort Bribie was built on the other side of the passage and the navy built a signal tower from which they could check the shipping lane. Currimundi and Kawana to the north were used as live ammunition shooting ranges and people continued to find unexploded shells in their gardens until the 1970s. The war also bought electricity, a bitumen paved driveway and a dance hall. skating that would soon join the other new military establishments. The military jetty at Golden Beach is another reminder of Caloundra’s role in World War II.
Progress slowed after the war, but some shrewd purchases and subdivisions of the original grand estates, coupled with modern advertising programs, put Caloundra on the path to boom times. The “Caloundra Topic” newspaper was published in 1947 and sold for 1 cent (1 cent) a copy. In the early 1950s, shops were renovated and a golf course, a new post office and telephone exchange opened, as well as two hotels, which combined with increasing land sales to make Caloundra the main Sunshine Coast destination for tourists, retirees and new businesses.