Howard
Postcode: 4659
Howard is a small town in Queensland, Australia, located 284 km north of Brisbane and 37 km west of Hervey Bay.
A service centre for the surrounding mixed agricultural area.
Located 284 km north of Brisbane and 37 km west of Hervey Bay, Howard is a small service centre for an area of sugar plantations and citrus orchards.
There was a time when coal mining made Howard an important centre but a combination of factors have returned it to a sleepy rural settlement. The decision to bypass the town ensured that it did not develop a tourist industry and the growing importance of the port facilities at Gladstone and the coal mines to the north and south of Blackwater reduced its importance as a mining centre. Miners had moved into the area as early as 1864 when a seam of coal was discovered on the banks of the Burrum River.
The town’s major ‘tourist attraction’ is the charming colonial home ‘Brooklyn’ (over the railway line from the centre of town) at 23 William Street which was once the home of Dame Annabel Rankin. She was a successful State and Federal parliamentarian who, after representing the electorate of Burrum for many years in the Queensland State Parliament, became a Liberal Senator for Queensland from 1946-71.
Nearby are the sleepy seaside resort towns of Burrum Heads (20 km from the Bruce Highway) and Toogoom which have become popular retirement haunts for people whose idea of bliss in ‘the autumn of their lives’ is a bit of fishing (whiting abound), some boating and lots of lazing in the sea.