Esteemed historian and academic Professor Emeritus Clive Moore and the Mackay Historical Society and Museum Inc have collaborated to present the full text of The River: Mackay in the Nineteenth Century.

Prof. Moore was born in Mackay in 1951 and graduated from James Cook University with an Honours degree in history in 1973 and a PhD in 1981, both based on the Mackay district. He is now a Professor Emeritus at the University of Queensland where he worked for 28 years before retiring in 2015 as McCaughey Professor of Pacific and Australian history. Prof. Moore has published extensively on Mackay and Australian South Sea Islanders, New Guinea and Solomon Islands, and Australian masculinity and sexuality.
 

The River is primarily about the history of the valley of the Pioneer River in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the urban settlement that became Mackay. No other history of the region has provided as large a First Nations and pastoral context. He explores the origins of early colonists, and what life was like at a domestic level, which is too often neglected.
 

The River has an Introduction, 14 chapters and a bibliography. It offers an overview of the second half of the nineteenth century—the crucial decades for the formation of the settler society based on the sugar industry.