Suttor River Causeway
St Anns Crossing and Old Bowen Downs Road
Suttor River Causeway is a heritage-listed causeway across the Suttor River on the Old Bowen Downs Road, now at St Anns Road, Mount Coolon, Whitsunday Region, Queensland, Australia. It was built in 1876 by the Queensland Department of Public Works. It is also known as St Anns Crossing and Old Bowen Downs Road. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 18 September 2008.
History
Old Bowen Downs Road was established in the early 1860s as a teamster route between Port Denison (Bowen) and Bowen Downs Station near Aramac in central western Queensland. The road was in regular use until at least the late 1890s as a communication and supply line between the interior and the coast. While remnants of the road remain visible between Strathmore Station and Mount Douglas, the stone causeway built in 1876 over the Suttor River at St Anns remains largely intact as an example of early civil engineering stonework in northern Queensland.
The Kennedy district was first explored by Europeans in the mid-1840s when Ludwig Leichhardt ventured into the upper Burdekin Valley. The area was not opened for settlement until 1861 and by the end of that year pastoralists had taken up most of the runs in the region. These isolated western stations relied upon teamster routes for important communication and supply lines to the coastal centres of the Kennedy.
The public source identifies “Suttor River Causeway” as st Anns Crossing and Old Bowen Downs Road. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Suttor, River and Causeway.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Suttor River Causeway”, the useful work is to connect “st Anns Crossing and Old Bowen Downs Road” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q24189444. Authority coordinates are -21.225, 146.913. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1876, 2008 and 1861.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Suttor River Causeway”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Suttor River Causeway primary sources, Suttor River Causeway archive and Suttor research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Suttor River Causeway”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Suttor River Causeway” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.