Throughout the first century of European involvement, the Great Barrier Reef, in addition to its daunting hydrographic challenges, and its significance for science – fascinating as it was to biologist and geologist alike – from its sheer magnitude exerted an even more powerful and determining influence on the social and economic history of Queensland. From the beginning of settlement, Queensland was the only Australian colony whose development was almost entirely constrained by a seemingly impassable barrier of complex reefs, with only the port of Brisbane directly accessible to the open sea. Reef waters, however, well before Queensland's separation from New South Wales in December 1859, were exploited from the earliest days. Whaling and guano mining, along with the later expansion of pearling, bêche-de-mering and fishing, came to assume economic importance in Queensland second only to the agricultural and pastoral industries. Although in the later nineteenth century the best possible interpretation was to be placed on its existence as the ‘Grand Canal’ or ‘a safe and secure harbour’ – today known as the ‘lagoon’ – the Reef was actually a serious impediment to development. As settlers moved along the restricted coastal lowlands – the only lands suitable for widescale permanent occupation – its effects on agriculture, grazing and industry were to often create intractable problems.

From the time of the First Fleet of 1788 there had been a continuing expansion of the original colony of New South Wales beyond the Sydney plain.