Emu Park

Emu Park is a coastal town and locality on the Capricorn Coast located 21 kilometres (13 mi) south of Yeppoon in Queensland, Australia.

Emu Park is a coastal town and locality on the Capricorn Coast located 21 kilometres (13 mi) south of Yeppoon in Queensland, Australia.It is within the local government area of Shire of Livingstone (between 2008 and 2013, it was within the Rockhampton Region). In the 2016 census the locality of Emu Park had a population of 2,130 people.Home of the famous Singing Ship Monument, the Emu Park land area was first discovered by Captain James Cook in 1770. It overlooks the islands of Keppel Bay, including Great Keppel Island. Emu Park is a popular tourist spot, and has won several tourism awards, and features fishing, surfing, boating, and unspoiled beaches.

Emu Park's European history dates to the 1860s when the Jardine family established a cattle grazing property south of the current town, at Zilzie, an anagram of Lizzie Jardine.Emu Park township was established in the 1870s when several Rockhampton families built seaside holiday houses on the hills overlooking the two beaches that are a feature of the town – Fisherman's Beach and Pine Beach.Emu Park was connected to Rockhampton by train in 1888 and became a popular, but fairly select, seaside resort from that time on. A branch to Yeppoon, further to the north was opened in 1910.Hewittville Post Office opened on 12 November 1883 (a receiving office had been open from 1876) and was renamed Emu Park in 1890.Emu Park State School opened on 3 February 1890. The school was burned down on 26 July 1946 and all early records of the school were lost in the blaze. The hall was used as a temporary school. The new school building was designed with 2 classrooms for a total 60 students at a cost of£2315.By the 1920s the town hd two large hotels, a cinema, court house, public library, shops and many guest houses for visitors. A small pier was opened by Mrs Bruce, wife of the Prime Minister, Stanley Bruce, in 1926 and Bell Park, a shady park on the shores of Fisherman's Beach was established in the 1930s.Emu Park Methodist church opened circa February 1920. Following the amalgamation of the Methodist Church into the Uniting Church in Australia in 1977, it became the Emu Park Uniting Church.The railway link from Rockhampton closed in the 1960s due to declining passenger numbers and the line to Yeppoon no longer exists. Remnants of the Woppaburra people evicted from their homeland in the Greater and South Keppel islands lived on in both Emu Park and Yeppoon.The Emu Park Library opened in 1984.At the 2011 census Emu Park had a population of 2,021.In the 2016 census the locality of Emu Park had a population of 2,130 people.