Maryborough's location just off the Bruce Highway, 255km north of Brisbane, is a good and a bad thing for the city. It's a good thing because that makes it easily accessible from major population centres in southeast Queensland. The bad side is because travellers might be tempted to keep travelling on the highway to wherever they're going, north or south, and not divert to the heart of Maryborough to explore its many beautiful heritage attractions.
Maryborough was established on the banks of the Mary River and the city owes much of its character and history to that stately waterway. Aboriginal tribes who lived in the region called the river Moonaboola. Andrew Petrie was the first European to see it when he explored the area in 1842 in search of grazing country. He named it the Wide Bay River for the bay south of K'gari (Fraser Island) located across from the river's mouth on the Great Sandy Strait. Its official name was changed in 1847 to Mary River in honour of Lady Mary Lennox, wife of Sir Charles Fitzroy, then Governor of New South Wales.
Surveyor JC Burnett sailed up the river in 1847 and his favourable report on the countryside encouraged settlement by land-hungry pastoralists. George Furber and his wife were the first European settlers, establishing a wool store, wharf and trading post on the south
