Settled way back in 1847, Maryborough was the place more than 22,000 free settlers took their first steps on Australian soil after months at sea. Visitors can relive those early years with a visit to the City's historic port area - Portside. The port may be long dormant, but its history and gloriously preserved buildings remain - along with a sense of time suspended. The Portside Centre - part of the Queensland Heritage Trails Network -provides a professional, colourful and entertaining representation of Maryborough's history as major port and one of Queensland's oldest cities. Interactive displays include listening posts with first settler stories, time capsules and a multimedia Pepper's ghost display revisiting the time when sly grog running was rife and opium was a legal import. Just a few doors away is one of the largest museum collections celebrating this early history and one of the city's oldest buildings: the Bond Store Museum. Walk through the Bond Store, and you're stepping on history. The earthen floor and ancient handmade bricks in the original 1864 building downstairs still exist, as do many of the liquor barrels left over from that time.
