River Engineering

Despite all these engineering efforts and financial expense, Rockhampton failed to become a major deep-water port on Australia's eastern seaboard By the end of World War I, the river wharves had passed their hey-day and were in decline due to many factors, chief of which was competition from cheaper railway transport. Faced with decreasing trade and falling profits, the RHB could not afford to repay loans on previous engineering works, let alone do any more than meet the navigational needs of comparatively small coastal steamers.
Even so, by 1965, the river wharves closed and remaining trade transferred to Port Alma. In 1968, demolition of wharf facilities removed most traces of a century's shipping on the river. To the modern eye, the stone walls are the only legacy of that era as Nature has seemingly reclaimed the man-made land as its own.