Mango Avenue, Eimeo

Mango Avenue is a heritage-listed avenue of trees at Mango Avenue (between Whittles Lane and Heidke Street), Eimeo, Mackay Region, Queensland, Australia. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 31 July 2008.HistoryThe avenue of mango trees at Eimeo, north of Mackay, was established probably in the 1880s by Jeremiah Downs Armitage, owner of the beachside Eimeo hotel/boarding house, to delineate the track leading from the main road through his property to the hotel.The Pioneer River district was taken up for pastoral and agricultural purposes from 1860. In 1862 a settlement was established on the south bank of the river; in 1863 this was surveyed as the township of Mackay, the first sale of town lots was held, Mackay was gazetted as a port of entry, and a customs house was opened. The town prospered as a port and as a commercial and administrative centre, drawing business from nearby pastoral holdings and the sugar plantations being developed along the river from the late 1860s. In the 1880s the population expanded as the Queensland economy enjoyed a boom and government settlement programs attracted agricultural immigrants to the colony. The Pioneer River sugar industry was flourishing and Mackay was emerging as an important regional centre.Jeremiah Armitage came to Mackay in the early 1870s, and took up a 105-acre (42.5 hectare) selection with ocean frontages, about 9 miles (14.5 kilometres) north of Mackay, which he named after the island of Eimeo (Moorea) near Tahiti in the Society Islands. The land was selected in the name of Nancy Armitage (spinster), who gained a deed of grant to the property in 1876. Following her marriage in 1881, title was transferred early in 1882 to Jeremiah Downs Armitage. In 1874 he was recorded as a Mackay timber merchant, but had turned his attention to fruit growing by the 1880s.