The occupation of the territory now included in Queensland began almost simultaneously at two points. Pioneer squatters, pushing northward from the interior of New South Wales, discovered the fertile plains of the Darling Downs, and the Sydney authorities determined to form a convict station on the shores of the remote almost unexplored sheet of land-locked water known as Moreton Bay. The convict station was founded in 1826, and in the first instance on the coast at a place since known as Humpy Bong, meaning, in the language of the blacks, 'dead huts or houses.' This settlement was soon abandoned, as the water-supply was precarious, and there was insufficient shelter for shipping. A site was subsequently chosen about twenty miles up the channel of the principal river emptying into Moreton Bay, which had been named after Sir Thomas Brisbane; and 'The Settlement,' as it was at first called, soon came to be known by the name of the river, and the decaying buildings of the first attempted lodgment caused the wandering blacks to give the locality the name it now bears. At first, of course, there were nothing but the necessary buildings for the convicts--dangerous characters who had been convicted for fresh crimes in the land of their exile, and were therefore relegated to what was then the safe isolation of Moreton Bay--and for the warders and others in charge of the prisoners. Meanwhile, as we have said, pioneer squatters had spied out the pastoral wealth of the Darling Downs, and some bold adventurers had pushed overland with their flocks to occupy it. These pioneers at first kept up communication by bush trails with far distant Sydney, but, hearing that a new settlement had been formed on the coast, they sought to open communication with it. A pass--known as Cunningham's Gap--was found in 1832 through the ranges which form the eastern flanks of the great plateau, and communication was opened with the settlement. Townships were formed. Near the verge of the Darling Downs plateau the seed of what is now the thriving and important town of Toowoomba was sown by the carriers making a halting-place before attempting the toilsome and dangerous descent through the ravines of the thickly wooded range, which then swarmed with bold and hostile savages. Another such halting-place was the spot where travellers, having emerged from the broken country and having passed the great scrubs or jungles at the foot of the hills--now a populated and thriving farming district--first struck the navigable waters of the Bremer, the principal affluent of the Brisbane. At that point the town of Ipswich came into existence, and for many years it rivalled Brisbane in importance, because the goods brought to the capital by sea-going ships were taken in river craft to the former town, which was thus the point of departure for all land carriage.