High Steaks: The men who bought modern-day Townsville – Peter Lindsay and Tony Mooney

Former Labor mayor Tony Mooney and former Liberal member for Herbert Peter Lindsay played crucial roles in creating the 21st version of this extraordinary city, the largest metropolis in northern Australia.

They don’t make such grandiose claims themselves.

The credit for Townsville’s success is spread across a range of exceptional individuals, from Labor stalwart Perc Tucker to recently deposed Mayor Jenny Hill to the rugged old local government veteran Les Tyrell and well beyond, to a promenade of politicians and business leaders who have worked to make the Castle Hill-crowned Townsville our northern capital.

But even the most partisan observer would acknowledge the signatures of Townsville: The world-class Strand, James Cook University and the Medical School, the Cowboys and their stadium, the thriving port, the expanded Lavarack Barracks and that long awaited ring road now skirting the city carry the imprint of both of these two now-ageing ex-politicians whose direct influence spanned one generation, and whose skill at public administration will go on influencing the shape of the city for decades to come.

Any bad blood between the two political rivals who fought ferociously for their side in various contests has given way to a friendship based on decades of shared endeavours.

When the political guns fall silent, former combatants often make their peace with one another, especially in Australian regional centres where there’s a fair chance they’ll run into each other at the pub.

“You used to snipe at each other all the time,’’ I tell them on the veranda of the historic Seaview Hotel over a lunch of rump steaks and fish.

“We had a few fights, but we always got along reasonably well,’’ says Mooney who is standing just a few metres above the most valuable piece of infrastructure the city possesses: the Strand.

That 2.2km of world-class, palm-lined beachfront real estate was a signature of the Mooney administration, which spanned two decades from 1989 to 2008, and a game changer for Townsville.

It was prompted by the “Night of Noah’’, a catastrophic flash flood of January 10-11, 1998, when the remnants of Cyclone Sid swamped the city.

Mooney insists the Strand was a group effort, and the credit for the concept itself belongs to city engineer Bob Neunhoffer who, as council was planning reconstruction after the flood, decided to get seriously ambitious.

“Bob came into my office and, on the back of a beer coaster, sketched out how it could all work,’’ Mooney recalls.

Instead of that old high rock wall separating the ocean from shore, the plan was to build out into Cleveland Bay and create beaches in the bays between the headlands using river sand from the Burdekin.

The result has won international design awards and recalibrated the city’s image as a modern, tropical, cosmopolitan destination. Thousands of tourists and locals pour into the precinct not merely on weekends, but every day, crowding the restaurants and hotels dotting the strip.

“It was all done and dusted, designed, procured and built in one year, because we had a one year window under the disaster relief funding,’’ Mooney recalls.

“That could not be done nowadays.’’

Mooney acknowledges he gets much of the credit for the Strand.

“But I suppose, and this is one of my life lessons when I talk about how to be effective in government or in private life or even in running boards or companies - you have got to have a really good team around you.’’

The fight for the medical school was a far more fraught affair, beginning in the 1990s and likened to a “Game of Thrones’’ political battle.

Turns out everyone wants a medical school.

Former Deputy Vice Chancellor of Tropical Health and Medicine at JCU, Professor Ian Wronski, has documented the behind-the-scenes drama which pitted universities against universities, states against states and various governments against various governments.

Peter Lindsay, who held Herbert from 1996 to 2010, remembers a pivotal moment in the battle during the John Howard administration when colleague and then Federal Education Minister Amanda Vanstone came up behind him as he walked through the ministerial wing of Parliament House.

“She said, ‘hey Pete, I just want to quietly tell you, don’t pursue this medical school in Townsville, you are not going to get it.’’

Lindsay recalls he barely broke his stride as he walked directly around to the Prime Minister’s office where he vigorously put his case.

Townsville got its medical school. It’s now providing a ready pathway into regional medicine for young students who, having obtained their degree, will often stay in the north to serve their communities.

The ring road, construction of which lasted from 2005 to 2023 and which connects three central institutions _ the university, the hospital and Lavarack Barracks _ is only there because Lindsay stood up during one federal election campaign and declared Commonwealth money had been approved for an Upper Ross River bridge critical to the success of the project.

It hadn’t.

Lindsay now freely admits he was loose with the truth, but he got away with it because he retained the seat of Herbert, got the money and ensured Townsville got its key piece of transport infrastructure.

Mooney vividly remembers the birth of the Cowboys, which dates back to the early 90s and figures such figures as North Queensland Newspapers executive chairman Ron McLean and North Queensland rugby league great Kerry Boustead, as one of the city’s more ambitious projects.

The Townsville Crocs, the now disbanded basketball team which ignited the city when it appeared in 1993, had already demonstrated how much energy a national sporting team could generate in Townsville.

Mooney, part of the initial lobbying group to get the NRL to accept the Cowboys, remembers the club’s arrival in 1995, which cemented a growing sense of a uniquely Townsville identity.

“It became a rallying point for Townsville,’’ he says.

“But, again, it happened because people got together – businesspeople supported it with time and money.’’

These two ex-politicians, now both past their 70th birthdays, are both something of a rebuke to that observation made by British politician Enoch Powell that “all political careers end in failure’’.

The success of the city which they have devoted so much energy to since they were both young men on the local council nearly half a century ago is their achievement, and they continue devoting their energies to the region’s advancement.

Mooney chairs the Townsville Hospital and Health Board and both men are keen supporters of the North Queensland Water Infrastructure Task Force which has one key aim _ increase the capacity of the Burdekin Dam, partly to allow a hydro project to generate massive amounts of electricity.

While both maintain allegiance to their respective political parties, they agree that those who represent the regions should always put the interests of the people they represent first.

“You just don’t tow the political line when you are representing a regional community,’’ Mooney says.

“Sometimes you have got to go out on a limb.’’