[1] Biloela is 120 kilometres (75 mi) inland from the port city of Gladstone at the junction of the Burnett and Dawson highways.

[7] Gangalu (Gangulu, Kangulu, Kanolu, Kaangooloo, Khangulu) is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken on Gangula country.

The Gangula language region includes the towns of Clermont and Springsure extending south towards the Dawson River.

[8] There was a ceremonial bora ground behind what is now the main street of Bileola and the local entombment custom was to place the skeletal remains of their dead in hollowed out burial trees which were specially marked with red ochre.

[10] British colonisation began in 1854 when Frederick Morton established a large squatting pastoral property in the area, which he named Prairie.

This leasehold comprised around 500 square miles of land in the Callide valley and Morton built his homestead not far from the present day location of the town of Biloela.

Morton's group was either warned at the last minute of the impending ambush or, according to historian John Bird, they were beaten back by the Aboriginal counter-attack and forced to retreat.

[10][11] In 1873, a Native Police detachment of Alexander Douglas was accused of a massacre of an unknown number of Aboriginal people.

[12] An Aboriginal survivor of Douglas' raids named Etamitcham later described how as a child he and his family were chased over the Kroombit Mountains to avoid "being shot down".

[13] The name Biloela is generally believed to come from an Aboriginal word (possibly from the Sydney area) for "white cockatoo".

[4][5] The Government dockyards in Sydney were known as Biloela during 1871–1913 in an endeavour to remove the perceived stigma of the prior Cockatoo Island convict establishment.

[1] Biloela has a humid subtropical climates (Köppen: Cfa), with hot, wet summers and mild, dry winters with cool nights.

[35] Callide is an open-cut mining operation providing low sulphur, sub-bituminous thermal coal primarily for Queensland's domestic power generation.

Confirmation came in 2020[37] with the first ichnological descriptions of tracks originating from Lower Jurassic (Hettangian–Sinemurian) aged Precipice Sandstone from the Callide open-pit mine.

Purportedly hundreds of small- to medium-sized three-toed tracks resembling bird footprints were observed in the overburden dumps associated with the Dunn Creek Mining area in 1998, with others noted and photographed in 2010, enough to create a virtual 3D model via photogrammetry methods.

The 18-centimetre (7.1 in) long blunt-toed track was attributed as registered by a medium-sized Anomoepus-like "Anomoepid" track-maker and resembles those of ornithischian footprints found from the only other Early Jurassic Australian dinosaur fossil sites: Mount Morgan and Carnarvon Gorge, these being the first to be discovered preserved as an impression rather than as track infills.

The closest fresh water depository is the Callide Dam, however it is often well below capacity due to low rainfall in the area.

Callide Dam holds 136,300 megalitres (3.60×1010 US gal) at an average depth of 10.5 metres (34 ft) and a surface area of 1,240 hectares (3,100 acres) at full capacity.

[51] The Callide Dawson Machinery Preservation Club holds an annual Old Wheels in Motion rally in July.

[62] Various legal avenues were subsequently pursued, with the family taken to Christmas Island Detention Centre in late August 2018.

In April 2020 they were awarded costs of more than A$200,000 against the federal government, for lack of procedural fairness in assessing their youngest daughter's claim.