Download coordinates as: St George is a rural town and locality in the Shire of Balonne, Queensland, Australia.

[1] The present township of St George was founded on the boundaries of three Aboriginal groups, the Mandandanji to the north, the Kooma to the south-west and the Bigambul to the south-east.

They supplemented their diet with the small native melons that grew in abundance in the area, and with yams dug out from the flats along the riverbanks.

Their funeral rites consisted of constructing an elevated bark platform on which the deceased would be placed, with fires lit underneath to smoke and preserve the corpse.

The mummified remains would then be wrapped in bark and possum cloaks and carried with care by the relatives until they were deposited in a hollow of a tree.

[4][5][6] In 1845, pastoralist squatters John Gordon Town and Christopher Bagot entered the vicinity looking for land to take up for cattle.

[5] In 1846, the site where the town of St George now stands was Major Thomas Mitchell's Camp VIII of his expedition into northern Australia.

Upon returning to Burgorah, they slaughtered the resident Aboriginal people, burying around 70 of their corpses in a large pit.

Sergeant Richard Dempster with property managers Patrick Brennan and others, shot at least five Aboriginal people on Wagoo.

Later that year, a detachment under Lieutenant George Fulford drove the free Aborigines into the "back country".

[4] By 1862, Burgorah and Gulnarbar were being utilised as a temporary Native Police barracks where Aboriginal prisoners were tied to trees and flogged, and occasionally shot dead.

Lieutenant John Marlow and his troopers made a final sweep of the region in 1862, destroying Aboriginal camps and pursuing them as far as Angellala Creek where he "dispersed" them after a brief battle.

[4][11][12][13] The township of St George was gazetted upon a portion of the Burgorah run in March 1864 with the first 59 parcels of land offered for sale a month later.

[27] St George has the following heritage-listed sites: The town is a centre for cotton growing, as well as sheep, wheat, onions, garlic, corn, carrots and grapes.

It includes a secure reserve to provide habitat for the critically endangered northern hairy-nosed wombat which is inaccessible to the public.

[31] The Richard Underwood Nature Refuge (RUNR) is also near St George, and as of June 2024[update] is home to 18 wombats.

[31] The area, which lies along the banks of the Balonne River, was gazetted in 2008 as wombat habitat, and the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) took on the lease in October 2023.

Vegetation includes eucalypts such as silver-leaved ironbark and poplar box, along with white cypress pine and belah trees.

The St George Dragons (named after the much more famous NRL team) play in the Roma District Rugby League competition.

This Wikipedia article incorporates text from BALONNE CAFÉ, ST GEORGE (17 September 2019) published by the State Library of Queensland under CC BY licence, accessed on 15 January 2019.