relocated in 1825 to a site on the Brisbane River (now Brisbane's central business district). Brisbane's population by 1856 was only an estimated 3,840. Gayndah and Ipswich were regional towns of similar size and competed with Brisbane to become the capital of Queensland when it became a separate colony from New South Wales in 1859. The main impetus to the growth of Brisbane and the development of a distinctive city centre came through the introduction of self-government, hand-in-hand with immigration and general economic expansion. By 1868 Brisbane was the largest town in Queensland with a population of 15,240. In 1857, Tom White came to Gayndah and started the newspaper, The Burnett Argus in April 1861. Gayndah State School opened on 12 October 1863. In 1870, the first Catholic church opened in Gayndah. In 1912 Father Patrick Brady decided a new church was needed. On 18 April 1915 Archbishop James Duhig blessed and opened the new church before a crowd of 800 people. The new church was built at 46 Meson Street () on the south bank of the Burnett River and was with walls high and constructed of ferro-concrete with asbestos roof tiles. The architects were R. Cook & Sons and it was built by contractor H.G. Millar. The total cost of the building and furnishings was about £1500. The railway was opened to Gayndah on 16 December 1907. Historian Matt J Fox spoke of Gayndah in 1923: "The Gazette now represents the Press in Gayndah, which is a very prosperous town of nearly a thousand people, the centre of a thriving district of farmers and fruit-growers and squatters, with a rural population of over 4,000 people". In 1872, the town was the location where the hoax fish Ompax spatuloides was supposedly procured. Gayndah North State School opened on 14 February 1918. It closed on 24 August 1931. Gayndah Aboriginal Provisional School opened on 8 August 1918. It became Gayndah Aboriginal State School in 1942. It closed in 1949. On 8 September 1919 the Gayndah War Memorial was dedicated by the Member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly for Burnett, Bernard Corser. St Joseph's School opened on 6 October 1919. During World War II, Gayndah was the location of RAAF No.8 Inland Aircraft Fuel Depot (IAFD), completed in 1942 and closed on 29 August 1944. Usually consisting of 4 tanks, 31 fuel depots were built across Australia for the storage and