Australian Dictionary of Biography

John Leslie Beausang, c.1970

Picture Sunshine Coast. Sunshine Coast Council

John Leslie Beausang (1912–2000), local government leader, was born on 25 August 1912 at Jones Hill, Gympie, Queensland, eldest of seven children of Queensland-born parents Richard George Beausang, labourer, and his wife Elizabeth Lena McGill, née Diggins. Richard worked as a security guard at his father-in-law’s Royal Standard Hotel, before moving the young family to nearby Imbil and then to Cambroon, near Conondale. Jack attended Imbil and Cambroon State schools. With the help of his maternal grandparents, his parents bought land on the Maleny–Kenilworth road at Cambroon and began dairying. Jack later recalled that twice each day ‘my sister and I and brother milked [by hand] up to a hundred cows between the three of us’ (Beausang 1988). On 8 July 1939 at the Presbyterian Church, Caboolture, Jack married Myrtle Lily Lee (1915–1990), a shop assistant; they were to have a daughter, Margaret, and a son, Kenneth. In 1940 he established his own dairy farm at 623–637 Eastern Mary River Road, Conondale, on the opposite side of the river to his parents’ property. As the dairying industry declined, he and his father would later switch to grazing beef cattle.

In April 1955 Beausang was elected as a councillor for division one of the Landsborough Shire, representing the rural districts of Cambroon, Conondale, and Witta. He was elected as chairman of the council in May 1964 and would retain the office (later as mayor) until he retired in 1988. During his term the seaside resort towns on Brisbane’s North Coast (Sunshine Coast from 1967) grew rapidly compared to the rural centres in their hinterlands. Reflecting this demographic change, in 1968 the Landsborough Shire Council chambers were shifted from the inland town of that name to Caloundra. In 1987 Caloundra was granted city status, making Beausang its first mayor. Although the local government boundary was unchanged, he successfully led moves to replace the title Landsborough Shire with Caloundra City. Not all councillors supported him but he was insistent; he was convinced that the Federal government was providing relatively more financial aid to cities and towns than to shires.

Beausang had striven as a councillor to improve the roads in his district and as chairman and mayor extended this objective to the whole local government area. Other infrastructure projects that he championed included a water reticulation system for Caloundra, and sewerage and drainage works for the city and towns. Nevertheless, he had misgivings about constructing dams for urban water supply because of the valuable land they submerge, and he became a supporter of desalinating sea water to meet future requirements. He took pride in the key roles he played in establishing the Caloundra Civic Cultural Centre and a new public library for the city, which was named after him in 1986. Caloundra’s Jack Beausang Oval had been named the previous year. Conscious of the need to keep rates as low as possible, he endeavoured to restrain expenditure, including on councillors’ fees. In 1978 he was forced to defend the council against allegations that it was permitting canal developments at Kawana Waters that were environmentally unsustainable. He argued that the council had no control over the project because it had been authorised by an agreement between the developer and the State government.

On behalf of the twelve councils in the North Coast region, Beausang served (1973–87) on the executive of the Local Government Association of Queensland. The LGAQ appointed him as its representative (1973–83) on the State Fire Services Council, which administered urban fire legislation in Queensland. A lifelong member of the Australian Country Party–Queensland (National Party of Australia–Queensland), he had sought preselection as the party’s candidate in a by-election for the State seat of Landsborough in 1968 but came third in a three-way contest won by Mike Ahern, a future premier. Beausang was a director (1959–74) of the Maleny Co-operative Dairy Association Pty Ltd. The Rotary Club of Maleny awarded him honorary membership (1970–86) for his community service.

In 1980 Beausang was appointed OBE. In explaining his success in local government, he declared that he was gifted with the ability to assess people’s characters and to estimate ‘what would be needed and what would be in the best interest[s] of the area’ (Beausang 1988). He also acknowledged the importance to his career of his wife’s support. Another factor was his reputation for ‘approachability and honesty’ (Sunshine Coast Daily 2000, 19). A short, wiry, fit, balding, and bespectacled man, he had a cheerful personality, practised a non-denominational humanist form of Christianity, and enjoyed ballroom dancing. He spent his later years on the family farm. Survived by his children, he died on 3 March 2000 in Maleny Memorial Hospital and was buried in Caloundra cemetery, affectionately remembered as ‘the man who built Caloundra’ (Qld Parliament 2000, 395).