Take away the "barn" and the bush and this could be a typical family portrait of the time outside a stone cathedral in a major city. And therein lies the reason why this remarkable 130-year-old picture says so much.

This was a community determined to have a go in a strange land without losing touch with the things that mattered to them — family and tradition.

They believed their religion should have a home, even if it was hacked out from what was immediately to hand; they believed they had a right to make this land their home as well; and they believed there was room for their way of life, as evidenced by the finest European fashions in the middle of an antipodean summer (the picture was taken in December).

These emotional strands of tradition, community and have-a-go spirit thread from the past, through the present and into the future.

This site highlights the essence of what is our Queensland — pioneers, policy-makers, stars of song, screen, stage and sport, warriors, teenagers, the very good and the very bad.

In this section we feature a pictorial essay of today's Queensland — a land where nature still throws out challenges that would be familiar to the wedding party in the 1872 Stanthorpe picture.

But perhaps there is one image, which, like the Stanthorpe picture, says more each time you look into it.

It is Graeme Parkes's dramatic picture, right, of volunteer rescuers helping a baby humpback whale which had beached itself at Coolum on the Sunshine Coast in 1996.

More than 3000 people gathered to watch this struggle for life, which ultimately succeeded.

There's all the things we like to admire on show here — courage, determination, selflessness and humanity. As we head into the future, these are qualities that will endure.

— Simon Mellick, Our Queensland editor