After the New Year's Day ceremonial handing over of the reel on the Maroochydore beach (1.1.1916), and
- the demonstration of its use by the visiting squad from Brisbane
- the formal meeting to create a "branch" of RLSSQ held back at the Cotton Tree encampment (Wm Whalley was elected President; Secretary...Duncan Martin; and Treasurer...Jack Parry
- the rescue the following day...
...the campers at Cotton Tree and the dignitories from Nambour and Brisbane returned to their respective home bases, while the locals returned to their outlying farms on Petrie Creek and the Maroochy River (upstream as far as Dunethin Rock and Lake, a locality known as "Maroochy River").
This annual Salvation Army Xmas holiday camping adventure was already in it's 20th year of operation at that time.
Land sales of Cotton Tree allotments had finally been held however, and so how to proceed from this point remained unclear...or did it?
Frank Venning had obviously been moved by what he had seen on this excursion, as he subsequently finished his season as Booroodabin baths manager in Brisbane, and relocated his family and settled on the river at Dunethin Rock by the end of March 1916, and became a share farmer growing bananas.
JJ Betts was similarly motivated to purchase land and ultimately build a house in Memorial Avenue.
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Prior to this foundation 'event', the only dwellings on the southern side of Cornmeal Creek, to the foothills of Buderim and the Mooloolah River entrance, were the former residence of the manager of the Pettigrew enterprise holdings (reduced to land at that time, as the timber harvesting and sawmilling operation had long ceased) and depicted by a bollard on the Esplanade opposite 2nd Ave; John Miller's slabhut residence on Cornmeal Creek (where Horton Pde bridges it today); and the Buderim folks' huts built around the 1860s depot (the sugar hut at Clarks Park on O'Connor's Reach in River Esplanade).
On the northern side of Cornmeal Creek on the Maroochy River banks however, some dwellings had been built by the wealthier residents of Nambour, and the Bury hotel had been constructed in 1912...beside which was another wharf (Wharf St).
Visitors to Maroochydore were by 1916 being transported to and from Nambour on the cane train running through Rosemount and crossing over Petrie Creek onto the northern bank, on a line that had been extended several times since its 1908 construction, and was by 1916 meeting boats at Deepwater (Wharf Road Bli Bli)...enabling thus passengers to be carried down to the Heads at Cotton Tree.
