The first local branch of the WCTU was formed in Sydney in 1882. The movement did not begin to grow in Australia until 1885 when Mary Leavitt, the first world missionary of the American WCTU, toured the colonies and helped found ten new branches, five in Queensland alone. The following year the Queensland branches came together to establish the WCTUQ. Conservative in outlook, the Union’s primary mission was to promote total abstinence from alcohol, but it also campaigned on a range of other issues relating to the social position of women, most notably female suffrage, which it saw as beneficial to the entire community and as a means to further its own agenda through women’s power at the ballot box. The WCTUQ played a significant role in Queensland social reform politics throughout the 1890s and in the leadup to the winning of (white) female suffrage in Queensland in 1905. Although it remained in existence throughout the twentieth century, the era prior to WW1 marked the highpoint of the WCTUQ’s influence in Queensland.