Bowen is located on the north-east coast of Australia, at exactly twenty degrees south of the equator. In fact, the twentieth parallel crosses the main street. Bowen is halfway between Townsville and Mackay, and 1,130 kilometres by road from Brisbane.

Bowen sits on a square peninsula, with ocean to the north, east, and south. On the western side, where the peninsula connects with the mainland, the Don River's alluvial plain provides fertile soil that supports a prosperous farming industry.

Bowen enjoys a diversified and prosperous economy based on agriculture, fishing, tourism, and mining. Bowen's unusually dry climate for a tropical location, plus its fertile alluvial soil, makes it the ideal place to grow a wide variety of small crops, including tomatoes, rockmelons (i.e., cantaloupes), and capsicums (i.e., green peppers). Outside the alluvial plain, much of the Bowen Shire is used for beef cattle.

Captain James Cook named Cape Gloucester on his voyage of exploration up the Australian coast in 1770. This "cape" turned out to be an island, and Gloucester Island dominates the view from Bowen's eastern beaches. Behind the island is a bay that forms an excellent port, which the town came to be built around. This bay was eventually discovered in 1859 by Captain Henry Daniel Sinclair, in response to a reward offered by the colony of New South Wales for finding a port somewhere north of Rockhampton. Sinclair named Port Denison after the colonial governor of New South Wales.

Bowen is known as the "Mural Capital of the Australia". It has 24 murals sites, most within walking distance of the central business district. twenty of the murals depict Bowen's early history. Eighteen of them were commissioned by the Bowen Shire Festival of Murals Society, a local group dedicated to putting Bowen's history on display.

The Murals have been painted by well known Queensland artists. Two of the murals were painted by local artists, one by art students of the Bowen High school and one by famed artist Ken Done.

This mural was displayed in the United Nations Pavilion at the 1988 Brisbane Expo. It was later donated to Bowen by the artist. The historical murals clearly depict the long history of Bowen.