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Boonah is both a town and a locality of the Scenic Rim Region in south-eastern Queensland. The history of Boonah township is connected to the nearby settlement of Dugandan which was named after a pastoral run of the same name that was taken up in August 1844 by Macquarie McDonald and his brother Campbell Livingston McDonald.

Dugandan was one of the earliest pastoral holdings in Queensland. In its early years the area was stocked with sheep but the region was discovered to be well suited for cattle and over time became renowned for the quality of its beef and dairy herds.

Variously known as Dugandan Scrub and Blumbergville, Boonah was also positioned within the boundaries of the early Dungandan property. Due to the scattered distribution of European settlers, the close proximity of the two settlements that would eventually become the townships of Dugandan and Boonak and the

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Queensland State Archives posted a photo:

Longreach, a rural town, is 620 km west of Rockhampton at the junction of the Capricorn and Landsborough Highways. The Longreach district was explored by the New South Wales Surveyor-General Thomas Mitchell (1846) and by Edmund Kennedy (1847). The pastoralist-explorer William Landsborough reported favourably on the district’s pastoral prospects, and in 1863 the first pastoral lease was taken up by the vast Bowen Downs station.

Considerable optimism surrounded the new settlement: town lots were auctioned and sold briskly, and by 1890 there were three hotels, several stores and tradespeople, a progress association and a police station. The opening of the railway line in 1892 spurred further development and thrust Longreach into the industrial upheaval of the age.

Apart from Longreach’s role as a railhead and district centre, it also became the centre of an area subdivided for closer-settlement farms during the 1890s. Many blocks were too

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Queensland State Archives posted a photo:

Allora is a town a locality in south-eastern Queensland on the Darling Downs. The region surrounding this small farming community was first explored by Europeans in the 1840s; the town was surveyed in 1859. Its name is believed to derive from an Aboriginal word “gnarrallah”, meaning waterhole or swampy place.

Following European settlement, the history of the area is entwined with two famous pastoral homesteads in the vicinity of Allora: Glengallan and Talgai. Both properties ran sheep. From the 1870s, red cedar, pine and beech logged from the Goomburra valley were milled at Allora.

Description source:
Wikipedia

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Digital Image ID 2334

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Queensland State Archives posted a photo:

For the purposes of building Somerset Dam, a small township was established at the construction site. The township boasted a hospital, school, police station and even tennis courts. A ‘swimming pool’ was located downstream in the river. The workshops, storage sheds and crushing plant were located upstream. The stone quarry, used for dam building, was at the top of the hill.

By 1937, 126 workers’ cottages were constructed. In a letter to the Brisbane Courier in 1935, H.P. Somerset explained that his name’s association with the dam and township was not in relation to his efforts to warn Brisbane back in 1893 about the flood risk, rather it was a suggestion of the site after writing to the Water Board in 1906. Somerset was flatteringly described as an ‘engineer’ for noticing the rock formation as well as its suitability for dam construction.

Description source:
Queensland Historical Atlas

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