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Queensland State Archives posted a photo:

Royals…

The first two trees – two jacarandas – were planted in 1907 by Lord and Lady Chelmsford. The Prince planted a palm tree, the Queen Mother a hoop pine, which continues to thrive.

The Prince of Wales visited Coochin Coochin in 1920 during his visit to Australia, because the Captain of his ship, Captain North, was a relative of Gertrude Bell’s. While he only intended to stay one night in order to attend a function held in Boonah, he ended up staying five nights due to flooding in Wallace Creek from heavy rain.

According to Gertrude’s diary he played tennis, went mustering and enjoyed dancing at night during his time at Coochin. Some versions of local history claim there was an assassination attempt on the Prince by a drunk but there were no mentions of this in Gertrude’s diaries.

The Queen Mother visited Coochin in 1958,

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Queensland State Archives posted a photo:

Gertrude Bell is affectionaly known as ‘Granny’ by the current resident Bells. She is Tim Bell’s great grandmother and her candid and extensive diaries have given an insight into life at Coochin in those early days.

Before taking the name Bell, she was Gertrude Norton and lived in a large and affluent home at Darling Point in Sydney. She was just 18 when she met James at a garden party in Sydney. He was in town on business and for 10 days he romanced the much younger Gertrude. On his final day in Sydney the then 35-year-old proposed to Gertrude. She accepted.

Between 1875 and 1882 Gertrude and James lived at Camboon, the family cattle property in central Queensland. Gertrude initially found the remote location difficult to take; she had been an eager and willing participant of the Sydney social scene prior to marrying.

While living at Camboon,

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Coochin Coochin homestead is one of the Scenic Rim’s oldest homes, and for the past 110 years it has been maintained by the Bell Family.

The Coochin Coochin story has its beginnings in 1842 when the 120,000 acre property was first established. This sprawling run stretched from the outskirts of the town of Boonah, south to the New South Wales border, and west to the Mt Alford range.

David Hunter applied for the first grazing lease in September 1842 and named the area Dulhunty Plains, apparently after a ‘very well respected Sydney family’.

By 1870 Thomas Alford was the owner-manager of the property which was now known as Coochin Coochin, meaning ‘Many black swans’, because there were many swans living on the large lagoon.

He moved the Coochin homestead to its existing site in the centre of the property, high on the hill to avoid floods, and from where

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East Talgai.

After bounding along by railway from Warwick for a distance of seventeen miles, we debark at a rustic siding known as Clark’s Crossing, the guard having previously admonished that there was a passenger for that point. At this place we are in the immediate vicinity of East Talgai, a name and locality too well known to all breeders of sheep to need any description here.
…
Before, however, proceeding with a history of the famous flocks at Talgai, it may not be uninteresting to state that the boundaries of this property extend down to the township of Allora, away to Headington Hill and the Clifton homestead, and back by Mr. Hanmer’s Talgai, &c. It embraces 32,000 acres of purchased land, and not an inch of Crown Land is included. At the time this property was taken up by the present proprietary, some fourteen years ago, it

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William and Jane White and their two children emigrated from Ireland to Sydney as assisted immigrants in 1840. When he arrived in Australia, William assumed his grandmother’s maiden name as a second christian name, and became known thereafter as William Duckett White. From 1842-44 White taught school in the Mangrove area north of Sydney until accepting an offer in 1845 to manage the Beau Desert run in the Moreton Bay District for his cousin Joseph Phelps Robinson. When Robinson died in 1848, his brother George Robinson and W.D. White took over the lease of Beau Desert, one of the largest runs on the Logan. In 1857, White left Beau Desert under the management of his son Ernest White and William, and with his wife Jane and their daughter Helena moved to Eagle Farm near Brisbane.

Description source: Wikipedia

Image source: Queensland State Archives, Digital Image ID 5735

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Brigalow Wheat Harvesting Daily

A heavy storm, yielding approximately 63 points, passed over the Brigalow district about mid-night on Wednesday night.
The rain delayed most harvest operations as several farmers in the district had expected to commence harvesting on Thursday last.
Most of the wheat crops are flat on the ground as a result of the heavy four-inch falls earlier in October.
Some farmers are expecting heavy yields from some of their crops.
Within the next week or so it is expected that harvesting will be in full swing in the Brigalow district. One of the first crops to be harvested has yielded 16 to 16 1/2 bags per acre.
Mosquitoes are proving very troublesome in the Brigalow district, and it is expected that the district will be plagued with them all the summer as all the melon holes are full of water and will provide “excellent” breeding grounds. Insects are

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Queensland State Archives posted a photo:

The Homestead.

In nearly every farming district there are to be observed farm homesteads that gladden the eye and the heart, and others that are most depressing to look at (says the “Agricultural Gazette”).
In practically every part of this prolific land, it is not a question of momentary outlay that governs the difference between a comfortable and beautiful little home and a miserably bare one.
It is just a matter of personal taste, and if the old folks will not improve the place in the thousand and one inexpensive ways possible for their own sakes, they certainly should do so for the sake of the little ones.
One may often see a settler in the slack time spending hours and hours chopping a rabbit out of a great log, when the same amount of time and energy spent round the homestead would result in paving

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