Category: Queensland State Archives’ Photostream About Fortitude Valley

Queensland State Archives posted a photo:

Abandoned homesteads from the 1880s still remain, such as Eulolo on the Gilliart River with its separate cookhouse and many outbuildings or Nelia Ponds on the Flinders River – both main homestead buildings prefabricated and carted there by bullock drays. Rockvale has buildings from every period, while some components like wool bins were moved to different properties as occurred with those from Peak Downs in the 1860s going to Cubaroo and remaining in use until 200. The associated stock routes between stations contain in situ heritage such as cast iron stock route signs, yards, bores, mills and tanks, which all require heritage protection.

Patterns largely remained until the mid 1960s when social and economic changes caused a slow but obvious drift away from the bush and a new pastoral framework formed with larger scale corporate ownerhsip, less labour and increased mechanical assistance. Granting equal pay to

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Queensland State Archives posted a photo:

Station Life

Replenishing the medicine chest on the homestead was very important and a variety of drugs were in common use. Laudanum for pain, chlorodyne for diarrhoea, drugs that are not available today because they are considered too dangerous to be used by the medically untrained; ‘fever mixture’, Epsom salts and eye lotion were ordered, simple remedies for the most common ailments.

Popular proprietary lines of the day such as Holloway Ointment and Holloway Pills for the treatment of inveterate ulcers, bad legs, sore breasts, sore hands, gout and rheumatism’ were kept on hand. These all purpose, internal and external applications were supplied in very attractive little ceramic pots of various shapes and sizes. Packaging was important even in those days.

For these runs, so far away from medical servies, serious illness or accidents had to be borne with stoicism and such home nursing as might be provided

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Queensland State Archives posted a photo:

Pastoralism has left a physical heritage from the initial squatting period of the 1840s to the present day. These homestead complexes are located across the State and vary from those now on the outskirts of expanding cities like Rockhampton, Toowoomba and the metropolitan sprawl of southeast Queensland to the remote (Thallon) and very remote (Birdsville). There are also many places with a richly layered history but the physical heritage values are no longer intact due to relocation, adandonment, fire, vandalism and ultimately decay.
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Colonial buildings include Cressbrook, Tarong, Gracemere, Nindooinbah, Burrandowan, Eidsvold, Booubyjan, Kilcoy, Canning Downs, Mount Abundance. Few survive after World War I when lightweight prefabrication and materials had an impact on rural homestead maintenance and new designs. Interestingly, the tradition of slab building continued because of the shortage of manpower and materials during World War I as illustrated by the sawn timber slab construction

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Mount Margaret Station

Mount Margaret Station is a pastoral lease that operates as a sheep station and more recently as a cattle station. It is located about 98 kilometres west of Quilpie and 177 kilometres south of Windorah in Queensland. The property has extensive and reliable water supply with 80 kilometres of double frontage on the Wilson River and associated creeks.

Mount Margaret was once Queensland’s and Australia’s largest sheep station, occupying an area of 599,000 hectares (1,480,161 acres) which makes it larger than the nation of Brunei. The station was sold in 2010 for $12 million; it was free of stock at the time but included all plant and equipment and was sold to New South Wales cattle producer Kilburnie Pastoral Co.

In 1937 the Peel River Pastoral Company who had acquired the station in 1925 sold the property for £50,000 to the Killeen Brothers; at this

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Laying Out A Homestead.

Independently altogether of the style of architecture adopted, says the “Sydney Morning Herald,” a great deal of skill may be exercised in laying out a new country homestead. When the settler makes a start in the country for the first time, he frequently commits great blunders for which he is sorry afterwards, but takes good care not to repeat them should he happen to move to a new selection a second or even a third time.
The way in which a man arranges his buildings and fences is generally a good or bad omen of his future success and prosperity. If you see a selector commence operations on a new building by planting a shed here, another there, and the next anywhere, depend upon it he is lacking in the qualities which go to make a successful farmer.
It is not always

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Climbing Plants In The Homestead Garden.

The growing of climbing plants is a subject to which, as a rule, a great deal of thought is not given by the home homesteader, and although we often see these plants about that are more or less taken as a matter of course and until seen gay with bloom are practically forgotten or unattended.
There are many beautiful flowers in this group of plants, and the uses to which they can be put are many and varied. There are, for instance, amonsts these plants those which will cling to walls, fences, and other subjects without the aid of wire and other supports, while others needs something through which to twine their growth to keep them up.
Some of the uses to which these plants can be put are the covering of unsightly out-buildings, or fences, or the sides of walls where

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Trees On The Farm

Shelter belts about the homestead serve a dual purpose. They increase the comfort of the dwelling, making it a much more pleasant place to live in, and also provide a much more attractive setting or background for the buildings. They may also be used for screening off unsightly buildings, stockyards, and other places.
Very little attention is usually given to the planning of the homestead and its surroundings, but consideration of the needs of the locality, combined with a proper tree planting scheme, would add considerably to the comfort of the one and benefit of the others. For instance, where ground is not expensive, a 5-acre timber reserve could be planted on the western side of the homestead. This would not only cut off the bleak or hot westerlies, but would form a source of timber supply for all farm needs, apart from

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“Away Down South”
(From A Correspondent).

Pimpama, August 10 – Very little concerning the doings in this thriving neighborhood appears in your columns, but perhaps a few remarks will not be out of place. It is little use commenting upon the state of the weather or the crops, for we all know how sharp the frosts have been, so I will, with your permission, cut that subject short until it gets warmer.
I am very glad to find that selectors are at last mustering courage to explore the upper regions of this and the Hotham river, where an abundance of good land is to be had. There have been a good many homesteads and some larger blocks taken up lately, and I trust that in the course of two or three years, this will be as flourishing a district as any in the colony ; but of course,

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Retro Station For Grain.

Clermont, May 21 – The Australian Mercantile Land and Finance Company’s property, Retro, 18 miles east of Clermont, has been acquired by the Queensland British Food Corporation.
Retro contains 71,600 acres freehold and joins Peak Downs grain farm.
Retro was originally taken up by Messrs. Archer, of Gracemere, in 1855, then it passed to Mr. Gordon Sandeman and was working as an outstation of Gordon Downs. R Towns and Company were the next proprietors and the station was formed in 1870. The only improvements then were a hut and a horse paddock. The homestead, wool shed and fencing were all erected in 1870.
Retro then contained 200 square miles, 62,500 acres freehold being acquired by preemptive rights or auction, the remainder being held under lease. Retro then carried 72,000 sheep, but marsupials were very troublesome and 70 miles of wire netting were erected, at an

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The station homestead was an important landscape feature that assisted the establishment and survival of the Queensland pastoral industry and the community of people associated with the industry. As the physical buildings are abandoned, deteriorate and are demolished over time, the survival of the remaining homesteads is under threat.

A ‘homestead’ is the main house or head statino on a large landholding running livestock, together with its associated outbuildings. These homesteads with their cluster of buildings resembled small villages. Queensland pastoral settlement was initiated by expansion from New South Wales to the Darling Downs and by 1844 there were 30 squatting stations. Some of these like Canning Downs and Coochin Coochin were painted by Sydney artist Conrad Martens in the late 1850s.

Following separation from New South Wales in 1859, rapid expansion occured west into the Maranoa and Warrego, then north into Mitchell and Burke districts. After

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