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