Carcory Homestead comprises the shell of a cottage constructed of limestone, also evident in the surrounding landscape. It is located 100 metres to the east of the Birdsville-Bedourie Road 80 kilometres north of Birdsville.
The walls are constructed of squared rubble, approximately 45 cm thick, rendered and scribed externally to imitate ashlar. A stone chimney remains at the northern end. The front (eastern) wall is of unrendered stone with irregular pointing. The window, doors and corners of this wall are rendered to resemble stone quoins.
Internally, the walls are plastered and floors are of concrete. The remains of a fireplace, window frames and doorframe heads are evident.
Piles of stones on the western side of the homestead building may be the remains of outbuildings. Evidence also exists of cattle yards approximately seventy-five metres further west.
","history":"The Carcory Homestead Ruin (also spelt as Carcoory and Cacoory) is a roofless stone structure located on the northern end of Roseberth Station, eighty kilometres north of Birdsville.
Thomas Mitchell made the first exploration of the area in which Carcory Homestead is located in 1845. Explorers Burke and Wills made further investigations in 1861, and it was while searching for them that intensive exploration of the region was first undertaken. In the 1870s, this region comprised some of the last remaining unclaimed land in Queensland.
The land on which Carcory Homestead is located is believed to have been taken up about in the late 1870s as a pastoral run.
The date of construction of this homestead is unknown, although buildings of a similar construction are found in central Australia as far south as Robe in South Australia and as far north as Boulia in Queensland. They are of significance for their illustration of a vernacular style that spread throughout central Australia, across South Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland. The origin of the style is unknown, but the architectural characteristics are immediately identifiable: built of stone with wide verandahs, they efficiently control the extremes of temperature in the hot arid interior of the continent. Where no local timber was available, and distance and the lack of good access roads or a railway created prohibitively high transportation costs.
The homestead was positioned near Carcory Waterhole and the major stock route through Birdsville. It consisted of two main rooms under a hipped roof, probably used as a bedroom and a living room with a chimney, and a skillion roofed second bedroom and store forming wings to the rear. It had an awning supported by posts at the front and was built of blocks of local limestone rendered inside and out. A stone store and kitchen were also built to the west of the house.
Around the turn of the century, Sidney Kidman, a pastoralist of humble beginnings who by 1890 owned stations stretching from the Gulf of Carpentaria almost to Adelaide, took up the Carcory Run, comprising one thousand square miles. Between 1900 and 1903, the region suffered severe drought conditions and the entire stock of 4000 bullocks perished. After visiting the station in 1902, Kidman decided to close it down, reputedly allowing the mailman to reside in the homestead for eighteen months. When Kidman returned, the place was abandoned and without a roof. The contents were then removed to Annandale Station.
In 1936 a Mr Morton, father of the current owner, took up Carcory. At this stage the building was in a ruinous condition and it is believed that most recoverable materials were removed from the site for use at Glengyle Station following the First World War.
The building suffered from the effects of the harsh climate and from damage by vandals. The chimney collapsed in about 1992. In 1994 a Queensland Heritage Grant was obtained to allow repair work to be carried out on the remains of the homestead building. The building has been stabilised as a ruin. The roof has not been replaced.
","criteria":"The Carcory Homestead Ruin in far southwest Queensland survives as an important link with early European settlement in this region and as an isolated ruin is demonstrative of the hardships experienced by early settlers. Carcory was established in 1877 as a pastoral run and the homestead ruin demonstrates the development of Queensland by pastoral settlement, later instrumental in the formation of towns.
|The Carcory ruin is a rare surviving example of an early homestead in this area.
|Due to the undeveloped nature of the place, Carcory Homestead Ruin has the potential to yield information through documentary and archaeological research that will contribute to an understanding of Queensland's history.
|The Carcory ruin is a rare surviving example of an early homestead in this area and is valuable as an example of a vernacular style of masonry construction that spread throughout central Australia, across South Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland in the late 19th century. It efficiently controlled the extremes of temperature in the hot, arid interior of the continent and compensated for the lack of locally available timber.
|Carcory Homestead Ruin has aesthetic appeal, derived partly from its form and materials and partly from its setting as an isolated structure in a broad, open landscape. The ruinous state of the homestead complements the desolation of the place.
|Carcory Homestead Ruin has a special association with the community as one of the earliest homesteads in the District.
","criteria_letters":"Criterion A | Criterion B | Criterion C | Criterion D | Criterion E | Criterion G","criteria_definitions":"The place is important in demonstrating the evolution or pattern of Queensland's history | The place demonstrates rare, uncommon or endangered aspects of Queensland's cultural heritage | The place has potential to yield information that will contribute to an understanding of Queensland's history | The place is important in demonstrating the principal characteristics of a particular class of cultural places | The place is important because of its aesthetic significance | The place has a strong or special association with a particular community or cultural group for social, cultural or spiritual reasons"}, {"heritage_type":"State Heritage","site_id":15234,"place_ref":600459,"name":"Royal Hotel/Australian Inland Mission Hospital (former)","alternate_name":"Birdsville Nursing Home | AIM Hostel","street_address":"Adelaide Street","suburb":"BIRDSVILLE","lga":"DIAMANTINA SHIRE COUNCIL","register_entry_date":"1992-10-21","description":"The site occupies an area of approximately 0.2 hectares and is located on the southeast corner of Adelaide and Frew Streets in Birdsville. It faces Adelaide Street, the main street in town, along a 40 metre frontage.
The hotel complex was at some period substantially larger than is indicated by the remaining buildings on the site. Remnants of the footings of some earlier stone buildings are in evidence, as is an unusual paving of upturned stoneware bottles. There is also some evidence of footings of timber structures on the site.
The remaining building on the site is a single-storeyed, L-shaped stone structure roofed partially with corrugated iron. It has corrugated iron roofed verandahs supported on bush timber posts on the two street elevations. There is some evidence that an earlier verandah was attached to the building face by a timber plate fixed to the stone walling. A false fascia wired to the verandah bressumer shows evidence of original sign writing. On the north fascia this reads: Best Brands - ROYAL HOTEL- Ales, Wines, Spirits, etc. On the west fascia part of the word ROYAL can be deciphered. Despite the collapse of parts of this structure, the original planning and detail remains. It is possible to locate original door and window openings and to determine original finishes, fittings and detail and to deduce the stages in which the building may be been constructed. Walls are laid either as random rubble, or as squared rubble built to courses, both of which use an exceptionally soft mortar. The walls are rendered internally and may also have been rendered externally at some period.
To the south of the main building are the remains of footings of a stone building originally attached to the main structure by a covered way. To the east are remnants of a further extension of the large room to the southern wing. At the eastern side of the site are footings of a series of stone cellular structures which may have been an accommodation wing.
Closer to the main building is evidence of a more recent small timber and corrugated iron structure , which may have been a bathroom.
","history":"This singled-storeyed sandstone building is thought to have been erected c1883 as the Royal Hotel, Birdsville.
Although European explorers had passed through the Diamantina district in the 1840s and early 1860s, pastoralists did not occupy this semi-arid region until the mid-1870s when a number of runs were established. In the early 1880s the towns of Birdsville and Bedourie were established to service the newly taken up pastoral holdings of the Diamantina. Birdsville is reputed to have sprung up around a rough depot constructed by general merchant Matthew Flynn in the late 1870s at the site of the present town. It was then known as the Diamantina Crossing and was on the stock route from Boulia south to Adelaide. By mid-1885, when the township of Birdsville was officially surveyed, a number of buildings had already been erected including a police lock-up [1883], Groth's Royal Hotel [c1883], Blair's Birdsville Hotel [c1883], Curtain's Tattersalls Hotel, and at least 3 stores and a shop. Diamantina Shire was established in 1883, and its headquarters were at Birdsville until moved to Bedourie in 1953.
The name Birdsville was not adopted until the 1885 survey, and is thought to have been suggested by Robert Frew, owner of Pandie Pandie Station, who also had a store and shop at the Diamantina Crossing, in reference to the profuse bird life of the district. The township, over 1,000 miles west of Brisbane and 7 miles north of the Queensland-South Australian border, developed as an administrative centre for police and border customs. Nearly all the trade of the town was with Adelaide, and it became an important marshalling point for cattle being driven south to markets in South Australia. By 1889 the population of Birdsville was 110, and the town had 2 general stores, 3 hotels, a police station, school, 2 blacksmith shops, 2 bakers, a cordial manufacturer, bootmaker, saddler, auctioneer & commission agent, and a number of residences. The population peaked in 1895 at 220.
Almost all the buildings in the town were of local sandstone, there being no local timber available. Distance and the lack of good access roads or a railway created prohibitively high transportation costs, so imported building materials were kept to a minimum. Architecturally, the old stone buildings of Birdsville reflect the associations of the town with the entire central "strip" of the Australian continent. Similar buildings are found as far south as Robe in South Australia and as far north as Boulia in Queensland. They are of significance for their illustration of a vernacular style that spread throughout central Australia, across South Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland. The origin of the style is unknown, but the architectural characteristics are immediately identifiable: built of locally quarried stone with wide verandahs, they efficiently control the extremes of temperature in the hot arid interior of the continent.
The earliest section of the Royal Hotel is likely to have been constructed in 1883, as the first license for this hotel was issued to Alfred William Tucker in that year. In 1885 Tucker transferred the license to Johann H Groth, and on the official survey plan of 1885, the building is marked as Groth's hotel. On 25 January 1886, Groth secured his holding by the purchase of the allotment on which the hotel was located, for £260, and the unimproved allotment adjoining this to the south, for £10. Each block comprised 2 roods. Title to both blocks passed from Groth in 1898, but the building continued to function as an hotel under several proprietors and licensees until the early 1920s. Mrs Alice Maude Scott was the licensee and later owner from c1908 until at least 1920, when title passed to Harry Afford, station manager of Birdsville.
From 1923 to 1937, the Royal Hotel buildings were leased by the Presbyterian Australian Inland Mission [AIM] as their first bush nursing home, or hostel. It was staffed by two nursing sisters, the first two arriving in September 1923. At that time the main building consisted of 6 rooms and was unfurnished. A 1926 photograph shows that parts of two walls of a stone shed at the rear of the hostel had collapsed by this date, and was nicknamed the 'Hole in the Wall Hospital Store'. A c1927 photograph shows an old shed of corrugated-iron also at the rear of the main hostel building.
At that period the AIM was headed by the Rev. Dr John Flynn, who was working toward establishing a flying doctor and air ambulance service for remote central Australia. Such a service could only operate efficiently if it could be contacted quickly, so Flynn experimented with radio as a means of communicating between isolated station properties, the Mission's string of bush hostels [ultimately 13], and the flying doctor/air ambulance. In 1925 he undertook various radio experiments throughout central Australia, including an early attempt at receiving/transmitting from the AIM Hostel in Birdsville. However, it was not until 1929, with Alfred Traeger's invention of the pedal radio, that reliable radio communications were possible for the bush. In September 1929, Traeger installed at the AIM's Birdsville Hostel one of 6 experimental 'transceivers' linked to pedal generators, the others being placed at 4 head stations in far western Queensland and at the Aboriginal Mission at Mornington Island, with base station VJI established at Cloncurry. For the first 18 months, communication was by Morse code, but the system proved enormously popular, and soon revolutionised outback communications. Importantly, Birdsville became reliably connected to the station properties in the Diamantina district, and with the new Aerial Medical Service, established by Flynn in 1928 under the auspices of the AIM, and based at Cloncurry.
In 1934, nursing sisters Edna McLean and Amy Bishop of the AIM's Birdsville Hostel introduced a system of early morning radio calls to the station women in the Diamantina district who had access to radio. It proved highly popular, and although indecorously dubbed the 'Galah Session', is credited with being Australia's first radio talk-back program. Birdsville VKK became the 'Voice of the Diamantina Country'. In 1937 the AIM relinquished the former Royal Hotel premises in Birdsville and moved to a new, purpose-designed hostel just down the road. The old sandstone building was subsequently used for residential purposes, then abandoned, and later partially collapsed. Some restoration work was carried out in 1984, when sections of the collapsed walls were partly reconstructed. Further substantial stabilisation and restoration work was undertaken in 1994.
","criteria":"The former Royal Hotel at Birdsville, erected c1883, survives as an important link with the earliest pastoral settlement in the Diamantina district of far western Queensland. As the Australian Inland Mission's Nursing Home from 1923 to 1937, it has national significance as the first in a string of such bush hospitals in central Australia and is associated with the earliest outback radio communication and the provision of the Flying Doctor Service. Such medical facilities revolutionised life in remote central Australia in the 1920s and 1930s.
|The former Royal Hotel/Australian Inland Mission Hospital is one of only three surviving masonry buildings in Birdsville, the others being the Birdsville Hotel and the police station and courthouse. These contribute significantly to the historic character of the town which, in the last quarter of the 20th century, became a major Queensland tourist attraction.
|It is important in illustrating the principal characteristics of a vernacular style of masonry construction that spread throughout central Australia, across South Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland in the late 19th century, efficiently controlling the extremes of temperature in the hot, arid interior of the continent, and compensating for the lack of locally-available timber.
As the former Royal Hotel, the place has the potential, through archaeological and documentary research, to reveal important information about the design, form and function of far western Queensland hotel complexes of this period, and about the people who erected such buildings.
|In form and detail it has aesthetic qualities valued by the community and is important in defining the Birdsville townscape.
","criteria_letters":"Criterion A | Criterion B | Criterion D | Criterion E","criteria_definitions":"The place is important in demonstrating the evolution or pattern of Queensland's history | The place demonstrates rare, uncommon or endangered aspects of Queensland's cultural heritage | The place is important in demonstrating the principal characteristics of a particular class of cultural places | The place is important because of its aesthetic significance"}, {"heritage_type":"State Heritage","site_id":15235,"place_ref":600460,"name":"Birdsville Aboriginal Tracker’s Hut, Courthouse and Police Complex (former)","alternate_name":"Birdsville Courthouse | Birdsville Courthouse Complex | Birdsville Courthouse, Police Station and Aboriginal Tracker’s Hut","street_address":"23 Macdonald Street","suburb":"BIRDSVILLE","lga":"DIAMANTINA SHIRE COUNCIL","register_entry_date":"1992-10-21","description":"The Birdsville Aboriginal Tracker’s Hut, Courthouse and Police Complex (former) comprises three modest buildings standing on a rectangular (3739m2) site near the centre of Birdsville, a small rural town in far western Queensland. The site is rectangular and flat, largely devoid of vegetation, and the complex is highly visible within the flat, semi-arid Birdsville terrain.
\nFeatures of Birdsville Aboriginal Tracker’s Hut, Courthouse and Police Complex (former) of State-level cultural heritage significance include:
\nSite Layout and Circulation, and Relationships Between Buildings
\nThe layout of the three buildings on the site and site circulation reflect late 19th to mid-20th century court and police operations and the status of these functions during the period. The Courthouse stands at the eastern end of the site, fronting east to Macdonald Street surrounded by a large, fenced, open yard. The Lock-up stands approximately 20m away from the rear (west) of the Courthouse at the western perimeter of the fenced yard, facing the Courthouse. The Aboriginal Tracker’s Hut stands west of the Lock-up, outside the fenced yard approximately 55m from the rear of the Courthouse and facing it.
\nThe Courthouse is built of stone and is the principal building on the site. It is the largest and most prominent from the street, with public access into the front of the building (courtroom) via a short front yard and wide front verandah for public waiting. The Lock-up is a simple, freestanding, brick building at the rear of the yard, visible and accessible from the rear rooms of the courthouse across an open yard without crossing into the public circulation. The Aboriginal Tracker’s Hut is a small, freestanding, timber-framed building, rudimentary, lowest in architectural hierarchy, and furthest away. It stands in an open, arid field, outside the fenced yard, and its circulation path to the complex is not defined.
\nCourthouse (1890, and Police Quarters extension 1896)
\nThe Courthouse is a highly-intact, one-storey, stone building with a timber-framed hip roof clad with corrugated metal sheets. T-shaped in plan, the building comprises a long rectangular courtroom wing at the eastern end with timber-framed verandah on three sides, and a perpendicular rear wing (west) comprising two offices and rear verandah. The roof has lost its ventilation fleche and the rear verandah has been enclosed.
\nExtending off the northern end of the rear wing is the Police Quarters extension (1896), a small gable-roofed stone block of two bedrooms with a northern, timber-framed verandah.
\nOn the western side of the Police Quarters extension is a timber-framed addition (by 1948), accommodating a laundry, bathroom, and toilet.
\nFeatures of the Courthouse of State-level cultural heritage significance include:
\nFeatures of the Courthouse not of State-level cultural heritage significance include:
\nLock-up (1958)
\nThe Lock-up is a small, separate, one-storey brick building standing behind (west of) the Courthouse. It is a slab-on-ground structure that accommodates one cell, a store, and garage.
\nFeatures of the Lock-up of State-level cultural heritage significance include:
\nAboriginal Tracker’s Hut (1948)
\nThe Aboriginal Tracker’s Hut is a small, low-set, one-storey timber-framed structure with a hipped roof standing at a distance to the west of the other buildings.
\nFeatures of the Aboriginal Tracker’s Hut of State-level cultural heritage significance include:
\nThe Birdsville Aboriginal Tracker’s Hut, Courthouse and Police Complex (former), comprises a Courthouse (1890) with an extension for Police and Customs Quarters (1896), an Aboriginal Tracker’s Hut (1948) and a Lock-up (1958). Located within the small town of Birdsville, in far western Queensland, this judiciary complex was the administrative centre for police and border customs along a major stock route from 1890. The site remained in use until the 1980s, and in police ownership until 2021.
\nThe area encompassing Birdsville (Wirrarri) and extending into what is now South Australia is part of the traditional land of the Wangkangurru and Yarluyandi (or Jeljendi) people. Life in the country, subject to cycles of drought and flood, was based around mikiri (desert wells) in the dry times, with travel when water was plentiful. The Wangkangurru and Yarlunyandi people hold knowledge of the mikiri and the Dreaming tracks that cross the desert, and retain connections and duties to care for country.[1]
\nWirrarri was also a meeting place, exchange centre and distribution area for pituri, a hallucinogenic plant containing high levels of nicotine. The country between the Georgina and Mulligan rivers, just north of Wirrarri, was the primary source of pituri, which was used in hunting, ceremonies, and recreationally, and carried in traditional pituri bags.[2] This placed Wirrarri near the centre of an important trade route, with people travelling hundreds of kilometres to the area to exchange high quality stone axes from Cloncurry and Mount Isa, medicines, and seashells for pituri. The route was also important for social and ritual trade, where songs, ceremonies, and knowledge were exchanged.[3]
\nNon-Indigenous expeditions traversed the trade routes across the area that became the Diamantina district in the 1840s and early 1860s. European pastoralists took up large holdings in the semi-arid region from 1876, driving cattle along the traditional trade route. Roads were built on the trade routes, and homesteads and stockyards were often built on Aboriginal campsites.[4] By the late 1870s a store and hotel were reportedly erected at the site of the present town of Birdsville to serve passing travellers, teamsters and drovers, and the pastoral stations in the region. The site was located adjacent to a permanent waterhole on the Diamantina River.[5]
\nIn 1881 a four square mile (1036ha) township reserve was gazetted on the Boundary and Boundary East runs on the Diamantina River.[6] The township, which became known as Birdsville, was officially surveyed in 1885.[7] Land sales in Birdsville town were held in 1886,[8] and the Diamantina Divisional Board was established and based in Birdsville.[9] By 1889 Birdsville boasted a population of 110, with two general stores, three hotels, two blacksmith shops, two bakers, a cordial manufacturer, bootmaker, saddler, auctioneer and commission agent, and a number of residences.[10] The town also managed to raise nearly £200 prize money for its inaugural race day in 1882, reflecting the success of the surrounding pastoral areas.[11]
\nPositioned halfway along the stock route which served stations between the Gulf of Carpentaria and Adelaide, Birdsville became an important marshalling point.[12] Drovers paused for refreshments or waited out poor weather while moving cattle south to Adelaide markets, as Afghan cameleers carried goods north from the Marree railway station in central South Australia to Birdsville, along what quickly became known as the Birdsville Track.[13] In 1883 a customs post was opened at Birdsville, the westernmost of 14 border posts established in Queensland before Federation to maintain tariff walls between the colonies.[14] Located just 11 kilometres north of the border with South Australia, along the busy stock route, the Birdsville post was an important administrative centre for border customs. A customs officer was officially appointed in 1885.[15]
\nFollowing violent clashes between Indigenous people and pastoralists in the region in the 1870s, the Queensland Government prioritised the establishment of a police force at the remote Birdsville settlement.[16] The first purpose-built police station and gaol was built in 1884, and a sergeant, two constables, and an Aboriginal tracker were despatched to Birdsville in September 1884.[17] A five-acre (2.02ha) police reserve at the western boundary of the town, surrounded by Macdonald, Adelaide and Graham Streets, was gazetted in December 1885.[18]
\nWhile crime levels in Birdsville were generally low, serious offenders like horse thieves had to be transported for trial to Winton, more than 600km away.[19] Civil matters and misdemeanours required attention at the nearest court of petty sessions, located more than 300km north in Boulia.[20] After complaints from residents,[21] the situation was partially resolved in 1884, when Birdsville was gazetted as a place where courts of petty sessions could be held. Police Sergeant McDonald was appointed as the acting court clerk.[22] A police magistrate was appointed in January 1885, and in later years the role was coupled with clerk of petty sessions or customs officer.[23]
\nThe population of Birdsville peaked in 1895 at 220. Following Federation, the Birdsville customs depot was closed and the population slowly dwindled to approximately 50 throughout the 1950s. The livestock trade continued to be the primary industry of the town but in the last quarter of 20th century and with the growth in popularity of the Birdsville Races, tourism became the primary economic driver. In 2011 the population had risen to around 280, swelling to around 6000 for the 12 days of the racing carnival, but in 2016 the reported population had dropped to 140.[24]
\nCourthouse and Police Station (1890, 1896)
\nDespite the town’s small population and infrequent need for a court, the Queensland Government built a courthouse at Birdsville as a symbol of authority and to convey the sense that this small settlement on the edge of a vast inland desert was part of a civilised society.[25] When Queensland became a separate colony in 1859, it had only five courthouses: at Ipswich (QHR 600575), Gayndah, Dalby, Maryborough, and Rockhampton. The new Queensland Government prioritised construction of courthouses, erecting 145 across the colony over the following four decades. These buildings ranged from basic slab construction such as at Clermont (1861) to the substantial masonry Supreme Court in Brisbane (1877, not extant). In the late 1870s the Colonial Architect, Francis Drummond Greville Stanley developed a standard plan for courthouses that could be easily adapted for local circumstances.[26]
\nThe period 1875-1890 was one of unparalleled activity in the construction of courthouses in Queensland. Eighty-five courthouses were erected, most of them timber buildings based on Stanley’s standard plan. Examples include courthouses at St Lawrence (1878, QHR 601152), Port Douglas (1879, QHR 600465), Nebo (1883), Croydon (1887, QHR 601153), Tambo (1888, QHR 600834), Cloncurry (1897, QHR 600415) and Childers (1897, QHR 600620). As Queensland experienced economic prosperity, specific designs were developed for new masonry court buildings in large centres, including Brisbane (1877), Toowoomba (1877, QHR 600848), Maryborough (1877, QHR 600714), Townsville (1876, QHR 600929), Bowen (1880, QHR 600044), Bundaberg (1882, QHR 601762), Charters Towers (1887, QHR 600403), Rockhampton (1887, QHR 600795) and Warwick (1887, QHR 600948).[27]
\nTenders for Birdsville’s courthouse were invited in April 1888.[28] Initially the contract was awarded to Henry Walton, for £840,[29] but by mid-1889 Walton was unable to continue,[30] and James Wookey completed construction.[31] The courthouse was completed in 1890 at a total cost of £933. It was positioned at the north-eastern corner of the police reserve, adjacent to the existing police barracks. It was constructed to the standard plan, which provided a courtroom of 30ft x 18ft (9.1m x 5.4m) surrounded by verandahs on three sides. Two offices were located at the rear and had a separate rear verandah.[32] £14 was expended on courthouse furniture, though it had not arrived in the town by 1891.[33]
\nUnlike most of the standard plan courthouses, Birdsville’s was built of locally-quarried stone rather than timber, which was unavailable in the region. Distance and the lack of reliable access roads or a railway created prohibitively high transportation costs, so imported building materials were kept to a minimum.[34] Most of Birdsville’s buildings were constructed of local sandstone, a quarry having opened near the town in 1886. [35] Stone construction was generally adopted in the 19th century throughout a large area of central Australia including the northern parts of South Australia and the southern parts of the Northern Territory.[36] Surviving (or semi-extant) Queensland examples include Birdsville’s Royal Hotel (QHR 600459) and Birdsville Hotel (QHR 600461), Boulia Stone House (QHR 600039), Noccundra Hotel in Thargomindah (QHR 600361), and the Carcory Homestead ruin (QHR 600458).
\nBy 1892, Birdsville’s ‘commodious courthouse’ was viewed by visitors as ‘the best building in town – stone walls, iron roof, and good floor of flooring boards.’[37] From the outset, the courthouse proved useful beyond its intended function: it was also used to conduct police business and to provide police accommodation, as the adjacent 1885 police barracks was in poor condition. In 1895 the Department of Public Works (DPW) prepared plans for the extension of the courthouse to provide living quarters for the police magistrate and sub-collector of customs, who were fulfilling dual roles as customs officer and clerk of petty sessions respectively. A stone extension was made off the northern side of the rear offices, accommodating two bedrooms and a timber-framed northern verandah. The existing rear offices were used as a dining room and sitting room, with minor reconfiguration of doors and windows. A timber-framed kitchen block was built in the rear yard nearby, connected to the rear verandah via a raised covered walkway.[38] Contractor Wookey was again engaged for the work, which cost £454 and was completed in 1896.[39] The site was later fenced in 1910-11.[40]
\nThe grouping of the courthouse and police facilities followed a common practice in Queensland. Similar complexes were built at towns including Toowoomba, Croydon, Bundaberg, Ravenswood, Mount Morgan, and Roma. The co-location of police and court buildings had numerous advantages. It allowed the entire justice process from arrest to trial to be provided expediently on a single site, facilitated prisoner management for police, and kept alleged criminals from the public. Onsite, buildings and fencing were carefully arranged to separate police officers’ families from the prisoners’ pathway from lock-up to court, though due to the low crime rate, this proved largely unnecessary in Birdsville.[41]
\nBirdsville’s buildings were subject to storms and other climatic extremes experienced around the Simpson Desert. In 1900, the courthouse additions were reportedly ‘blown away’ in a wind storm; they were replaced later that year, and the walls were strengthened in 1909-10.[42] In 1904 the police barracks building was completely wrecked in storm, leaving the courthouse to take over the police function entirely.[43] In 1938, an earth tremor briefly shook the stone building, causing no damage but leaving a horse bell on the verandah ringing.[44] General repairs were undertaken to the courthouse in the 1900s and 1940s, both by the DPW and the Birdsville police officers.[45] Improvements were made between 1946 and 1951, including enclosing the rear verandah with weatherboards and casement windows (1951), demolishing the kitchen block at the rear, and adding a kitchen fitout to one of the rooms of the Police Quarters extension.[46] By 1948 a small extension had been made to the western side of the Police Quarters extension, which continued the northern verandah roof around on this side and was semi-enclosed. It later accommodated a laundry, bathroom, and WC.[47]
\nThe courthouse continued in use through the 20th century as a combined police station, courthouse, and government office.[48] In the small remote town, with few other buildings and staff, the police undertook additional duties to provide a range of essential services, including agents for the Commonwealth and Clerk Savings banks, Irrigation Department, labour and social services, Stock Inspection, Aboriginal protection, and, following the opening of the Birdsville airstrip, Trans Australian Airlines.[49] The police also played a vital role for visitors. Travellers along the Birdsville Track were required to check in at the Birdsville police station, and the Birdsville police officer would travel into the desert to rescue those who did not turn up at the next checkpoint.[50] Additional police were also stationed at Birdsville during the annual races.
\nThe courthouse was vacated in the 1980s, when a new police residence (1981) and new police station (1988) were built on the southern end of the police reserve.[51] Sessions of the Birdsville Magistrates Court were transferred to the Birdsville State School,[52] and the courthouse provided overflow accommodation for police officers during the week of the annual Birdsville races.[53]
\nAboriginal Tracker’s Hut (1948)
\nIntroduced to Queensland police stations from 1874, Aboriginal trackers were employed to find missing persons, trace criminals, and search for lost or stolen stock. They could trace paths indistinguishable to Europeans, providing vital services in remote and rural areas. Trackers also carried out tasks around the police station, including caring for police animals; the wives of married trackers undertook domestic work at the station. Trackers had become part of the police forces across Australia after first working for Europeans in the 1820s, and the skills of Queensland trackers were particularly renowned. By 1896, 112 trackers were employed across the colony, though numbers varied from year to year. The number of trackers employed by the Queensland Police peaked at 127 in 1900, had fallen to 68 by 1925, and to only 26 by 1952. The last tracker employed by the Queensland Police retired in 2014, ending the 140-year operation.[54]
\nAn Aboriginal tracker was stationed at Birdsville with the initial contingent of police officers in 1884.[55] Over the following seven decades, between one and three trackers at a time were stationed at Birdsville. The Birdsville trackers undertook a range of tasks – one tracker was charged with the care of the station’s camels, which had arrived in 1886 – while their wives performed ‘domestic duties’ at the station.[56] The longest serving trackers, Tracker Billy (served 1885-1905) and Corporal Tommy (served 1905-1952), covered almost the duration of trackers stationed at Birdsville.[57]
\nAs part of their employment, trackers were to be provided with wages, food, and accommodation. Wages were well below the average rate (and later well below the minimum wage), and food was supplied by the officer in charge of the station. Trackers’ wives, though expected to work, were not paid. The standard of accommodation provided varied, from a large brick building at Townsville, to bark huts or storage rooms within the police building. Generally, tracker accommodation was rudimentary and located away from the other police station buildings, reflecting the treatment and status of Aboriginal trackers in the police force. The DPW provided plans for tracker accommodation (called ‘huts’) at Burketown (c1906), Gilbert River (1908), Emerald (1917), Ingham (1927), Thursday Island (1928 and 1954), Toowoomba (1929), Almaden (1934), Cooktown (1935), and Mount Molloy (1936). None of these buildings are known to survive in 2022.[58]
\nFrom 1898 to 1948, the Birdsville trackers were accommodated within a rudimentary hut with mud and stone walls and a galvanised iron roof, located at the rear of the site on the Adelaide Street boundary. In 1948 this was replaced by a simple, timber-framed building, clad on its walls and roof with corrugated metal sheets. The building had a single room 16ft x 11ft (4.8m x 3.3m) with a 2.4m wide awning on the eastern side.[59] It was positioned away from the courthouse and lock-up, outside the fence that enclosed the police site.[60]
\nCorporal Tommy occupied the new building until his retirement in 1952, 47 years after his engagement with the Birdsville police. In his final year of employment he appeared in the documentary Back of Beyond, filmed in 1952 and released in 1954. [61] He was the last Birdsville tracker.[62]
\nThe Birdsville tracker’s hut is a rare surviving example of accommodation provided for Aboriginal trackers employed by the Queensland Police. Other trackers’ huts extant in Queensland in 2022 include the tracker’s hut at Bedourie (QHR 650098), built in 1947 on the police reserve but later moved; and the Normanton trackers’ hut (unknown construction date), on the site of the Normanton Gaol (QHR 601501). The Bedourie hut, 200km north of Birdsville, is similar in form and materials to the Birdsville hut, while the Normanton hut is clad on its walls with timber.[63]
\nIn December 1985, a severe storm badly damaged the Birdsville Aboriginal tracker's hut which, at the time, was being used for storage. The small structure lost sections of the wall and roof but these were reinstated.[64]
\nLock-up (1958)
\nA lock-up had been provided at Birdsville from 1884, though was infrequently used due to the relatively low levels of crime in the area.[65] The original lock-up was replaced by a stone building in 1908.[66] By 1925 it was still standing, but was less than secure.[67] On 14 February 1954, the lock-up was demolished by a whirlwind. A replacement lock-up was ordered but not constructed until 1958. The new lock-up was a single-storey brick structure with a gable roof clad with corrugated iron. Similar to its predecessor, it accommodated a single cell with the addition of a storeroom sized to allow conversion to a second cell (which never eventuated), and garage, and a cell stockade under an awning along the eastern side. It was in use by 1959.[68]
\nIn 1972 the lock-up was reported to be in poor condition. Major repairs and repainting were carried out to the police station, residence, and lock-up in 1974. This included adding electric lighting and a shower to the cell stockade to extend its useful life.[69]
\nOther structures on site
\nIn 1959 an electricity generator and a septic system were installed. A small corrugated iron shed was built in the backyard to house the generator. These structures remain on site in 2022.[70]
\n21st century
\nThe site was transferred to the Diamantina Shire Council in 2021. The former courthouse building was refurbished and converted to an educational tourist attraction. In 2022, the complex retains its Courthouse, Aboriginal Tracker’s Hut, and Lock-up.[71]
","criteria":"Birdsville Aboriginal Tracker’s Hut, Courthouse and Police Complex (former), comprising the Courthouse (1890, with Police Quarters extension 1896), Lock-Up (1958), and Aboriginal Tracker’s Hut (1948), is important in demonstrating the establishment of pastoral occupation in the Diamantina district of far western Queensland in the late 19th century and Birdsville’s pre-Federation role as a border post. It is important in demonstrating the early establishment, evolution, and provision of a judicial system and police force within the region.
\nThe form, materials, and fabrication technique of the Courthouse are important in illustrating building construction in remote areas of Queensland. It is part of the late 19th century earth and stone building tradition of central Australia and western Queensland.
\nThe Aboriginal Tracker’s Hut (1948) is a rare surviving representative example of the standard accommodation provided for Aboriginal trackers in Queensland. It is important in demonstrating the crucial role Aboriginal trackers played in assisting in police work in Queensland, particularly remote areas of western and northern Queensland in the 19th and 20th centuries.
|The Courthouse is a rare surviving 19th century stone building, a building material generally adopted throughout a large area of central Australia and western Queensland in the 19th century, but now rare.
\nThe Aboriginal Tracker’s Hut is exceptional as one of only three known surviving examples of this type of accommodation in Queensland provided for Aboriginal trackers by the Queensland Government between 1874 and the 1950s.
|Birdsville Aboriginal Tracker’s Hut, Courthouse and Police Complex (former) is important in demonstrating the principal characteristics of a justice complex established in the late 19th century in remote Queensland with evolving provision of justice services. Principal characteristics of this class of cultural place retained at Birdsville include: the Courthouse; Police Quarters; Lock-up; Aboriginal Tracker's Hut; and a site layout reflecting the hierarchy of justice administration during its operation.
\nThe Courthouse is a highly intact example of a late 19th century courthouse in regional Queensland and is important in demonstrating the principal characteristics of its class of cultural place. This includes its: prominent central location in the town; design by the Department of Public Works (DPW); use of high quality materials and symmetry in plan and form; verandahs; and rooms laid out to closely reflect the court’s former functions.
\nThe Aboriginal Tracker’s Hut is a rare surviving example of its class of cultural place, and is important in demonstrating the principal characteristics of the accommodation built for Aboriginal trackers in Queensland. This includes its: small size; lone room; low-set, gable-roofed form; timber-framed, single-skin construction clad externally; and bare interior amenity.
|The basic size, form, and materials of the Aboriginal Tracker’s Hut, and its location isolated away from the other buildings evokes a strong response to the living and working conditions of Aboriginal trackers employed across Queensland in the mid-20th century.
|The Birdsville Aboriginal Tracker’s Hut, Courthouse and Police Complex (former) has had a long association connection with the people of Birdsville and the surrounding Diamantina district, having served as the focus for the administration of justice and policing for almost 100 years (1890-1988).
","criteria_letters":"Criterion A | Criterion B | Criterion D | Criterion E | Criterion G","criteria_definitions":"The place is important in demonstrating the evolution or pattern of Queensland's history | The place demonstrates rare, uncommon or endangered aspects of Queensland's cultural heritage | The place is important in demonstrating the principal characteristics of a particular class of cultural places | The place is important because of its aesthetic significance | The place has a strong or special association with a particular community or cultural group for social, cultural or spiritual reasons"}, {"heritage_type":"State Heritage","site_id":15236,"place_ref":600461,"name":"Birdsville Hotel","alternate_name":null,"street_address":"Burt Street","suburb":"BIRDSVILLE","lga":"DIAMANTINA SHIRE COUNCIL","register_entry_date":"1992-10-21","description":"The Birdsville Hotel is a single-storeyed building constructed of local stone rendered and scribed. It has elevations to Burt and Adelaide Streets and the corner of the building at the street intersections has been truncated marking the original main entrance. The hipped roof is clad with corrugated iron and is concealed by a low masonry parapet raised at the corner to carry the words 'Birdsville Hotel' and 'Established 1884'. An awning of corrugated iron supported by timber posts runs and decorated by a scalloped timber valance runs along the street elevations and is also truncated at the corner. Quoining at the windows and doors is picked out in a dark colour, as it has been since at least the 1920s. There are extensive modern additions including a beer garden and extra bars.
","history":"This singled-storeyed sandstone building was erected c1884 as the Birdsville Hotel, Birdsville, for publican William Blair. Although European explorers had passed through the Diamantina district in the 1840s and early 1860s, pastoralists did not occupy this semi-arid region until the mid-1870s. Annandale, Pandie Pandie, Glengyle and Roseberth were taken up in 1876; Sandringham, Cacoory and Haddon Downs in 1877; and Dubbo Downs in 1878. Monkira, Mt Leonard, Cluny and Coorabulka were other early holdings.
In the early 1880s the towns of Birdsville and Bedourie were established to service the newly taken up pastoral holdings of the Diamantina. Reputedly, a merchant named Matthew Flynn, who carried stores for the stations, built a rough depot in the late 1870s at the site of the present town of Birdsville, then known as the Diamantina Crossing, on the stock route from Boulia south to Adelaide. By mid-1885, when the township of Birdsville was officially surveyed, a number of buildings had been erected at the Diamantina Crossing, including a police lock-up [1883], Groth's Royal Hotel [c1883], Blair's Birdsville Hotel [c1883], Curtain's Tattersalls Hotel, and at least 3 stores and 1 shop. Diamantina Shire was established in 1883, and its headquarters were at Birdsville until moved to Bedourie in 1953.
The name Birdsville was not adopted until the 1885 survey, and is thought to have been suggested by Robert Frew, owner of Pandie Pandie Station, who also had a store and shop at the Diamantina Crossing, in reference to the profuse bird life of the district.
Birdsville, over 1,000 miles west of Brisbane and 7 miles north of the Queensland-South Australian border, developed as an administrative centre for police and border customs. Nearly all the trade of the town was with Adelaide, and it became an important marshalling point for cattle being driven south to markets in South Australia. By 1889 the population of Birdsville was 110, and the town had 2 general stores, 3 hotels, a police station, school, 2 blacksmith shops, 2 bakers, a cordial manufacturer, bootmaker, saddler, auctioneer & commission agent, and a number of residences. The population peaked in 1895 at 220.
Almost all the buildings in the town were of local sandstone, there being no local timber available. Distance and the lack of good access roads or a railway created prohibitively high transportation costs, so imported building materials were kept to a minimum.
The earliest section of the Birdsville Hotel is likely to have been constructed in 1883 [possibly from stone quarried at a site about 16 kilometres from the town], as the first license for this hotel was issued to William Blair in that year. On the official Birdsville town survey plan of mid-1885, the building is marked as Wm Blair's hotel. On 24 February 1886, Blair purchased from the Crown, for £206, the allotment at the corner of Adelaide and Burt streets which contained the hotel. A month earlier he had bought for £12 the allotment at the rear, which contained a fenced yard and had frontages to Burt & Graham streets; also an unimproved allotment adjacent to this, fronting Graham Street, for £8. Each block comprised 2 roods.
Following Blair's death in 1898, title to all three blocks passed to Queensland Trustees [Charles H Morton was the licensee during this period], then to the Hayden family in 1912, the Gaffney family in 1918, and the Dixon family in 1947. The building continues to function as a hotel, and has become nationally famous. With it's longevity, romantic remoteness, and as a focus for festivities associated with the annual Birdsville Races, the Birdsville Hotel has become an outback icon.
It is understood that in 1905 a cyclone destroyed all of the structures on the site other than those constructed in stone. In 1964 the southeast corner of the building collapsed, also as a result of a cyclone. This section was reconstructed c1990-91, although not to original detail. A fire destroyed the front bar, also in 1964; this has been rebuilt. The major changes to the building have been the replacement of the front verandah, additions to the northern end, and reconstruction of the southeast section. Internally, no original finishes appear to exist as the floors have been laid in slate, walls plastered and painted, and ceilings altered. The building however retains its essential character.
","criteria":"The Birdsville Hotel, erected c1884, survives as an important link with the earliest establishment of pastoral settlement in the Diamantina district of far western Queensland.
|The place is rare as one of only three surviving masonry buildings in Birdsville, the others being the c1883 former Royal Hotel and the 1888-90 police station and courthouse. These contribute significantly to the historic character of the town which, in the last quarter of the 20th century, became a principal Queensland tourist attraction.
The Birdsville Hotel is also a rare surviving late 19th century outback hotel, and besides being important in illustrating its type, also has the potential, through physical investigation and documentary research, to reveal important information about the design, form and function of far western Queensland hotel complexes of this period, and about the people who erected such buildings.
|The Birdsville Hotel is also a rare surviving late 19th century outback hotel, and besides being important in illustrating its type, also has the potential, through physical investigation and documentary research, to reveal important information about the design, form and function of far western Queensland hotel complexes of this period, and about the people who erected such buildings.
|The Birdsville Hotel is important in illustrating the principal characteristics of a vernacular style of masonry construction that spread throughout central Australia, across South Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland in the late 19th century, efficiently controlling the extremes of temperature in the hot, arid interior of the continent, and compensating for the lack of locally-available timber.
|The place is rare as one of only three surviving masonry buildings in Birdsville, the others being the c1883 former Royal Hotel and the 1888-90 police station and courthouse. These contribute significantly to the historic character of the town which, in the last quarter of the 20th century, became a principal Queensland tourist attraction.
The place has aesthetic value, and is important in defining the Birdsville townscape.
|The Birdsville Hotel has social value as an outback cultural icon of national significance, a place that has become part of central Australian legend.
","criteria_letters":"Criterion A | Criterion B | Criterion C | Criterion D | Criterion E | Criterion G","criteria_definitions":"The place is important in demonstrating the evolution or pattern of Queensland's history | The place demonstrates rare, uncommon or endangered aspects of Queensland's cultural heritage | The place has potential to yield information that will contribute to an understanding of Queensland's history | The place is important in demonstrating the principal characteristics of a particular class of cultural places | The place is important because of its aesthetic significance | The place has a strong or special association with a particular community or cultural group for social, cultural or spiritual reasons"}, {"heritage_type":"State Heritage","site_id":15237,"place_ref":600462,"name":"Kidman's Tree of Knowledge","alternate_name":"Tree of Knowledge | Kidmans Tree","street_address":"Glengyle Station","suburb":"BEDOURIE","lga":"DIAMANTINA SHIRE COUNCIL","register_entry_date":"1992-10-21","description":"Kidman's Tree of Knowledge (Eucalyptus sp.) is situated on Glengyle Station on the western bank of Eyre Creek, about 60 km south of Bedourie.
It is located in the centre of a grassed square formed by Glengyle homestead and associated buildings and is healthy and mature.
","history":"Kidman's Tree of Knowledge is located on Glengyle Station in Queensland's Diamantina district and has become associated with Sir Sidney Kidman and the vast pastoral empire he established in the Australian interior in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The mature coolibah (Eucalyptus coolibah) is reputedly the tree under which Sidney Kidman camped when contemplating the development of his pastoral empire in western Queensland. Glengyle Station on which the tree is situated subsequently proved to be the most important in Kidman's chain of properties that eventually stretched from the Barkly Tableland through to the Barrier Range in South Australia. However, while Kidman visited and purchased stock from Glengyle he did not acquire the leasehold until 1913.
Although European explorers had passed through the Diamantina district in the 1840s and early 1860s, pastoralists did not occupy this semi-arid region until the mid-1870s. In 1876 Patrick Drinan took up Annandale Station and Duncan McGregor took up Glengyle. Also taken up at this period were Sandringham and Carcory in 1877 and Dubbo Downs in 1878. The towns of Birdsville and Bedourie developed in the late 1870s/early 1880s to service these newly established Channel Country runs.
The Diamantina and Georgina rivers, Cooper and Eyre creeks are part of a network of western Queensland waterways known as the Channel Country. They draw water from an area of 566,000 square kilometres. These systems contain innumerable waterholes of various depth and length that generally last throughout the dry season, however, after rain, the network of rivers, creeks and channels links together, stretching out over a vast floodplain like fingers, hence the name Channel Country. While some of the properties such as Glengyle border the Simpson Desert and have many square kilometres of sand dunes, the natural irrigation following the tropical north wet season means the land is ideal for grazing cattle.
Sidney Kidman was born on 9 May 1857 at Athelstone near Adelaide, the son of English immigrants. At about 13 years of age he left home and made his way north to Poolamacca Station in the Barrier Range where he met up with his brother, George. He acquired work with George Raines, a landless bushman who travelled the countryside taking advantage of unfenced lands where there was good feeding for his stock. It was at this time that Kidman learnt numerous bush survival skills and came to appreciate the knowledge and skills of the Aboriginal people.
In the early 1870s Kidman obtained work on various stations, drove cattle and bullocks, carted goods, opened a butcher's shop at Cobar shortly after the rush started and soon after went into business with his brother droving, buying stock and dealing. They took on mail contracts, ran a butchery in Broken Hill and in the 1890s started buying pastoral leaseholds as Kidman Brothers.
As a young man Sidney Kidman had talked widely with cattlemen about the Australian interior and in his travels buying and selling stock, realised the value of Channel Country land. His aim was to acquire a chain of properties so that in times of drought cattle could be moved from properties badly affected to areas with good grass. Eventually Kidman acquired two strings of properties. The first or 'main chain' stretched from the Barkly Tablelands near the Gulf of Carpentaria down through the Channel Country of western Queensland and along the Birdsville Track to the rail head at Maree in South Australia. The second chain of stations followed the Overland Telegraph line from the Fitzroy River and Victoria River Downs Station in the north to Wilpenia Station in the Flinders Ranges near Adelaide. The development of the Kidman empire in Queensland stems from Kidman Brothers' acquisition of Annandale in the Channel Country in 1896.
As result of his acquisitions, his knowledge of the bush and his business acumen Kidman's empire was able to survive the depression of the 1890s and the drought of 1899-1902.
The Pastoralists' Review of 16 September 1903 featured an interview with Sidney Kidman, the 'Cattle King'. It included biographical information about his life and detailed the properties he then owned:
In the Northern Territory: Victoria Downs, with its 45,000 head of cattle, Newcastle Waters, Austral Downs; South Australia: Lake Albert, Eringa, Peake, Macumba, Mount Nor'-West, Clayton, Coongy on the cooper, Pandy Pandy on the Diamantina, Alton Downs; and Queensland: Annandale, Collegwairi, Dubbo, Cartrey, Rocklands, Monkira, Bulla Downs; in New South Wales: Wompah and Tickelara.
Kidman continued to buy properties, buy and sell cattle and horses and manage his properties while almost continuously on the move. He kept abreast of market fluctuations, weather conditions and what was happening on his properties, via the telegraph.
While Kidman abhorred wastefulness and was known to sack employees who exhibited such traits he was also known to be generous to deserving causes. He gained a reputation for munificence to the war effort, his World War One donations including wool, meat, horses, ambulances and warplanes. In monetary terms this patriotic generosity amounted to hundreds of thousands of pounds. In 1921 he was knighted for his contribution to the war effort.
The leasehold to Glengyle Station was transferred several times after Duncan McGregor took up the run in 1876. The London Bank of Australia Limited held the lease until William Frederick Buchanan had purchased the Glengyle Holding by October 1907. Following the death of this Narrabri grazier in 1911 the lease was transferred to William Buchanan and Charles Henry Buchanan.
The 1008½ square mile Glengyle leasehold became part of the Kidman empire in 1913 when he purchased the lease from the Buchanans for £1,575. Kidman had long wanted Glengyle Station for its size and its permanent deep waterholes on the Georgina River, its plains and flats of lignum and saltbush, and its strategic position adjoining his Queensland properties of Sandringham, Kaliduwarry, Dubbo Downs and Annandale. Moreover, Glengyle, between Eyre Creek and the sand hills of the Simpson Desert, did not always need to rely on local rainfall. In good seasons it is drained by channels fed by the northern monsoon. The property proved pivotal to the Kidman holdings in the Lake Eyre Basin and is still held by the family firm S Kidman and Company.
Kidman had married in 1885 and raised a family of 3 daughters and one son in Adelaide. Kidman retired in 1927 but his children continued to run the family business empire from Adelaide. On 2 September 1935, aged 78 years, Sir Sidney Kidman passed away in Adelaide and his only son, Walter Sidney Palethorpe (b.1900) took over as chairman of the Kidman empire.
The Kidman Tree of Knowledge has been described as 'one of the state's most famous living monuments to the king'. It is valued by both the local community and visitors as a tangible link with Sir Sidney Kidman, a pioneer who successfully created a pastoral empire in the vast remote interior of Australia, encompassing approximately 3.5% of the Australian continent.
","criteria":"For the many people who worked for Sir Sidney Kidman and for those who continue to be associated with Kidman Holdings, Kidman's Tree of Knowledge on Glengyle Station is significant for its association with Sir Sidney Kidman. For local people and visitors alike, Kidman's tree of Knowledge is a tangible link with Sir Sidney Kidman, a pioneer who is recognised as having created a successful pastoral empire in the vast remote interior of Australia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
\nThe Tree of Knowledge is significant for its association with prominent Australian pastoralist Sir Sidney Kidman, who through business acumen, knowledge of the land he traversed and hard work, acquired a string of pastoral runs in the Australian interior (in Queensland, New South Wales, Northern Territory and Western Australia), where his stock could be moved from property to property to withstand the impact of drought. Whether Sir Sidney Kidman sat under this Coolibah tree near the Glengyle homestead is not known. It is, however, the perception or mythology of Kidman's association with this tree that is significant.
|For the many people who worked for Sir Sidney Kidman and for those who continue to be associated with Kidman Holdings, Kidman's Tree of Knowledge on Glengyle Station is significant for its association with Sir Sidney Kidman. For local people and visitors alike, Kidman's tree of Knowledge is a tangible link with Sir Sidney Kidman, a pioneer who is recognised as having created a successful pastoral empire in the vast remote interior of Australia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
|The Tree of Knowledge is significant for its association with prominent Australian pastoralist Sir Sidney Kidman, who through business acumen, knowledge of the land he traversed and hard work, acquired a string of pastoral runs in the Australian interior (in Queensland, New South Wales, Northern Territory and Western Australia), where his stock could be moved from property to property to withstand the impact of drought. Whether Sir Sidney Kidman sat under this Coolibah tree near the Glengyle homestead is not known. It is, however, the perception or mythology of Kidman's association with this tree that is significant.
","criteria_letters":"Criterion A | Criterion G | Criterion H","criteria_definitions":"The place is important in demonstrating the evolution or pattern of Queensland's history | The place has a strong or special association with a particular community or cultural group for social, cultural or spiritual reasons | The place has a special association with the life or work of a particular person, group or organisation of importance in Queensland's history"}, {"heritage_type":"State Heritage","site_id":28739,"place_ref":602635,"name":"Australian Inland Mission Hospital (former)","alternate_name":null,"street_address":"Adelaide Street","suburb":"BIRDSVILLE","lga":"DIAMANTINA SHIRE COUNCIL","register_entry_date":"2008-07-17","description":"Located at the eastern end of the main street of Birdsville, Adelaide Street, the former Australian Inland Mission Hospital site comprises the hospital building, former Aboriginal ward, 'billiard room', water tanks, shed and new padre cottage. Of these, the hospital building, former Aboriginal ward and above ground corrugated iron tank and the in-ground concrete water tank are significant.
The north-west facing hospital building is a rectangular structure with a gabled hip roof and is surrounded on three sides by enclosed verandahs. It is constructed on a steel frame with corrugated iron external walls, ripple iron verandah linings, Oregon pine joists and rafters, masonite and tilux internal walls, and caneite ceilings. The foundations and floors are concrete, with linoleum covering most internal floors.
The hospital was designed especially for the inland. Ceilings are well insulated and low to afford maximum space between the ceiling and the iron roof, while air vents in the gables provide roof ventilation. Verandah ceilings have a gap at the eaves to permit air flow. The building is equipped with a cool storage cellar under the kitchen, an underground tank for rain (drinking) water and an above ground tank for town water, which was previously drawn from the Diamantina River and now from an artesian bore. On the roof at the rear of the building is a communications aerial.
Entrance is central, via a covered walkway from the front gate onto the enclosed verandah that is built-in at both ends. Central French doors lead into a chapel. On the chapel's left hand side are two wards, both with single door access onto the front verandah. On the right hand side of the chapel are a pantry and an L-shaped kitchen. From the kitchen, stairs lead to the cellar. Double doors through a partition wall lead from the kitchen to the central pavilion. At the eastern end of the pavilion are three rooms designated as nurses' quarters with a common lounge room on the southern side of the pavilion. Western and southern verandahs have been enclosed to accommodate bathrooms and cupboards, while a cold room is located near the kitchen on the northern end of the western verandah. On the eastern end of the northern verandah a bathroom has been added.
The former Aboriginal ward is located at the rear of the former hospital near the property's south-east boundary. This corrugated iron-clad, steel-framed, gable-roofed building consists of an open verandah, two wards and an enclosed rear verandah along the long axis of the building, approximately east-west. Hinged, corrugated iron shutters cover the window openings.
Other buildings on the site include a separate gabled building on the north-west corner of the former hospital, now used as a billiard room; a new Padre Cottage; and an iron-clad shed used for storage and containing toilet facilities. These are not regarded as significant being relatively new structures. Other outbuildings have been demolished.
","history":"Located in Adelaide Street, Birdsville, the single-storeyed, prefabricated steel, Australian Inland Mission Hospital building was erected in 1952-1953 on the site of its predecessor, which burnt down in November 1951. An Australian Inland Mission bush nursing home or hostel was established at Birdsville in 1923 in the former Royal Hotel building [QHR600459] the first mission hostel in Queensland and the seventh in Australia. It was replaced by a purpose-built, pre-fabricated hospital opened in 1937 on land purchased by the Presbyterian Church.
Although European explorers had passed through the Diamantina district in the 1840s and early 1860s, this semi-arid region was not occupied until the mid-1870s when a number of pastoral runs were established. In the early 1880s the towns of Birdsville and Bedourie developed to service the newly taken up pastoral holdings of the Diamantina. Birdsville, known originally as the Diamantina Crossing, is reputed to have sprung up around a rough depot constructed by general merchant Matthew Flynn in the late 1870s on the stock route from Boulia south to Adelaide. It became the headquarters of Diamantina Shire when the shire was established in 1883. The township was officially surveyed by mid-1885 and the name Birdsville adopted in reference to the profuse bird life of the district. Located over 1,000 miles west of Brisbane and seven miles north of the Queensland-South Australian border Birdsville developed as an administrative centre for police and border customs. Nearly all the trade of the town was with Adelaide, and it became an important marshalling point for cattle being driven south to markets in South Australia. Due to the lack of local timber, the town's remoteness and the lack of good access by roads or rail, which created prohibitively high transportation costs, almost all the town's early buildings were built of local sandstone. The population peaked in 1895 at 220.
The Presbyterian Australian Inland Mission (AIM) leased the Royal Hotel buildings (erected from circa 1883) from 1923 to 1937 as their first bush nursing home, or hostel in Queensland. At that time the AIM was headed by its founder Rev. Dr John Flynn, who was working toward establishing a flying doctor and air ambulance service for remote central Australia. Such a service could only operate efficiently if it could be contacted quickly, which became possible in 1929, with Alfred Traeger's invention of the pedal radio. In August 1929 Traeger installed at the AIM's Birdsville Hostel one of six experimental pedal radios, the others being placed at four head stations in far western Queensland and at the Aboriginal Mission at Mornington Island, with base station VJI established at Cloncurry. The system revolutionised outback communications. Importantly, Birdsville became reliably connected to the station properties in the Diamantina district and with the new Aerial Medical Service, established by Flynn in 1928 under the auspices of the AIM and based at Cloncurry.
By 1930 the Royal Hotel building needed extensive repairs and the AIM decided to erect a purpose-built hospital - more modest than the masonry hospitals erected at Victoria River Downs (circa1923), Innamincka (1923) and Alice Springs (1926). AIM hospitals, previously intended to become district hospitals, changed in purpose after the advent of the flying doctor. Their function changed to that of first-aid posts, with serious cases being evacuated to larger centres. The Birdsville Hospital took years to eventuate. It was not until April 1937 that the purchase of land for the project at the eastern end of Adelaide Street, the main street of Birdsville, was completed. Flynn decided on a pre-fabricated building, designed for the arid conditions, to function as a community house and public hall as well as a hospital. The hospital opened in December 1937, and a separate Aboriginal ward, a simple transverse gabled building with corrugated iron cladding and roof over a steel frame, was added between before 1951.
On 10 November 1951 the AIM Hospital at Birdsville was destroyed by fire thought to be caused when a kerosene refrigerator blew up. Only the Aboriginal ward was spared, but no lives were lost. Within days of the disaster the Charleville Flying Doctor Base flew out medical supplies and rigged an emergency transceiver and aerial to restore communications, while Rev. Les McKay of the AIM Western Queensland Patrol drove from Burketown to begin salvage operations. The ruins of the burnt building were dismantled and temporary accommodation erected out of salvaged material so that services could continue. An emergency hospital was set up in the two small rooms of the Aboriginal ward and a bough shed was constructed adjoining it.
Local people started a subscription for a replacement hospital and a re-building fund appeal was organised. Donations of £100 came from each of the Kidman cattle stations in the area and many other donors Australia-wide. Queensland's Minster for Health promised a pound for pound subsidy, thereby ensuring the project proceeded.
In February 1952 a prefabricated steel building was ordered from the Sidney Williams factory in Sydney. The materials were transported from Sydney by road to Birdsville via Broken Hill, Marree and the Birdsville track a two thousand mile journey. The Rev. Les McKay spent a year in Birdsville assisting with the re-building.
Ben Hargreaves, builder of the 1937 AIM hospital at Birdsville, came out of retirement to undertake construction of the 1952 buidling. A skilled cabinetmaker with outback experience, he constructed the building and made most of the original furniture and fittings, such as cupboards and tables on site, using North Queensland silky oak. Other furniture was of tubular steel, regarded as ideal for bush conditions, while canvas deck chairs lined the front verandah. These were used by outpatients and also for open-air movie shows, church services and other gatherings. Some of the furnishings and equipment were donated for instance, the dispensary was equipped by the Society of St Andrew, Brisbane and the Adelaide pharmaceutical company, Fauldings, gave £100 worth of drugs.
The new hospital was opened on 5 August 1953, having cost £15,000. The opening was a community event for the Diamantina Shire and beyond. The gala event was accompanied by a two-day race meeting and a dance, and attracted the largest crowd the town had ever seen. The opening and dramatic events preceding it were recorded in the movie Diamantina Drama, one of several films produced by the AIM. A reporter from Brisbane's Courier-Mail attended and the ABC broadcast the event in their news the next day, referring to it as 'the miracle at Birdsville'.
As with the former building, the plan incorporated a large central room (pavilion) suitable for public gatherings. The plan and footprint generally followed that of the former building, except that a central entrance has replaced two former front porches. Other rooms include a dispensary, two wards men's and women's, the latter used by the sisters or visitors when not needed for patients; a wireless room-cum lounge with an open fireplace, that once housed the transceiver and a circulating library for the use of local people; a large kitchen with floor to ceiling cupboards and an adjoining pantry; bathrooms, toilets and sisters'accommodation.
Sidney Williams & Co, which prefabricated both the 1937 and 1952 AIM hospitals, was a well-known steel fabrication business. Originally based in Rockhampton, it was active in the prefabrication of metal buildings from the 1890s. The Company began to expand rapidly around the time of the development of its Comet Windmill (c1910) with branches established in Brisbane and Townsville. In 1922 the Company opened a new factory in Sydney which led to the closure of the Brisbane and Rockhampton Works. During World War II the company prefabricated large numbers of 'huts' for the Defence Forces. The Company also established hundreds of offices and agencies throughout Australia to distribute and service its product. A subsidiary of the Company, BOWAS, was established in 1950 as a result of the significant building component of the Company's operations. This company ceased trading in 1976.
From as early as the late 1890s the Company was involved in designing, manufacturing and erecting steel-framed buildings for many purposes including rural and town uses. The Company promoted their buildings as being white ant proof, fire proof, hygienic, long lasting and easily dismantled and erected on another site. Their so-called 'ordinary buildings' were those individually designed to meet the specific client's needs. The whole of the frame was erected in the factory yard with all the joints being marked. The structure was then dismantled and packaged for shipment to the site for re-erection. There was extensive use of their locally-manufactured, prefabricated metal buildings throughout the hot, sparsely populated areas of pastoral Queensland and the Northern Territory. Buildings prefabricated by this company included: hangars; Sidney Williams Huts; the Supreme Court complex in Darwin; Christ the King Catholic Church at Tennant Creek; dormitory and school accommodation on Croker Island; and AIM hospitals at Tennant Creek (pre-1937) and at Dunbar on Cape York (circa 1953).
Additional buildings were added to the Birdsville Hospital site over time. The main building was surrounded by a series of detached buildings, including the Aboriginal ward, laundry, electric light plant house (the later two made from materials salvaged from the former hospital building), goat pen, chook house and Old Timers' cottages. These cottages were built in 1963, to accommodate elderly bushmen who wanted to spend their final years in retirement in the precincts of the town. One of these Old Timers' cottages was named the Francis Cottage after Grace Francis, one of the first AIM nurses in Birdsville. Towering behind the building was a tall radio aerial and a windmill, the latter used to generate electricity.
Following the creation of the Uniting Church in Australia in the 1970s, the work of the Presbyterian Australian Inland Mission, the Methodist Inland Mission and the Home Mission of the Congregational Church, was amalgamated as the Uniting Church in Australia Frontier Services. From 1977 to 2005 the Birdsville AIM Hospital was operated by Frontier Services.
Like all AIM hospitals, Birdsville's was intended eventually to be handed over to local control. In 2005 the Australian Inland Mission Hospital at Birdsville closed, after serving as a hospital for 53 years. Its function was taken over by the Diamantina Shire Council, which built a clinic on adjacent land provided by the Uniting Church Frontier Services. The former AIM Hospital remains the property of The Uniting Church in Australia Property Trust (Qld), which holds the land and buildings in trust for Frontier Services, but is now open to the public as the 'Old Birdsville Hospital historical display'.
","criteria":"The former AIM Hospital, Birdsville is a rare example of the AIM hospital service that was established to provide medical aid to the people of remote inland Australia. Of the AIM hospitals built in Queensland at three different locations - Birdsville, Dunbar and Coen, only the Birdsville and Coen hospitals remain.
|The former Australian Inland Mission (AIM) Hospital at Birdsville, demonstrates the continued presence and importance of the AIM to inland Queensland from the establishment of its first Queensland hospital in Birdsville in 1923 (the seventh of its hospitals Australia-wide). The services provided by the Birdsville Hospital were an important component of the AIM's objective of providing a 'mantle of safety' for residents of inland Australia, and this ensured that after a fire destroyed its predecessor in 1951 this hospital replaced it.
|The former AIM Hospital, Birdsville demonstrates the principal characteristics of an AIM hospital viz. a simple building designed for life in inland Australia that comprised wards for patients, a dispensary, kitchen, bathrooms and toilets, and quarters for two nurses including a living room. Under the kitchen was a cellar/basement. Near the hospital were the Aboriginal ward and Old Timers' accommodation and structures necessary to the hospital's operations such as water tanks and communication equipment.
The building is a good example of a Sidney Williams and Co prefabricated building and the company made at least two other AIM hospitals. These buildings were considered ideal for use in remote inland Australia because of ease of transportation and erection, and durability.
|Located in remote south-western Queensland, the former AIM hospital, Birdsville was a place of essential community function upon which people relied, leading to special attachment not only for the Diamantina Shire community but those living beyond Queensland's border. The significance of its community association is evidenced by the Australia-wide fund-raising campaign and subsequent attendance and interest in the building's opening in 1953. The opening was witnessed not only by shire residents, but also by media from Brisbane and filmed by Fox Movietone for the documentary 'Diamantina Drama'. The hospital served as a health facility for 52 years.
|The former AIM Hospital, Birdsville has a special association with the Presbyterian Church's Australian Inland Mission founded by the Rev. Dr John Flynn, which has made an important contribution to the development of medical and community services to inland Queensland since 1923. For 52 years this hospital provided medical services to remote Queensland communities in conjunction with the Royal Flying Doctor Service.
","criteria_letters":"Criterion B | Criterion A | Criterion D | Criterion G | Criterion H","criteria_definitions":"The place demonstrates rare, uncommon or endangered aspects of Queensland's cultural heritage | The place is important in demonstrating the evolution or pattern of Queensland's history | The place is important in demonstrating the principal characteristics of a particular class of cultural places | The place has a strong or special association with a particular community or cultural group for social, cultural or spiritual reasons | The place has a special association with the life or work of a particular person, group or organisation of importance in Queensland's history"}, {"heritage_type":"State Heritage","site_id":33360,"place_ref":602808,"name":"Poeppel Corner","alternate_name":null,"street_address":"South-west Queensland, on border corner with South Australia and Northern Territory Simpson Desert National Park","suburb":"POEPPEL CORNER","lga":"DIAMANTINA SHIRE COUNCIL","register_entry_date":"2012-11-09","description":"Poeppel Corner is the westernmost of Queensland's three south-western corners located at the intersection of the Queensland, South Australia and Northern Territory borders, near Lake Poeppel - a salt lake. It is approximately 300 km west of Haddon Corner [EHP application reference no. 602807] and 450 km north-west of Cameron Corner [EHP application reference no. 802806]. The site is within the Simpson Desert, a vast region in which linear dunes[26] are the main landscape feature. The confluence of 26 degrees S 138 degrees E is between Lake Poeppel (immediately to the west) and a linear dune that trends SSE-NNW a little over half a kilometre to the east. There is a discrepancy of several hundred metres between the specified latitude and longitude and the officially mapped border.[27]
\nLand on the Queensland side of the border is in the Simpson Desert National Park while the South Australian land is part of the Simpson Desert Conservation Park.
","history":"Poeppel Corner, marked in 1880 during the official survey of the western section of the border between Queensland and South Australian undertaken in 1879-80, defines the most westerly corner between Queensland and South Australia. Its marking was a surveying feat of its time.
Letters Patent issued by Queen Victoria in June 1859 separated the new Colony of Queensland from New South Wales (NSW). They described Queensland's border as the watershed from Point Danger (28º8"S) west to the Dumaresq River; the Dumaresq, Macintyre and Barwon Rivers to latitude 29 degrees South; and along latitude 29 degrees South to the 141st meridian of East longitude, which was the eastern boundary of South Australia.[1]
Although legal opinion advised that the 141st meridian was the western boundary of Queensland, Surveyor-General Augustus Charles Gregory believed otherwise. In a memorandum of 28 September 1860 he wrote ‘the western boundary ... appears to be the 141st meridian; but it is probable that it was not described in the Letters Patent erecting the Colony, with greater distinctness, expressly with a view to a future adjustment, when more certain information should have been collected as to the natural features of the country... It is now submitted that the 141st meridian passes through the tract of country known as the ‘Plains of Promise' and that the Eastern shore [of the Gulf of Carpentaria] possesses no harbours. It would therefore be desirable to adopt the 138th meridian as the boundary; as that line would pass through a barren tract of country, and bring ‘Investigator's Road' [an anchorage] within the limits of Queensland.'[2]
Furthermore, expeditions in 1861-62 funded by the South Australian, Victorian and Queensland governments to rescue the missing explorers Burke and Wills, who had failed to return from a journey from Cooper Creek to the Gulf of Carpentaria, led to the exploration of an enormous area of the inland and were predicted to stimulate interest in this previously unknown tract of land beyond Queensland's western boundary. Writing to the Secretary of State for the Colonies on 5 September 1861, the Queensland Governor George Bowen indicated his colony's willingness to protect any settlers so attracted, provided that the western boundary could be extended to include the Gulf. The proposal was accepted on condition that the additional territory could be reclaimed later should another colony be formed in northern Australia.[3]
In response, a despatch dated 14 December 1861 from the Secretary of State for the Colonies advised that the proposed annexation to the 138th Meridian of longitude should be revoked under Act 24 and 25 Victoria, c.44. This immediately provoked a despatch from Sir George Bowen, dated 18 January 1862, stating that Queensland had taken provisional control of this area. Subsequently, on 12 April 1862 Letters Patent were issued describing the accession of ‘so much of our Colony of New South Wales as lies to the northward of the 26th parallel of south latitude and between the 141st and 138th meridian of east longitude...'.[4] Thereby two more corners in Queensland's western boundary were created and the colony acquired part of the Barkly Tableland and the area which later became the Mount Isa mineral field.[5] A revised definition of the extent of Queensland was subsequently proclaimed on 23 June 1862.[6]
In July 1862 Sir Charles Nicholson[7] reported to the Secretary of State for the Colonies that: ‘On the west, the whole of the basin of the ‘Barcoo' for several hundred miles, as far as the 142nd meridian of East longitude, is becoming rapidly occupied by squatters, and the authorised possession of the greater part of it has already, I believe, been secured under pastoral licenses...'.[8] Pastoralists began settling the Cooper and Bulloo country and the adjacent portion of South Australia in 1864 with Bulloo Downs being the first run in the Bulloo area. By the end of the decade the Cooper country was also settled.[9]
During the 1870s, settlement extended west to the Diamantina, Mulligan and Georgina areas. In 1873, the pastoral districts were named - Gregory South comprised the Bulloo and lower Cooper area and the remainder became Gregory North. Initially runs in both districts were stocked with cattle and sheep.[10] By 1885 all available land in Queensland's far south-west had been claimed. This land, comprising the floodplains of the Mulligan, Georgina, Diamantina and Bulloo Rivers and Cooper Creek, which form part of a vast inland drainage system originating in Queensland's central west and north-west and eventually reaching Lake Eyre, became known as Channel Country. During floods, the semi-arid region becomes a network of channels, watering cattle-fattening grasslands.[11]
Agitation by pastoralists in the Cooper region for surveying of the border because of uncertainty as to its position began in the 1870s. In 1877 James McLeod, the new owner of Cullamurra run, applied to the South Australian Commissioner of Crown Lands to have the colony's border surveyed urgently, after finding himself in dispute with his eastern neighbour John Conrick of Nappa Merrie over their station boundaries.[12]
Another factor in the determination of Queensland's borders was the collection of customs duties at the border and establishment of border customs offices. Inter-colonial border duties were introduced in Australia in the 1850s, after the Murray River became the boundary between New South Wales and Victoria. Their introduction demonstrated that the Australian colonies were developing in divergent and independent ways. As each new colony was declared, it established its own customs administration, which was responsible for the collection of lucrative custom duties and the prevention of smuggling.[13]
As the western regions of the colony developed and internal trade routes were established, custom facilities were required along the borders with New South Wales and South Australia. In mid-1862, the Queensland government had assented to the provisions of the New South Wales Border Customs Act, introduced to provide for a mutual Queensland-New South Wales system of collecting customs duties payable on goods crossing their shared border.[14] Queensland's Customs Duties Act 1870 provided the colony with independent legislation to regulate the collection of duties on goods imported from other colonies. A small Customs Border Patrol consisting of a police inspector, sub-inspector and four constables was appointed with powers to collect duties from 1 January 1871. They travelled along the Queensland-New South Wales border, collecting duties and keeping careful records regarding the type and value of goods and the amount of monies collected. They also recommended 11 sites suitable for custom offices and these were later established. Those near the South Australian border were at Beetoota, Birdsville and Oontoo.[15]
The marking of the Queensland-South Australian border was undertaken in 1879-80 by the South Australian Government as the final section of a survey of its border on the 141st meridian, which had started at the Murray River.[16] William Barron was the surveyor chosen to undertake the border survey, but after surveying from the Murray River to Cameron Corner then 90 miles north to Cooper Creek, his health failed and he was forced to return to Adelaide.[17]
Surveyor Augustus Poeppel took over the survey in January 1880, assisted by Lawrence Wells. He arrived at the survey camp at Innaminka on 3 February 1880, spent the following month taking observations and preparing rations and equipment, then on 5 March, with two months' rations and the animals in good condition, the survey team returned to work. They continued the line to the 26th parallel where they met their Queensland colleague Alexander Hutchinson Salmond. Together the surveyors took star observations for latitude to fix the position at 26 degrees S and 141 degrees E (now known as Haddon Corner, named after the nearby pastoral lease). After marking the corner they continued the survey line marking the border with mileposts recording the distance from the surveying starting point at the Murray River.[18]
Then on 30 June 1880 Poeppel and his survey party began the westward survey along the 26th parallel, running a series of 10-mile chords and setting the mileposts on the arc of the parallel by calculated offsets. They experienced many hardships on this section of the survey traversing Australia's most inhospitable country - the vast waterless plains of the Sturt Stony Desert and the salt lakes and sand hills of the Simpson Desert. Their diet was salt beef and damper causing all to develop scurvy. They relied on Aboriginal people to guide them to wells as water was so scarce. They reached the final corner at 26 degrees South 138 degrees East, marking it with a timber post by the end of 1880. Drought forced them to return to Adelaide. Later the South Australian Triangulation Survey reached the border and on checking the mileposts, discovered an error in chainage and the corner post was relocated from the salt lake, Lake Poeppel, to its foreshore. Starting in 1883 Poeppel and Wells began the survey of the Queensland-South Australian border along meridian 141 degrees E.[19]
Augustus Poeppel was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1839, the son of an architect. Emigrating with his family in 1849, he settled in South Australia before moving to Victoria to become a mining surveyor and architect. In 1878, after short periods in New Zealand and Western Australia, Poeppel joined the South Australian Lands Department and was soon appointed to the border surveys. During the Queensland-Northern Territory border survey, from the 142-mile post, he suffered from trachoma and lost 13 kg in weight, forcing his withdrawal in July 1885. His health was broken and he later lost sight in one eye. He retired to Melbourne where he died in 1891 aged 52.[20]
Lawrence Wells, born in 1860 in South Australia, entered that colony's Survey Department in 1878. In the following year, at the age of 23, he joined the border surveys, eventually assisting with almost the entire survey of the Queensland-South Australian- Northern Territory borders, completed in 1886. Later Wells became a well-known explorer, known as ‘the last of the great inland explorers'. In 1891-92 he accompanied the Elder Scientific Exploring Expedition, which discovered the East Murchison goldfield; in 1896 he led the Calvert Scientific Exploring Expedition, investigating northern Western Australia; and in 1903 he led South Australia's North-West Prospecting Expedition. Later Wells held administrative positions in the state and federal public services, and was appointed Order of the British Empire in 1937.[21]
Since the nineteenth century, various explorers of the Simpson Desert have included a visitation to Poeppel Corner. In 1883 the corner was visited by another South Australian surveyor, Charles Winnecke who, after departing from Farina in northern South Australia, headed north-west to Poeppel Corner, later exploring the south-eastern and north-eastern sections of the desert to assess its pastoral potential. Although disappointed with his findings, he travelled deeper into the desert than anyone before him. The next explorer to visit Poeppel Corner came many years later. In 1936, Edmund Albert (Ted) Colson, a pastoralist of Blood Creek Station, near Abminga, in northern South Australia, became the first European to cross the Simpson Desert. Colson crossed from west to east, travelling along the 26th parallel from Mt Etingambara, hoping to locate the Poeppel Corner post and then follow the border mileposts to Birdsville. However, on his eastward journey, Colson missed the post by 300 metres, but located it on his return journey. To record his passing, he photographed it and nailed a tin plate to it bearing the date and his initials. Other explorations across Simpson Desert, notably those by David Lindsay in 1886 and Cecil Madigan in 1939, came close by Poeppel Corner but did not actually visit it. So, it was not until the 1960s that it was visited again, in a series of vehicular crossings made by Dr Reg Sprigg of Geosurveys Australia. By that time the original corner post had deteriorated due to white ants and dry rot, prompting Sprigg to take it to Adelaide for conservation treatment.'[22]
The area was opened up to scientific investigation and tourism by the Sprigg expeditions, together with a well-publicised crossing made in 1966 by the Leyland Brothers which proved that the Simpson Desert was accessible to four-wheel drive vehicles. In 1967 a large part of the desert became protected with the proclamation of South Australia's Simpson Desert Conservation Park and Queensland's Simpson Desert National Park; the latter being extended in 1983. By this time, interest in the desert was increasing, with many people visiting Poeppel Corner. In 1986 the Friends of the Simpson Desert Conservation Park was formed in South Australia to assist with the park's conservation. In 1989 the group erected a replica of the original post at Poeppel Corner.[23] Poeppel Corner is a well-known tourist destination today.
Given the enormous physical difficulties which the surveyors faced in the task, their survey of the Queensland-South Australian border was impressive. Today, we have the Global Positioning System (or GPS) to pinpoint place by longitude and latitude more accurately. It is now apparent that the intended corner between Queensland and South Australia at 26 degrees S 138 degrees E was not achieved. The Poeppel Corner post does not correlate with the confluence of 26 degrees South 138 degrees East as was originally intended. However, the Queensland Boundaries Declaratory Act 1982 confirmed ‘that each land boundary of the State ... as ... defined in the Letters Patent ... by reference to a parallel of latitude or a meridian of longitude is and always has been the boundary ... permanently fixed by marking it upon on the surface of the earth before 1900...'.[24]
The corner post as a survey mark is protected under the Survey and Mapping Infrastructure Act 2003 and the Survey and Mapping Infrastructure Regulation 2004 whereby a person must not interfere with a survey mark unless certain conditions are met.[25]
","criteria":"Poeppel Corner (1880), marking the south-western extension of Queensland's border with South Australia, is important in demonstrating the priority placed on clear border demarcation by the governments of Queensland and South Australia. Set borders were an important part of colonial economic and administrative development, providing certainty for governments and pastoralists, and enabling the collection of customs duties.
Poeppel Corner is the result of early cooperation between Australian colonies and provides lasting evidence of the feat of endurance which marking the Queensland-South Australia border involved.
|Poeppel Corner represents the culmination of a difficult feat of geodetic surveying and is an early application of this branch of surveying in Queensland.
|Poeppel Corner has an important association with the life and career of Augustus Poeppel (1839-91) and Lawrence Allen Wells (1860-1938), who later surveyed the Queensland-Northern Territory border and whose work contributed to the opening-up of outback Australia for European settlement.
|Poeppel Corner is important to the Australian community as a geographical and cultural landmark, and is a well-known tourist attraction.
","criteria_letters":"Criterion A | Criterion F | Criterion H | Criterion G","criteria_definitions":"The place is important in demonstrating the evolution or pattern of Queensland's history | The place is important in demonstrating a high degree of creative or technical achievement at a particular period | The place has a special association with the life or work of a particular person, group or organisation of importance in Queensland's history | The place has a strong or special association with a particular community or cultural group for social, cultural or spiritual reasons"}, {"heritage_type":"State Heritage","site_id":null,"place_ref":650098,"name":"Bedourie Pisé House and Aboriginal Tracker's Hut","alternate_name":"Pise House | Bedourie Mud Hut","street_address":"5 Herbert Street","suburb":"BEDOURIE","lga":"DIAMANTINA SHIRE COUNCIL","register_entry_date":"2019-05-31","description":"The Bedourie Pisé House and Aboriginal Tracker’s Hut occupies a 2133m2 site at the south end of Herbert Street, the main street running through the small west Queensland town of Bedourie. Both are freestanding buildings. The house stands toward the front of the site facing east to the street and the tracker’s hut stands at a distance behind it to the west, facing west, away from the house. A separate structure, the Bathhouse and its lean-to Generator Shed, stands to the rear of the pisé house.
\nThe Pisé House (1897)
\nThe pisé house is a modest, one-storey house. Built directly onto the ground, the building has an earth floor and thick rammed-earth walls forming a rectangular core. The pisé walls are lightly bagged on both sides. It has a timber-framed hip roof clad with corrugated metal sheets, which extends beyond the core to form an encircling, earth-floored verandah with timber posts. The posts and part of the roof framing timber is rudimentary ‘bush timber’ – timber logs and branches stripped of bark and still in the round.
\nThe building is symmetrical and has doors on three sides (southern, eastern, and western) and a large opening on the northern side, which has replaced a fireplace and its chimney in this location. It has no windows.
\nThe interior is a single volume, with no ceiling. A part-height timber-framed partition divides the space into two rooms of unequal size. The partition is dressed timber and is clad with ripple iron sheets.
\nFeatures also of state cultural heritage significance include:
\nFeatures not of state cultural heritage significance are:
\nBathhouse and Generator Shed
\nThe Bathhouse and Generator Shed is a rudimentary, freestanding outbuilding located behind (west) of the pisé house. It is built in two parts: the bathhouse is slightly taller and the generator shed is a lower, lean-to structure. Both are built on the ground with timber-framed walls and shallow skillion roofs, all clad with corrugated metal sheets. The timber framing is basic and minimal and is a combination of bush and dressed timbers. The buildings do not have doors – their entrances face the pisé house and are simply gaps in the wall sheeting. The bathhouse has a concrete slab on ground floor and the generator shed has an earth floor.
\nThe interiors were not inspected.
\nFeatures also of state cultural heritage significance include:
\nFeatures not of state cultural heritage significance are:
\nThe Aboriginal Tracker’s Hut (1947, removed to this site 2011)
\nStanding near the north side of the Bathhouse and Generator Shed is the Aboriginal Tracker’s Hut, a single-room, one-storey, timber-framed structure with a gable roof. It is low-set close to the ground on short timber stumps and the walls and roof are clad with corrugated metal sheets in short lengths. Along the length of the western side, the roof extends to form an awning supported on timber posts set into the ground.
\nThe building has one window opening on each of its four sides. The east-facing window retains a timber-framed surround but does not retain window sashes; it is partly covered with a fixed corrugated metal sheet. The other windows, built without glazing, retain timber-framed awning shutters clad with corrugated metal sheets. It has only one door (timber boards), which faces west.
\nThe interior is unlined on the walls and ceiling.
\nFeatures also of state cultural heritage significance include:
\nOther features on the site
\nAll other buildings, structures, and features on the site are not of state level cultural heritage significance, including:
\nThe Bedourie Pisé House was built in 1897 as the residence of Mary Brodie, local landowner and proprietor of Bedourie’s Royal Hotel. The use of pisé (rammed earth construction) was an uncommon form of building in Queensland. The building was used as a dwelling, a council meeting place and possibly a temporary hotel, but fell into disrepair before being purchased by the Diamantina Shire Council and restored in the early 21st century. Moved to stand behind the Pisé House in 2011, the Aboriginal Tracker’s Hut was built at the Bedourie Police Station in 1947 as lodgings for police tracker Doctor Jack and his wife Norah. The shelter is typical of the accommodation standard built for Aboriginal trackers employed by the Queensland police in the 20th century.
\nThe small, isolated town of Bedourie is located near Eyre Creek in the Channel Country flood plains of central western Queensland, approximately 1,130km west of Rockhampton and 1,182km north of Adelaide. The town is on the edge of the traditional lands of the Wangkamadla, Pitta Pitta, Mithaka, and Wangkangurru people. These people retained important knowledge of soaks, vital in the often dry country, and used the major rivers, particularly the Georgina River, as water supply, travel route, and source of Dreaming stories.[1]
\nThe area now encompassing Bedourie was a meeting place, exchange centre and distribution area for pituri, a hallucinogenic plant containing high levels of nicotine. The country between the Georgina and Mulligan rivers was the primary source of pituri, which was used in hunting, ceremonies, and recreationally. This placed it at the centre of an important trade route, with people travelling hundreds of kilometres to the area to exchange high quality stone axes from Cloncurry and Mount Isa, medicines, and sea shells for pituri. The route was also significant for social and ritual trade, where songs, ceremonies, and knowledge were exchanged.[2]
\nFollowing European expeditions, pastoralists occupied the Channel Country in the 1860s, stocking runs with cattle and sheep from South Australia. From 1884 Afghan cameleers, following the Aboriginal trade routes, transported goods from the newly-opened Maree railway station in central South Australia, along the Channel Country rivers to Birdsville and Cloncurry. Afghan trading towns sprang up near the present sites of Birdsville and Bedourie, supporting camels transporting stores north and drovers moving stock south to the Adelaide sale yards.[3]
\nIn 1886, a township reserve named Bedouri – reputedly meaning ‘dust storm’ – was proclaimed on Eyre Creek. After locals advised of the flooding risk, a new site was chosen further north, on the road from the Gulf of Carpentaria to Adelaide. Situated about two days’ journey from Boulia in the north and Birdsville to the south, the township was one of six small settlements which became important refreshment and supply sites for surrounding pastoral stations and drovers bound for Adelaide. Blackall merchants AJ Haylock and Co established a general store and hotel in the yet-to-be proclaimed and surveyed township, importing building materials to the sparsely vegetated area. The survey of the township, completed in 1888, shows the location of the hotel, its kitchen, stable and horse yards (Allotment 1 of Section 1), and the store (Allotment 2 of Section 1), but no other structures.[4]
\nBedourie developed slowly, with the hotel at its centre. A publican’s licence was issued for the Bedourie hotel, named the Royal, in May 1888, but AJ Haylock and Co advertised the hotel and store for sale or let two months later. The businesses were still unsold in May 1889, when the Bedourie town sites were offered for sale in Birdsville. Eleven allotments, including the hotel, store, and future site of the pisé house, were purchased by Mary Dolan. Born Mary Ballard circa 1858, she had been raised in hotels in Victoria by her twice-widowed mother. In 1883 she married Andrew Carey Dolan, the manager of Breadalbane Station, on the Georgina River, and the couple moved to Birdsville. Andrew Dolan died in 1887, leaving Mary with one child and an £800 estate. The purchase of the Bedourie town land, particularly the hotel and store, enabled Mary to provide an income for herself and her daughter. Mary’s acquisition of the hotel also mirrored a tradition of female publicans in Australia, particularly of widows or deserted wives. Hotel keeping was one of the few occupations women could pursue in the 19th century, allowing childcare from a home base, and granting them legal and economic independence.[5]
\nBy 1891, Mary had become the principal business operator and service provider in Bedourie. Although very few people lived in the town, her hotel served passing drovers, pastoral station occupants, and visiting racegoers who attended Bedourie’s annual horse races, which began in 1887. In addition to being the hotel proprietor, Mary was the town’s postmistress, storekeeper, butcher, and wine and spirit merchant. She also grazed two flocks of sheep around Bedourie, and owned the town’s boat. In 1890, she married John Gray Brodie, of Cluny Station, and the hotel, butcher, store, and wine and spirit businesses were transferred to Brodie from 1892. John Brodie, however, died in January 1895, leaving Mary with a further two children and a third expected. She continued to run the Bedourie businesses, inheriting them along with Brodie’s £500 estate.[6]
\nIn 1897, the value of two of Mary’s previously undeveloped sites (allotments 1 and 2 of section 5), leapt from £60 to £200. The allotments stood opposite the hotel and store on Bedourie’s main street. The hotel and store were destroyed in a storm in October 1897, and the building erected on allotment 1 of section 5 – a small pisé house – may have served as a temporary hotel as well as residence, until a new hotel and store were built in 1898.[7] It featured multiple external doors, and a large room with a fireplace at one end, similar to hotels in remote areas in South Australia.[8]
\nThe house employed an unusual construction method for Queensland, pisé de terre. Often known as pisé or mud construction, pisé de terre is an ancient building method in which loam (earth of low clay content) is rammed into temporary formwork to create rock-like walls. The compaction forces the soil particles together, requiring no additional strengthening. The method was traditionally used in Mediterranean, Central Asian countries, and parts of China, but fell out of use. It was ‘rediscovered’ in France in the mid-18th century, reaching England about 1787, the United States of America around 1810-5 and Australia from the 1820s. It was one of several earthen building construction methods used in Australia, including structures made from mud brick, stones within a mud matrix, cob, adobe, and pisé.[9]
\nWhile not widely used across Queensland, the method of pisé construction proved valuable in western Queensland, where building materials were difficult to come by. The limited vegetation provided insufficient material for construction, and while a sandstone quarry existed near Birdsville, allowing residents there to construct stone buildings, Bedourie, surrounded by desert sandhills and stony desert tableland soils, lacked a local stone cache. Pisé construction had several advantages, being ‘less than one-half the cost of Brick or Wood’, ‘equal in appearance and strength to any stone building’, and its material was ‘always procurable’.[10] Pisé had particular benefits in the arid climate of western Queensland: the buildings were not prone to deterioration, and were ‘cool in summer, warm in winter’. A wide array of pisé buildings were constructed in the Channel Country, including Birdsville’s first hotel; Windorah’s original police station (1884); hotels in Jundah, Windorah, and Canterbury; and homestead buildings at Diamantina Lakes, Cullwilla, Daroo, Palpara, Mornay, St Albans, Toorajumpa, and Monika.[11]
\nThe ease of construction was another advantage, with minimal equipment and expert knowledge needed. Information on erecting pisé buildings was easily procurable in the 1890s, with contemporary publications and newspapers providing detailed, illustrated instructions on the construction process. A pisé building could be constructed by a single person, though ‘a tradesman who understands the principle of the system and the materials’ was recommended. Publications emphasised the strength and durability of the buildings, so long as a large projecting roof was provided to protect the walls from the weather, with verandahs on all sides also recommended.[12]
\nIn 1899, Mary Brodie married her third husband, James Craigie, owner of Alderley station and ‘uncrowned cattle king’ of Boulia. Craigie relocated his business headquarters to Bedourie in April 1900, and Mary’s property was transferred to James in 1901. Mary briefly moved to Winton in 1902, where she owned and operated the Tattersalls Hotel, but returned to Bedourie in 1904. In her absence, the Bedourie Pisé House was leased to the newly-formed Diamantina Shire Council. Council meetings were held in Bedourie until March 1919, likely all in the pisé house.[13]
\nThe house was – and remained – one of the few buildings in Bedourie, which in December 1904 consisted of a public house, store, blacksmith’s shop, a few dwellings, and a police station. A bore was added in 1905. Despite its small size, however, Bedourie’s attractions drew regular visitors. A traveller in October 1910 described Bedourie as a ‘caravansary… an oasis in the desert’ with hospitality courtesy of the Craigie family, and the town was ‘a favourite resort of cattlemen’.[14] The hotel issued its own currency and the large race-going crowds were managed under the watchful eye of publican ‘Mother Bedourie’. ‘Mother Bedourie’ was compared with the ‘Eulo Queen’ Isabel Gray, also a thrice married publican who operated from a pisé building.[15]
\nJames Craigie died in 1912, and his property was transferred to Mary. Mary transferred her southwest Queensland property to pastoralist Sidney Kidman and retired in 1914 to Brisbane, dying there in 1941. Kidman had acquired a wealth of grazing properties along two major droving paths linking Adelaide and northern Australia, giving rise to his reputation as the ‘Cattle King’. By the time he acquired the Bedourie Hotel and pisé house, he was considering retirement. Kidman installed his cattle property manager, George Gaffney, as manager of the Bedourie Hotel, and Gaffney purchased the Pisé House in 1918, with a substantial mortgage of £1375.[16]
\nThe hotel and Pisé House remained in the ownership and occupation of the Gaffney family and descendants (including the Clanchys and Smiths) for the next several decades. The house, known variously as the ‘Mud House’, ‘Mud Hut’, or ‘The Cottage’, was the family’s residence through the school year. The generator shed and timber power poles behind the house were likely added during this time; Bedourie did not receive electricity until 1970, requiring residents to install their own generators to provide power.[17] A bathhouse was also added.[18]
\nIn 1940, the Bedourie Pisé House was recognised as one of the ‘coolest houses in Queensland’, thanks largely to its pisé construction. Postwar building material shortages sparked a revival in the construction form, which had dwindled in the 20th century, as the cost of importing building materials to western Queensland decreased. By 1911, only 61 pisé houses were identified of Queensland’s 125,800 dwellings. Despite the postwar revival, however, the number of Queensland pisé houses did not significantly grow, and weather, neglect or replacement took their toll on the older pisé buildings.[19][20]
\nBedourie grew from the 1950s, with an airstrip, new residences, and a school constructed. The Diamantina Shire Council re-established itself in Bedourie in 1954, building a new shire hall. The Pisé House occupants departed in 1971, and the house was transferred to the Diamantina Shire Council in 1974. The land was resurveyed and in 1996, new land parcels were created to the south of the existing township, contiguous with the site of the Pisé House and the hotel. By 2002, the chimney and fireplace had been removed, the verandahs enclosed with corrugated iron sheets, and the house had fallen into disrepair. The council began repairs and stabilisation works on the Pisé House in 2003. In 2019, the Pisé House site also includes the generator shed and a bathhouse.[21]
\nAboriginal Tracker’s Hut
\nPolicing in the Bedourie district began in 1882 with the opening of the Eyre Creek Native Mounted Police depot. Established in 1848, the Native Mounted Police was an armed retaliatory force engaged to displace and dispossess Aboriginal people of the land that European pastoralists intended to occupy. Aboriginal people had assisted the European expeditions to the Channel Country in the 1840s and 1860s, but in the 1870s, several violent incidents occurred in the district between Boulia and the border, including spearings of Europeans and Aboriginal deaths at the hands of the Burketown Native Police.[22] Pastoralists called for a police force in the area,[23] and the Native Police depot was opened at Eyre Creek, a short distance from the future town of Bedourie. The depot lasted six years, closing in 1888, and was replaced by a permanent police station in 1889. The station building, constructed c1890, was a simple corrugated iron-clad structure which served as the office, accommodation and courthouse. The station was staffed by two constables and two Aboriginal trackers.
\nIntroduced to Queensland police stations from 1874, Aboriginal trackers were engaged to find missing persons, trace criminals, and search for lost or stolen stock. Their abilities allowed them to trace paths indistinguishable to Europeans, providing vital services in remote and rural areas. Trackers had become part of the police forces across Australia after first working for Europeans in the 1820s, and the skills of Queensland trackers were particularly renowned. By 1896, 112 trackers were employed across the colony, though numbers varied from year to year. Most trackers were not local to their station, and from 1900 were drawn primarily from the Fraser Island and Durundur Aboriginal settlements. If married, the tracker’s wife would be employed in domestic work at the police station.[24]
\nThe initial police presence in Bedourie was short lived: only one tracker was recorded in Bedourie with the two constables in 1891, and all three had departed by 1893. In 1895, three police were despatched to Bedourie to re-establish the station, and a tracker was employed again by 1897. In 1900, he was one of 127 trackers engaged by the police in Queensland, the peak of tracker numbers.[25] The tracker’s role in Bedourie was largely deterrent: crime rates in the town were low, with few offences reported in the 19th and 20th centuries. The need for the station was questioned on multiple occasions, but local residents argued that the presence of a police officer and tracker discouraged crime in the remote district, and the station remained open. A series of trackers was employed at Bedourie, helping to locate a murder victim in 1908; a missing man in 1913; cattle in 1925; and a lost theatre troop in 1940.[26]
\nAs part of their employment, trackers were to be provided with wages, food, and accommodation. Wages were well below the average rate (and later well below the minimum wage), and food was supplied by the officer in charge of the station. No standard for accommodation was stipulated, and the accommodation provided across Queensland varied, from not being supplied, to bark huts or storage rooms within the police building, to a large brick building at Townsville. The Department of Public Works provided plans for tracker accommodation (called ‘huts’) at Burketown (c1906), Gilbert River (1908), Emerald (1917), Ingham (1927), Thursday Island (1928 and 1954), Toowoomba (1929), Almaden (1934), Cooktown (1935), and Mount Molloy (1936). None of these buildings appear to survive in 2019.[27]
\nWhen the Bedourie tracker’s position fell vacant in 1934, the police applied for the services of a new tracker. The Bedourie police horses had been transferred due to the lack of water in the area, and a tracker’s service was considered ‘essential’ in the absence of the horses. A 26 year old tracker in Boulia, Doctor Jack, indicated his willingness to take the position, and he was appointed in September 1934. Tracker accommodation had not been supplied at Bedourie, so Doctor Jack constructed a humpy for himself and his wife, Norah, out of bush timber and kerosene tins, which he erected on the police reserve in Bedourie.[28]
\nDoctor Jack had been recommended by the Boulia police as a ‘master horseman and splendid tracker’.[29] Over the next several years, his skills with animals were also recognised; and he was employed around the town on construction and repair work. [30]
\nIn 1945, while requesting verandah extensions to the Bedourie police station, the local constable described the conditions under which Doctor Jack had been living:
\n… there is absolutely no timber or iron in the present Tracker’s Hut, at this Station, which would be of any use in the proposed new hut. The present hut is a humpy… this humpy has been erected many years and is now in very bad state of repair, a lot of the kerosene tins having been blown away and the bush timber has rotted… There is no bucket shower at present supplied for the tracker, whenever the Tracker or his Gin [sic] desires to have a bath they are compelled to walk to the town bore, which is situated approximately half a mile from their camp.[31]
\nArchitectural plans for Bedourie’s new Aboriginal ‘tracker’s quarters’ were drawn in 1946 by the Department of Public Works. The quarters – described in police correspondence as a ‘hut’ – was a small, one-roomed, timber-framed building with a gable roof. It had a 9ft (2.7m) wide earth-floored verandah on one side and its walls and roof were clad with corrugated iron sheets. It was lowset and its single room was 14ft x 12ft (4.2 x 3.6m) with a timber board floor and no internal wall or ceiling linings. It had a single glazed window (casements) and three other window openings, able to be closed with awning-hung shutters of corrugated iron sheets, not window sashes. The hut was built 20 yards (18m) away from the main station building, on what transpired to be land outside the Police Reserve. The hut and police station verandahs built concurrently were erected in 1947 at a cost of £1,025.[32]
\nThe hut was occupied for approximately eight years. In 1954, Doctor Jack, now 50 years old and with a small child to support, requested to resign to take up a better-paying position as a stockman. His request was granted in 1955, and a replacement tracker found. The new tracker, after requesting that a double bed, mattress, mosquito net, and a portable radio be purchased for the hut, resigned in 1956.[33]
\nThe number of trackers employed in the police service had fluctuated through the 20th century, largely for economic reasons: budget cuts (on the part of police), and the availability of better conditions and wages for stockmen (on the part of the trackers). This was also the case at Bedourie, where the tracker’s position had often fallen vacant, but had eventually been refilled. However, tracker employment declined through the mid-20th century, falling to 68 by 1925, 34 by 1943 and 23 by 1958. The Bedourie tracker’s position remained vacant and the hut was offered for sale in 1961. The police station, which had become inadequate for requirements, was replaced at the same time. The old galvanised iron police station building was sold to the Clanchy family and relocated to Kamaran Downs Station. The vacant tracker’s hut was sold to Cedric Smith and removed to Ethabuka Station, northwest of Bedourie.[34]
\nThe tracker’s hut remained on Ethabuka Station until the station was sold to Bush Heritage Australia in 2004. It was sold to the Diamantina Shire Council and relocated to the site of the Pisé House in 2011.[35]
\nThe Aboriginal Tracker’s Hut survives as one of the few tracker’s huts in Queensland. Other trackers’ huts extant in Queensland in 2019 include Birdsville trackers’ hut (built 1948), on the site of the Birdsville Courthouse [QHR 600460], and the Normanton trackers’ hut (unknown construction date), on the site of the Normanton Gaol [QHR 601501]. The Birdsville hut is similar in form and materials to the Bedourie hut, while the Normanton hut is timber-clad.[36]
\nIn 2019, both the Pisé House and the tracker’s hut serve as part of the tourist interpretation of Bedourie.
","criteria":"The Bedourie Pisé House (1897) is important in demonstrating the pattern of settlement along the pastoral trading routes between South Australia and western Queensland in the late 19th century. The Pisé House, the oldest building in Bedourie, reflects the significance of Bedourie as a commercial centre for the central-western district in the late 1880s, and reflects the pattern of early European settlement in far west Queensland. The house’s combination of commercial, residential and civic functions illustrates the rudimentary nature of early non-indigenous settlement in rural Queensland and the resourcefulness of its residents.
\nThe form, materials and fabrication technique of the Pisé House are important in illustrating house construction in remote areas. It is part of the late 19th century earth and stone building tradition of central Australia and western Queensland. The structure represents a variation on the Queensland vernacular ‘tin and timber’ construction to a more massive form, suitable for a harsh climate.
\nWhile removed from its original location, the Aboriginal Tracker’s Hut (1947) is a rare surviving representative example of the standard accommodation provided for Aboriginal trackers in Queensland. It is important in demonstrating the crucial role Aboriginal trackers played in policing Queensland, particularly remote areas of western and northern Queensland in the 19th and 20th centuries.
|Highly intact, the Pisé House provides a rare surviving example of pisé de terre construction, once common in central-western Queensland, where building materials were scarce. The house is one of only five known surviving 19th century pisé buildings in Queensland.
\nThe Aboriginal Tracker’s Hut is exceptional as one of only three known surviving examples of this type of accommodation in Queensland provided for Aboriginal trackers by the Queensland Government between 1874 and the 1950s.
|In its design, materials and construction, the intact Pisé House has the potential to contribute to a greater understanding of the few rare surviving 19th century examples of this built form in remote Queensland. Physical, documentary and contributory analysis could be undertaken to address research questions relating to the social and technical aspects of its construction, occupation and conservation.
|Highly intact, the Pisé House is important in demonstrating the principal characteristics of a remote 19th century Queensland house built in response to harsh conditions and restricted building resources. This includes its: freestanding, hipped roof form and single-storey scale; use of locally-sourced materials for its main structure; simple, steep roof clad with corrugated metal sheets, overhanging for protective shelter; a verandah for additional outdoor living space; and simple interior amenity.
\nThe Aboriginal Tracker’s Hut is a rare surviving example and is important in demonstrating the principal characteristics of the accommodation built for Aboriginal trackers in Queensland. This includes its: small size; lone room; low-set, gable-roofed form; timber-framed, single-skin construction clad externally with no internal lining; and bare interior amenity.
|The pisé house, with its thick earth walls, simple form, verandahs on all sides and a corrugated metal-clad roof, is strikingly simple in the Bedourie town and landscape. Built using local materials, it evokes a sense of the remoteness and isolation of the central western township, while reflecting the resourcefulness of the early European settlers.
\nThe basic size, form and materials of the Aboriginal Tracker’s Hut evokes a strong response to the living and working conditions of Aboriginal trackers employed in across Queensland in the mid-20th century.
|The Pisé House is important for its association with Mary Brodie (formerly Mary Dolan; later Mary Craigie) (c1858-1941), an early businesswoman in central western Queensland, who essentially founded the town of Bedourie. She funded the construction of the pisé house, and, following a tradition of unmarried or widowed female publicans, lived and worked in the Bedourie Pisé House and associated hotel for more than twenty years, providing essential services along an important travel and trading route between Queensland and South Australia.
","criteria_letters":"Criterion A | Criterion B | Criterion C | Criterion D | Criterion E | Criterion H","criteria_definitions":"The place is important in demonstrating the evolution or pattern of Queensland's history | The place demonstrates rare, uncommon or endangered aspects of Queensland's cultural heritage | The place has potential to yield information that will contribute to an understanding of Queensland's history | The place is important in demonstrating the principal characteristics of a particular class of cultural places | The place is important because of its aesthetic significance | The place has a special association with the life or work of a particular person, group or organisation of importance in Queensland's history"} ]}