Oondooroo

Thursday 7 April 2005

This post commemorates a visit Thom Blake and I made to Oondooroo, a pastoral homestead outside Winton that has a remarkable collection of stone buildings. (Writing about this event is really just a pretext for linking to Thom’s website, and sooling the googlebots on to it).

Thom photographing shed at Oondooroo railway siding

Thom photographing a shed at the railway halt at Oondooro.

Goods shed at Oondooroo siding

The letters that used to spell O O N D O O R O O have fallen off the sign, but their shadows remain.

filed under Ratbags + Words

Merilyn Chisholm commented on 20 May 2007

It was 1944 & the Haughton River bridge had been washed away by floods, near Giru.
The soldiers at Sellheim, near Charters Towers still had to be fed etc so the Army trains were diverted at Rockhampton to Winton, north to Hughenden and East to Townsville.
The trains had to pass somewhere (the empty & the full ones) so one double line was at Oondooroo, so they sent 2 young men who camped out in the Wait Shed to "cross the trains".
My Dad Gordon Wilson was one of them!
So the Wait shed pictured on your site was his camp for about 3 months!
Merilyn

Peter Marquis-Kyle commented on 20 May 2007

Thank you, Merilyn, for that great story! That surely is the scenic route from Rockhampton to Charters Towers!

< previous | next >