Currawinya National Park

Currawinya Shearing Shed

Whilst Plummer Cotter, the Bartons, the Howchins, the Dunks, and MaGraths worked on the properties I have previously  mentioned, Alfred Cotter was managing Currawinya and Caiwarro. So it was worth the trip to see what  remains of these.

The shearing shed is a good one, well laid out and in good order it would not take much  to "turn on the lights" and start up.

The shearing stands

The same could not be said for the shearers quarters, kitchen, and meat  house.  QLD National parks have used concrete reinforcing steel to "wrap" some of  the buildings  disallowing access.  I  can  only assume the buildings are unstable.

The engine that  drives the shearing gear.

Reflecting on what I  have uncovered over the past  12 months it leads me to  ponder about just  how "proud" are we as a nation of our pioneering history.

It seems we have a cringe mentality  to  it. There is no doubt that what happened to the Aborigines was, and is, appalling and I  acknowledge the utter devastation  that  occurred to them. However, our current prosperity was forged by those women and men who created these great sheep stations. Yes there war tyrants, but there were many more good people.

The shearers accommodation

It seems that  National parks are very  good at measuring decay, and are lousy at any  real positive input into the natural environment or real maintenance of the buildings that  people worked hard to establish.  I  say  this with  confidence based  on  what I  saw. 1. Feral cats at  lake Wyalla, 2. the building condition, 3. the utter waste of money  in creating sculptures   welcoming you  to the park. are just  a couple  of examples.

Sheep yards

I  give the area about 10 years.  When all the older cattlemen and women retire and are forced to sell and use there properties as their superannuation.  I  doubt if the government has enough resolve to invest in our pastoral history.

The country  here is good. Flood out with a great  mixture of herbages. It seems such a date to  leave it to the ferals.

We left Currawinya and headed towards Caiwarro.

From a pastoral history  perspective Caiwarro will prove a worse example.