Episode description
Today we're talking about the crossing of the Main Range from the present day township of Murphy's Creek to Toowoomba, and what truly was a marvellous feat of Victorian era engineering. We also speak with Gavin Anderson, Asset Manager West Moreton for Network Operations South at Queensland Rail. He commenced his career as a ‘Nipper’ in a Bridging gang at Miles on the western line, and has been with Queensland Rail for 36 years.
As Asset Manager, Gavin looks after the Main Range railway, and follows on a tradition stretching back nearly 155 years of maintaining this important piece of railway infrastructure. He commenced in the Asset Manager role in 2013.
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Podcast transcript
Introduction
Annette: Hi, I'm Annette and I'm so glad you've joined us again for the fifth episode of the Queensland Rail History podcast. Our podcast is all about discovering the rich story of the railways across our state and how they evolved, and the hardworking people who created them. Our four previous episodes have looked at the beginning of the railway story in Queensland, about the construction of the Kuranda Scenic Railway journey. In episode three, we looked at the patchwork railway and how the railway really became a sprawling figure that it is today. Many towns in Queensland became connected when the line finally arrived and were able to be part of the large railway story. Episode four, we looked at homespun adaptions to problems, designs and standardisation and gave a local solution to the needs of the big enterprise that was the Queensland Railways. Today, we look at the crossing of the Main Range from the present day township of Murphys Creek to Toowoomba and what truly was a marvellous feat of Victorian era engineering.
“You just go down there and you can just sense it, you know, them old guys, you know, back in them days just worked so hard to get something that looked so beautiful."
“Be that as it may, we, in common with the whole community, hail with pleasure the inauguration of the railway in Queensland."
“An old woman in our carriage was very proud of this little bit of railroad."
Building the railway up the Main Range to Toowoomba
One thing that we always seem to come back to is the story of building the railway up the Main Range to Toowoomba, the economy that was utmost, and the 500 metre climb to the range was a true challenge. However, the story of building up the range really is a tale unto itself. Today, I am again talking with Greg Hallam, our historian with Queensland Rail. Greg, can you quickly give us a take through how it all began?
Greg: Quickly? Oh, okay, Annette. The Act of Parliament that authorised the construction of the line was passed in 1863. That covered section one of the line from Ipswich to Bigges Camp. It was a total distance of 21 miles, 38 kilometres. Then on August 24th, 1864, the tenders were called for section two, three, four and five, which would take the railway up the Main Range. That was about another 120 kilometres, if memory serves me. And the contract was for £515,000. Don't ask me the equivalent in today's money, Annette, I know you're going to ask me that. That was actually approved on February 27th in 1865. And it was to Messrs Peto, Brassey & Betts of England. And section five, which is the ascent of the Main Range railway, that actually ran literally from a shepherds hut at a place called Murphys Creek. And Murphys Creek was actually spelled with an E at that point, when you see the original plans in the 1860s. It was the shepherds hut and it ran up here to Toowoomba, where the station is today, which is Russell Street. It was the most difficult to engineer. It involved nine tunnels, 47 bridges, and was nearly 18 miles or 30 kilometres in length.
Murphy's Creek
Annette: So, Greg, can you actually tell me where Murphys Creek is?
Greg: Murphys Creek? Oh, it's at the bottom of the range. And it was a settlement that's there today, a small township. It was a big railway town. And it's actually on what's called the Cobb & Co. Tourist Drive that takes you from Toowoomba down and through the Lockyer Valley in that area as well. So, definitely there. And the other signpost, it's on the way to and from Spring Bluff as well.
Contractors
Annette: I have a couple of random questions to throw at you, Greg, I'm sorry. Section one, did it have the same contractors as two, three, four, five?
Greg: Well, the entire box and dice went to Peto, Brassey & Betts. And they were – yes, they were the big worldwide contractors. I think in a previous episode, or I might have mentioned to someone recently, their workforce in the 1860s was about 200 or 250,000 around the world. They were building railways everywhere. So, it was remarkable, remarkable stuff.
Annette: Now, the work wasn't carried out by just one individual, was it?
Greg: No, it was – well, no, Peto, Brassey & Betts did – and a lot of the Victorian era engineers used to do – they used to contract the work out to subcontractors and other subcontractors, similar to this day and age. So, there were lots of different companies that were involved with Peto, Brassey & Betts on that. So, they'd subcontract out for various works. It could be for tunnels, it could be for bridges and things like that. They called them subagents, if memory serves me correct. The one thing, though, they did actually appoint an Engineer in Charge of heavy works. And in this case, it was Robert Ballard– not the doctor who discovered the wreck of the Titanic or the Bismarck or anything like that – this Robert Ballard was actually an engineer.
He was 25 years old when he was appointed to undertake the heavy works, as they called it, on the Toowoomba Range. And he was appointed to that role, and he actually reported – as you would know in any form of reporting structures – he approached, he reported to a Samuel Wilcox, who was in charge of all the railway works. But Robert Ballard is the one who was in charge of what they call the heavy works, the tunnels, the bridges and things like that, Annette.
Annette: Now, we hear a fair bit about Robert Ballard, and we know that other people who did a fair bit of work on the railways have towns and bridges and things like that. Is there anything named after him?
Greg: There was Ballard's camp that was up here. There was a station for many years up here on the Toowoomba Range, closed in the 1970s, I think, called Ballard. And there's actually a suburb of Toowoomba up here as well called Ballard. It's all named after him. Actually, Annette, going back 30 years ago now, literally, I actually was contacted when I was doing my undergrad work, by a fellow who was a descendant of Robert Ballard from England. And he contacted me because he couldn't believe that at that stage, 125 years on, he was still remembered here in Queensland. He was a member of Ballard's family and everything like that. His name was Major Robert Barnes, British Army, retired. And he lived in Herefordshire, to quote him, “where the cows come from". And he contacted me just with passing on some of the family history from the Ballards, and he just could not believe that 125 years on, his ancestor was still being remembered and commemorated, and having a suburb named after him as well.
Annette: I guess when you help shape a railway.
Greg: Well, that's right. It's the works that you do that live after you. That's the important thing in history. That's what we know.
Constructing and building the railway up the Main Range
Annette: Do we know when work actually began to go up the hill, constructing and building the railway up the Main Range?
Greg: That's a really good question, Annette. A lot of the papers of the day actually carried stories of construction work on the Main Range. They did that for many, many years. And in the case of the Main Range railway, you start seeing reports in 1865. They start appearing in the early part, March, April, and they start – obviously work was really beginning on the works on the Main Range. So it's probably around about March, April, 1865, you actually start seeing the evidence appearing that they were digging, they were preparing works and things like that. There was a really interesting article that was written in 1866, I think it was, and they described the works on the Toowoomba Range. And the correspondence, anonymous, we don't know in this day and age, they call it a very up and down place. And it's a very interesting description because I think an up and down place described the works on the range and what was going to happen and everything like that, as you'd appreciate.
Railway workers
Annette: So where did all those people who were working on the railway come from?
Greg: They were actually recruited from overseas because the ability to build a railway here just was not there. So in common practice with Peto, Brassey & Betts, they recruited and then they'd actually – the workers who were recruited overseas were then actually – had to get their way here to Queensland, on ships that were provided, passage and things like that. They actually had immigration agents from Queensland which were working in Britain at that stage. They even somehow got across to what they called Scandinavia, which is actually the countries, probably northern Germany and that in this day and age as well. And so they'd actually charter people to go out to recruit. And that was the important thing in it. They needed skilled, experienced people to undertake this work, and especially in building a railway, who had – as Gavin, who we'll meet during this episode today will talk about – specialist work, specialist techniques and basically knowing how to build a railway.
So they recruited from – they came from, they were specially recruited. They also came over in a number of ships. So there were special ships that were chartered by the Queensland Government to bring all the railway navvies, I suppose you'd say, with their families and bring everything over with them as well. So they were all specially recruited. There were handbills that were produced and everything like that. It was very interesting. I think if you came out here – they came out on the Black Ball Line, I think it was, and they were special ships that were chartered, clipper ships, sailing ships. So it would have been probably about, about what – two and a half, three months' journey to come here to the colony of Queensland from halfway around the world.
Annette: So, a handbill, that's basically an ad saying we're looking for people?
Greg: In this day and age, you'd probably go to social media and things like that for work recruitment. They really were looking for people, what they called excavators, specialist people who could actually do the proper labouring works, bridge carpenters, masons, stone masons. There was also artisans, as they called them. And the artisans was literally people very skilled in doing, well, especially with stonework and things like that, because they had to make use of a lot of sandstone. So you've got to imagine the 1860s in England or somewhere like that, isn't it? People literally going around handing out these bills. They probably went to where railway works were actually being undertaken at that stage in Britain. And again, that'd be how they'd be recruiting. So it was basically throw the pick and shovel in here and come halfway around the world and build a railway here in Queensland.
Annette: So we went head hunting?
Greg: In this day and age, that's exactly what you'd probably call it anyway, Annette.
Interview with Gavin Anderson, Asset Manager, West Moreton for Network Operations South
Annette: Our guest today to talk about the work on the Main Range in modern day is Gavin Anderson. Gavin is the Asset Manager, West Moreton for Network Operations South. He commenced his career as a nipper in a bridging gang at Miles on the Western Line, and has been with Queensland Rail for 36 years. As Asset Manager, Gavin looks after the Main Range railway and follows on a tradition stretching back nearly 155 years, of maintaining this important piece of railway infrastructure. He commenced in the Asset Manager role in 2013. Gavin, you started out as a nipper in a bridging gang. Can you explain to our listeners today what that job was?
Gavin: A nipper's job was more like a – well, today's modern talk is an apprentice or a junior bridge worker, I guess. So I started when I was 16 and generally was learning how to become a bridge carpenter. So you started off as a nipper, boiling the jug for the boys, and then slowly getting to learn how you dress girders and transoms and bridge timbers and do culvert work and cement work. So it was basically a labouring position to work into a bridge carpenter.
Annette: Lots of words I already don't know there. What's a girder?
Gavin: A girder. So a girder is like a – varies in length so it can go from four metres to nine metres and supports all the transoms, which are similar to sleepers. So the girders will run in the same direction as the railway line and then you've got the sleepers, or in bridge talk it's transoms, and then the railway line there. So it's part of the top structure of the bridge.
Annette: Cool, I'm going to learn a lot today.
Gavin: And back in my day we used to put them in with ropes, and they were around 750 kilos. So we used to lower them off the top of the bridge, underneath the bridge using ropes. So technology's changed a lot these days and we use cranes and all types of better equipment.
Annette: So you're good with the pulley system then?
Gavin: Yes. Starting to forget it now, these days though. You have a look at some of the bridge girders that we have, they've been in track for 90 years. These days you probably won't get a girder to last 30 or 40 years. It's just a lot greener, a lot younger. Whereas back in the earlier days or back – I wouldn't say olden days, when I first started – but the timber was a lot more older, I guess, when you got it.
Greg: And when you started out, being the nipper in the gang and that, learned to work with timber, so who taught you, who basically taught you to work with the timber and that? How was it done back then anyway, Gavin?
Gavin: When I first started it was, my boss was Noel Clancy, I was in a pretty good bridge gang because the guys always allowed you to have a go. I'd get on an adze. For those people that don't know what an adze is, it's a very sharp instrument. It's probably six or seven inches wide at the thingo and it's got a handle, and you swing it between your legs and it shaves the timber off the thingo so that when you, if you're dressing a girder, you're dressing it to a blue line where you've marked it and you swing the adze between your legs as you shave the timber off. Sometimes you missed though, and ended up cutting your leg, but it only happened to me once, thank God.
Annette: You learn after the first time, right?
Gavin: Yes. See, back in them days, we used to dress all our timber, all the girders, all the transoms. We used to dress those, every single one of them. Now they come pre-dressed. Well, not the girders, but the transoms; but we've got bush mills now.
Greg: Yes, with the timber bridges, the last one on the Toowoomba Range was Kings Bridge, I think it was, and that was the one that got knocked away in 2011 with the floods up here, wasn't it?
Gavin: Yes, that's correct, yes. And then it's now a concrete ballast top bridge.
Greg: Yes, some of the girders for the community down at Murphys Creek, they actually gave the girders from the Kings Bridge, I think, to make a hitching rail outside of the pub there.
Gavin: Yes, that's true, yes. You see a horse tied up there every now and then.
Greg: Yes, that's right. And I remember when they installed it, the gang came down from up here and there was a young fellow in that one, he had his grandfather's adze and he had it all set and ready to go so he could actually adze it off for the hitching rail and everything like that. So it was great.
Gavin: Everything back in my day, we'd travel on the track by section car. Even when I first started, we used to camp in red wagons on the track and they used to just pull a train up the side and hook it on and you'd go to your next site.
Annette: That sounds amazing.
Gavin: It was good days, actually, really good days.
Greg: Arthur, who works with us up here in Toowoomba, of course, he used to be in charge of electrical work and his camp wagon was camp wagon, I think, 34. Found a photograph of camp wagon 34 and he used to travel the entire state in that camp wagon. And he was also talking about one time at Wallangarra, he was sort of like wrapped around the potbelly stove in the middle of a very cold winter there, basically, to try and stop freezing and that.
Gavin: I remember one day – I used to travel in the camp wagon because I was only 16, didn't have a licence – so we were out on the Wandoan line and we stayed there and I was in the camp wagon. We were moving to Macalister. So I just stayed in the wagon. The train come along during the night and hooked up and got into Dalby and then they couldn't shunt us, and I had to stay in Dalby in the wagons for two days before they got us back to Macalister. But it would have been the coldest place in Australia, I reckon, that Macalister during winter, because it's just a big, broad flat. We used to have these water bags and I'd take a water bag into the wagon with me of a night to just have a drink of water. And you'd wake up in the morning, it was frozen. It was incredible. And I'd have to get the fire lit for when the boys turned up to make sure they could warm themselves up before we went to work. There was a lot of opportunity back in them days with Queensland Rail to travel to different places. I remember I started as a nipper and then decided to make it a career, and so I just put in for promotion jobs and actually when I got one, I didn't even know where it was. I had to look it up on a map to find out where I was going. And it was awesome, you know. You travelled most of the state.
Greg: So where was it, Gavin? Where was the promotion to?
Gavin: It was Alpha.
Greg: Alpha? Ah, yes.
Gavin: So I did three years in Alpha and then went from there to Blackall. I spent about 18 months in Blackall. Because we were a migratory gang, we worked around a lot. So we were sort of based in a town, but then worked within hundreds of kilometres of the area. So I spent a lot of time working at Longreach actually, on the Longreach and Winton section, while I was camped at Blackall. And then went from Blackall to Emerald. Was only there for four months and then got another promotion down to Mundubbera, and then into Toowoomba where I've been ever since for the last – 2004, I think I moved here – so 16 years, 17 years here in Toowoomba.
Annette: We've talked about navvies a lot, and what it was like for them. What would I need to do to apply for the job?
Navvies
Greg: Okay, Annette. Okay, let's take you back then. Well, being a railway navvy, your pay rate was quoted as being six or seven shillings a day. The artisans, as we mentioned before, they actually received the top money, Annette. So that was about nine to 12 shillings per day. That was really, really big money in that period. When you look at it, in 1914 when the first AIF went overseas, they were called, what, five-bob-a-day tourists. They were some of the best paid soldiers in the world at that stage. And half a century before, the people who had been recruited to work here on the railway line had been paid really good money. But that makes sense when you think about it, because you're going to uproot your life and come halfway around the world to build the railway. That includes your family in cases as well too. The other interesting thing was you actually had a list of what you could bring because the idea was if they were going to recruit, you had to have almost like something behind you. So on the handbill, you're required to have, six shirts; six pairs of stockings, that's heavy socks and everything like that; two flannels, and that's not the variety that's worn with an UGG boots or anything like that, but your flannels in that case tend to be things like heavy undershirts and those sorts of things.
Annette: Because you need that in Queensland?
Greg: Oh, well. You had to have two pairs of new shoes and two complete sets of strong exterior clothing. You know what that strong exterior clothing would have been? Moleskins. So, moleskins was very much the clothing of the workers. So that would have all been packed into what they called a sea trunk. And so basically, it wasn't a case of just turning up with the clothes you had on your back. You actually had to have these clothing as well. Clothing indicated at least you had some means behind you as well too, Annette. You just weren't an itinerant with nothing in the world sort of thing.
Annette: I was thinking, it would have cost a fair bit back then to have all of that set up ready to come.
Greg: Well, that was part of it. You know, if they're going to recruit people to come and work here, they actually wanted them to be – well, let's be honest, they wanted people who had some providence or means behind them as well. You wanted good people to come to Queensland. That would have been the thinking of the government of the day.
Attracting workers to the Main Range
Annette: So how many people did we attract from around Britain and other places in Europe to work on the Main Range?
Greg: Oh, Annette, you're on fire today. Oh, boy. There was section five, which was the Main Range railway, which we've mentioned before. The largest extent, there were over 1,000 workers on its construction. I think it could have been up to 1,300 at one stage. In April of 1866, there was a record that there were about 798 workers were counted being employed on the various works on the Main Range railway.
Annette: Just 1,300 people. That is a lot of people.
Greg: That is a lot of people. And Robert Ballard, in charge of the heavy works, a 25-year-old, he was actually in charge of all those workmen.
Annette: Wow, a 25-year-old in charge of 1,300 people.
Greg: With great power comes great responsibility, Annette.
Annette: He must have been a pretty organised man to organise all of that.
Greg: I imagine he would have been, yes. Funny you should say that. When I was 25, I actually was doing my undergrad at university and I was looking at doing a paper on the construction of the Main Range railway.
Annette: When you were 25?
Greg: When I was 25. I was a mature-aged student, Annette.
Annette: No, no, I was thinking that was young, to pick that, not old. I was working in management for Woolworths. I was trying to work my way up that ladder.
Greg: Work your way up a ladder or build a railway. There you go. Challenges of being 25.
Annette: Was it any different being on the range versus a general navvy?
Greg: Probably not, Annette, because in this day and age, they talk about transferable skills and all that sort of thing. Basically, the difference would have been because it was hard work, because it's in a concentrated space. You're going through rock. It's range country. It's hilly. There would have been ravines, as they called them back then. Compared to, say, building across large flat stretches of Queensland. But the work was, again, pretty much the same. There was picks, there were shovels. There was also a labour hierarchy as well, too, that they actually – when we mentioned the pay rates before, like artisans and that – and probably at the very top of their hierarchy were the stonemasons, because they're the ones that actually created the sandstone bricks and things like that, that actually went with the tunnel works and also on the culvert works and on the bridges and things like that. And because it was very much artisan work, they were actually at the top of your labour hierarchy.
Then you had what they call plate layers and lengthsmen, and they were actually highly valued for their track laying skills. Pick spades and wheelbarrows, they were used for excavations. There was assistance from horse and bullock teams. Now, amongst the navvies on the range, there was an employment hierarchy, and that actually came along with the railway materials from England. So it's an entire culture that was imported as well. Top of the labour hierarchy stood the stonemasons; they were employed for finishing the sandstone blocks. That was for mainly the nine tunnels on the range, but culverts, the bridge works and that. And then you had what they call the plate layers and the lengthsmen. And a lengthsman is actually an old name for what they call the fettler in the railways as well. A lengthsman was basically a track layer. So in this day and age, there'd be a track laying gang or someone like that, people who actually lay the sleepers and lay the rails. They were also highly valued for their track laying skills as well, Annette.
Stonemasons
Annette: A stonemason, an apprenticeship? How long would they have done their training?
Greg: That's a really good question. But yes, stonemasons was a very valuable skill. Apprenticeship would have taken years. Some of the tunnels down the range, they've still got a couple of places, the stonemasons with their own individual special marks and things like that. And when you think about the stonemasons and that, with the skills and everything that goes back to the building of the great cathedrals in Europe. So, those skills and everything like that and the entire artisan approach, dated back centuries, imported here and then used on the works on the Main Range.
Working on the tunnels
Annette: Another question. So, we know we have got nine tunnels on the great Main Range. Would a navvy have worked on that or did they have to have some special skill to do the tunnels?
Greg: Well, literally, it would be almost like a project approach in this day and age. But you think about it, you'd have to – the navvies would have been involved in boring the tunnels with hand drills and picks and shovels. They used black powder and things like that to dislodge rock. But a lot of it was done by pick, shovel and hand. And once they actually drove the bores through, as they called them – they're called the bores, the tunnel bores and that, actually, you know, piercing through the rock and that, then the masons and that, the stone masons would then come in after that to actually line the tunnels, to provide – to give support to the tunnel and also for drainage and things like that. So, the navvies, they would have actually pierced the rock, dug their way through and then the artisans would have come in to finish off the work.
Annette: Wow! In our history, have we ever had a tunnel collapse in works?
Greg: There was actually going to be ten tunnels up here, if you read the historical record. There was one up near the top of the range at a place called Harlaxton, but apparently the rock strata wasn't good enough and they actually just opted to build a very deep cutting in place of a tunnel. Should have been ten, but they went for nine in the very deep cutting. I think it was called Cameron's Cutting or something like that, Cameron's Camp or Cameron's Cutting up towards the top here. You build a railway the easiest way, not through the hardest way, thank you very much.
Annette: One of the recent projects were the tunnel lowering works on the Main Range railway. What sort of challenges were involved in the tunnel lowering project?
Gavin: Obviously, they're all historical, so minimising any impacts to the tunnel was obviously very important. The confined spaces, you know, like a lot of drainage work had to go on. You're obviously lowering the tunnels, so there wasn't a lot of room to get machinery in. A lot of work crews had to work side by side. You had set windows where they had to obviously get slab track in. So some of the tunnels were just dug down and lowered and then just filled back in with ballast. Others were a slab track.
Annette: What's a slab track?
Gavin: So it's like a concrete floor and the railway line's placed on that instead of on sleepers. And there's no ballast, it's just a concrete slab and the track's sort of bolted down to that. Obviously, tunnels are very tight. It was to increase to bigger containers. So the limitations on the – how would I put it – you virtually had to be – you couldn't be 10 mm out of line. Otherwise, with the cant on the railway line – so the cant is that it brings it up when you go around a tight radius curve, it applies a cant. So then that obviously tilts the wagons. And brings them in closer to the tunnel wall. So there was very little room for movement. So you had to nearly be – you had to be a hundred percent spot on where you nailed that track down.
Annette: It's amazing to think it's down to a centimetre.
Gavin: Yes, even closer than that.
Greg: When you had to do that, did they have to use laser light for guidance? Or was it – what was it? Hand-eye or how was it?
Gavin: A lot of the slab tracks, a lot of it was done out in the precast. So they took a template. So obviously they worked through all the models and come up with the models and done the template. And then they actually drilled the slabs out of the site and then just brought the track back in. But obviously just placing that as well had to be very, very close to where it was nearly a hundred percent spot on.
Greg: The other thing with the lowering, how far did they actually have to lower the tunnels there, Gavin?
Gavin: In some cases it varied, you know, 600, 700 mm, up to 900 mm. And then obviously it's just not the tunnel floor that had to be lowered. Obviously the approaches and when you're going from one tunnel into another cutting or something like that. So there was a lot of planning and a lot of work went into it.
Annette: How long did the project take?
Gavin: Probably close to 12 months for it to come together. To get the drains, in some cases you'd pull the tunnel out, put the drains in, then you'd reinstate the tunnel back on its original alignment. And then the next phase you'd come through and then do the lowering. It's just not a one-phase thing. You had to do it in different phases.
Greg: How big was the workforce for the tunnel lowering that would have been out on the line there?
Gavin: Because it was extremely hard rock, so they had these specialist machines come in to gouge the rock out. It could have been anywhere – if we were working on one or two ranges it was around the clock, so you had obviously crews overlapping. So you know, it could be up to 200 people on the range.
Greg: It would have been what, pretty much, continual work over a 24-hour period?
Gavin: Yes, it certainly was, yes. It was day and night, 24/7. So if it was a 10-day closure, they'd have crews going day and night for the 10 days.
Greg: That would have been incredible. With the tunnels on the range, have any of them got their own individual nature in a way or are they completely different, or what do you think, Gavin?
Gavin: Obviously, some are on a straight, most of them are on curves, you know. So tunnel four is a tunnel that has a reverse curve virtually inside of it. So that, to me, is probably unique. I don't know whether I've ever seen or heard of another one like that. Tunnel eight is a manhole tunnel, so three parts of the way through the tunnel, it just takes a diversion out to the side there. I don't know the full story to that, whether it was an escape route, if something had gone wrong. But, you know, the Little Liverpool Range is a massive, massive length. So you sort of come into a curve like that. So it just comes back the other way, like two curves, you know. So you start curving that way, then it comes back the opposite way. So nearly like an S.
Why navvies are called navvies
Annette: So we've talked a fair bit about navvies and where they came from, but where did the name come from?
Greg: Okay, that's a really good one. 18th century England, and the navigations they called them, which were all the canal works, the big inland waterways were being constructed in the 18th century in England. There were a lot of them were farm labourers because the agricultural revolution had come through. There were big changes in agricultural practice. A lot of them lost their traditional work and jobs. But at the same point, they had these enormous engineering works that were going on. And a lot of them were employed directly to dig the canals. And where the name came from, they were called navigations. And the inland waterways were called inland navigations. The labourers who worked on them, they were called navigators. And that's nothing to do with maps and compasses or anything like that. But it was just a term that they were the navigators. They were the ones who dug on the navigations. It was 'navigators' and then we shortened down to navvies.
Annette: Obviously, when it got here, because that's our Australian culture.
Greg: Yes, it actually began before then. But you know what the nice thing is? A lot of the fellows who work on the tracks these days, they call them track laying gangs or the fettlers and that. I still call them navvies. And a lot of them still call themselves navvies as well. They've got this incredible sense of that sort of work and association with railway construction going back two centuries or more now. And quite a few of them still call themselves navvies anyway. I'm happy to call them navvies as well.
Life in the camps
Annette: What was life like in the camps back then, Greg?
Greg: We're very, very fortunate because the papers – and if you look on Trove in this day and age, which is the National Library of Australia's digitisation project for newspapers and that – it gives an incredible snapshot of life. And the old inquest papers held at the State Archives again. But I guess in this day and age, we probably think it was fairly rough and ready. But for the period – we're talking the 1860s, it's a colonial existence – it was a settled form of life. And that was the thing, going back 30 years ago now. I remember a film, The Railway, describing the works. You know, they must have lived like animals. And I was happy to say after quite a number of years of looking at the story, they didn't live like animals, Annette. They were people, you know. They lived – a third of the men were married and they could have had up to, I think it was eight children. And they accompanied them halfway around the world on ships.
So you probably learn about a third of the men were with very, very large families. They lived in bark humpies. They lived under canvas. They're almost like a donga form of existence in this day and age, you know, with the camps and things like that. Sort of like fly-in fly-out, without being able to fly in and fly out. So it's a temporary township that's there. But it had a lot of amenities that went with it as well too. Peto, Brassey & Betts actually – and through Robert Ballard, they actually looked after the workers and their families reasonably well for the period. They had a prefabricated church. It used to travel up the line to the camps and things like this as the railway lines advanced. They had special offices set up for the police because they needed police in the camps as well too.
And they also had what they called assembly halls, which were very large places. You could get about 200, 250 people in them. They used to have things like dances there, concerts. They had impromptu schools, I guess you'd call them, or informal schools. And quite a number of the women who were educated in the camps, they ran the school and teach reading and writing. But that was open to everyone. So a lot of the navvies who were illiterate and things like that took the opportunity to learn their letters, as they called it then. So there was also the schooling that was promoted as well. So they would have been like in the Gold Rush, I imagine, a very similar form of existence. And it certainly wasn't a bed of roses. It could be pretty wild in the navvy camps and that.
Yes, so the last nine kilometres up here were fairly difficult. There were five tunnels. There were the three major bridges. And Ballard's Camp – we mentioned Ballard before – that was the principal centre of our construction work on what they call the second incline of the range, which comes up from Spring Bluff. The line was built in two big inclines. Coming up from Murphys Creek, came up through a place called Tipperary, up to Holmes, Holmes' Camp, make its way up to what we call Spring Bluff today. And that was on the level. And then you had another climb from there all the way up here to Toowoomba. And that's where Ballard's Camp was, putting about halfway up the works there, Annette.
Strikes and working conditions
And end of 1865, there was the first eight-hour strike that actually took place in Queensland for an eight-hour day. And it was one of the first in Australia and took place on the Main Range here as well.
Annette: A strike in 1865?
Greg: Yep. The navvies had a bit of a reputation. As soon as they pick up work, then they go on strike. And that was basically for conditions, because they were working a 10-hour day. And there was big movement in the 1860s for the eight-hour day. Eight-hour day was the eight-hours sleep, eight-hours recreation, eight-hours work, instead of these very long work days, 10, 12 hours or something like that. So, yes, it was one of the first eight-hour strikes in Australia, took place here and on the Main Range. It led to a lot of concern down in Brisbane because there were stories going around that this great army of navvies were going to march on Toowoomba. And the other thing was that they were going to march on Brisbane. They went on strike. Some got the eight-hour day. Not all of them got it. They worked a 10-hour day and they got a pay increase. That was basically a navvy tradition, go on strike straight away.
Trouble on the range
Annette: Was there any other trouble on the range when building the railway?
Greg: Lots. In July of 1866, work was suspended. That followed the collapse of the Agribank in England, and Queensland ran out of money. Now, nearly all the navvies on the southern and western works, they were thrown out of work and that was about 1,500 workers unemployed.
Annette: So, they jumped on a boat after kitting themselves out with expensive gear, were here for 12 months maybe, and then they're sacked.
Greg: Mm-hmm. Not happy. Not happy at all. And they showed it. It was pretty desperate times. There was no money. The colony was basically out of money. It had run bust and everything like that. They took it into their own hands, and on the 20th of August in 1866, there was a committee of navvies; they met down at Helidon, and they actually decided to march on Toowoomba initially and then proceed down the length of railway line. They were going to stop at each camp and use compulsory measures to encourage others to join them. That's in on the strike. So, you know, it's pretty fierce. These are very hard workers and everything like that. They're very well organised. I know up here in Toowoomba, they were running stories that they thought the place would be burnt to the ground by this army of navvies descending on it.
Brisbane was terrified. There's actually – when it was happening – comparing stories that were in the paper to what had gone on during the American Civil War. There were stories about, there's a rampaging army coming through. A lot of it was overblown and everything like that. But they were improvidentas they said, this is August. Now, early September, a lot of them have got young families and they're starving; they had no money. So, they decided actually, the well-organised navvies, to take their grievances to Parliament. And they did it in their own unique manner. 200 of them actually decided to go from – march on Brisbane and basically, they demanded relief for those without work. So, what they did is, at Helidon they commandeered – they didn't hijack, they commandeered an Ipswich-bound goods train and they packed into eight goods wagons and they set off down the line towards Ipswich and then they were going to march on Brisbane from there.
Annette: Much shorter march from Ipswich to Brisbane than Toowoomba to Brisbane.
Greg: I like the coordinated transport approach to this. We build the line, we'll take the train. And what happened, Annette, there was an infamous civil disturbance in Brisbane called the Bread or Blood riots, and that was in 1866 in September. There was a major riot in George Street. They were pulling up cobblestones in the street, a lot of the unemployed, and they were flinging them at the police. There was this great big riot and they called it Bread or Blood. That's what they were calling for, bread or blood. And that's how desperate things had become. But again, you had this very well organised group in the centre of it. And I always thought it was impressive, the fact they decided to commandeer a goods train and pack themselves into it. We build the railway, we'll use it for our purposes, basically.
Annette: Yes, with their compulsory measures.
Greg: That's right. Fortunately, the Government was able to get new loans out of England. And basically, that brought money back into the colony. And that happened in October of 1866, and that prevented further disaster. The workers were re-employed, but they weren't in the great numbers that they were before, Annette, because many had headed off into New South Wales, into the Weddin Mountains, to try their luck on the goldfields. And that's around Forbes and those areas. And they also got a pay cut, which the navvies weren't happy with, but if there's work in the offing, okay, they'll take it up. And that's what they decided to do. But yes, a lot of them actually literally tossed in the job, tossed in the tools and went down to try and find gold in the Weddin Mountains in New South Wales.
Annette: Did we hear if any of them were successful?
Greg: Actually, had I been in that period, I probably would have taken my chances still working on the railway than go and try and pan for gold, Annette. Better with a pick and shovel up here than with a gold pan in New South Wales.
Annette: It sounds like our navvies have had to deal with a lot. They've come out here from England, fully kitted out. They've been paid a certain rate for so long, working a 10-hour day, six days a week. Then we've had our strike and we've come back to eight hours. So taken a pay cut with that. Then we've had the state go bust and they had to take a pay cut with that. Then they've had no work at all. It's a very changing circumstance for them as we're moving along.
Greg: In this day and age, Annette, we'd say very resilient people. By the end of 1866, work was progressing. It got to such an extent, they were really picking up the pace on things. So in early December, they had a special Separation Day excursion train that was organised to run between Brisbane and Helidon. Separation Day, that was December the 10th, and that's the day that Queensland separated from New South Wales in 1859. So they had a public holiday. They had a special train for that. The journey was three hours and five minutes. The fares were seven shillings and sixpence or five shillings. That's a day's pay, basically, when you think, Annette. So a day's pay actually to do the special train. It's a fair amount of money for the period anyhow.
The gold rushes of the 1860s, they continued to deplete the labour. The great problem was that you're losing experienced hands and experienced people, and they're tossing in their tools, as we said, and trying their luck in New South Wales. The navvies at that stage, who opted to travel hundreds of kilometres to try their hands on the goldfields rather than stay at the railway works – I think the ones who stayed here were the ones who probably were more experienced and probably knew more about the railway and the work that was going to be encouraged. Because you've got a smaller workforce then, they're obviously going to get paid more as well too. So, they're the ones who decide to stick it. So smaller numbers building the railway, but obviously must be more productive, or the fact that a lot of the hard work had already been achieved. They can actually start getting towards the end of the construction work.
The completion of construction
Annette: So, getting towards the end of the construction work, when did the first train make its way up the range?
Greg: Yes, the workers were discharged from the work further down the line as it was completed. They made their way up here early February 1867. I think there were about 1,300 were employed on the works again. Papers were talking about the end of April the railway between Ipswich and Toowoomba would be completed. And you asked about when the first train made its way up here to Toowoomba. That's a good question, Annette, because it was done by stealth, as they'd say in this day and age. Trains had actually been coming up the range, like construction trains and things like that, but not all the way through to Toowoomba.
There's actually a very interesting newspaper account down at Helidon, and not long after the line had been built. I remember reading this 30 years ago, but they actually spoke about the original Aboriginal inhabitants were actually on a walk through their country. That's how it was described. They were walking through their land. They came across this marvellous account. They're having a look and they're seeing a steam locomotive. It might have been one of their first encounters or something like that. But again, it was a wonderful thing. They were just looking at the locomotive. It was almost a shrug of the shoulders, “Oh yes, that's interesting", sort of thing. Which is okay. So what else have you got? Yes, all right. But again, it was very interesting that the railway's starting to become part of the life and things like that.
The first train got up here, it was April the 12th of 1867. It was a special train that had come up from Ipswich. It left at 6:30 in the morning, got here at 12:15. So it's a nearly a six-hour trip coming up. It stopped at all the navvy camps along the way. So you've got to imagine people turning out. They were saying, “This is the first train going all the way along the railway works from Ipswich to Toowoomba", because obviously the rails were laid all the way here. And you can imagine the little whistles on the steam locomotive whistling out and everything like that. Stopping so people could see it go through. And it got here into the station in 1867 on April the 12th. And apparently they heard the whistles all over Toowoomba announcing the arrival of that first train coming up here.
The other thing too, it took everyone by surprise. No one knew it was happening. And I always thought that was good. It was basically the contractors and everything like that having – I think it was almost like their own private trip, saying, “We'll see how far up we can get up the range." No one knew it was coming. And then next thing, this train with these dignitaries appear out of nowhere, basically.
Annette: We kind of did that with the first part of our railway as well, where we did the trial run. So it's interesting to see that we keep doing these. Oh look, here's a train.
Greg: It's one of the favourite questions I get asked a lot, Annette. It's about when did the railway line open? I say, “What do you mean?" I said, “Officially, there's an official day where it's officially open with the grand ceremonies and things like that. But if you're looking the working way, it's obviously sometime before then because, they had to get the construction trains and had to come in, deliver rails and sleepers or things like that or other things." So technically, which day does it open? Is it the day your first train comes in, or the more proper thing is officially open, when we have the official ceremony that goes with it. So, yes it was a clandestine affair. And as you said, it sort of set the tempo, I guess, where the next couple of decades with railway openings and things like that.
Annette: So when did we have our first revenue service on the Toowoomba line?
Greg: Ah, that's good. The official opening took place on the 30th of April, 1867, and it was absolutely foul, rotten, raining weather. In fact, when they were coming up the range, the two steam locomotives on the front, one of them actually derailed because the works weren't up to scratch. So what happened is everyone got off and they rerailed the locomotive. Now, there was actually a fellow, Wilcox, I think it was, who was coming up the range. And he was worried, because he said the heavy rains and the new works and everything like that, and they're wondering if they'd hold up to all the heavy rain and everything. But they actually managed to get up here, the train coming up from Ipswich, double header. And when they got up to the top here, there was going to be a very big banquet as well. That was a great success.
But this fellow who came up the line, he said, “Well, it was very nice to get up here", but he said, “I was terrified about what would happen when we go back down the range the next day." So it was 30th of April that they actually had the official opening train come up. For revenue services and for the line open for traffic and that, it's actually the 1st of May that the Railway Department went. So opening event on the 30th of April, and then the official opening and the line being open was the 1st of May, 1867. How do we know this? There's a plaque down on the platform that went up in 1967 for the centenary. And it says it there as well too, Annette.
And back in 1992, the small A10 locomotive that was restored by volunteers – so that would have been 125 years old, the locomotive – it actually did a sort of recreation run for the 125 years of the railway up here, the little A10 built in 1865. It's part of QR's heritage fleet. It's an exhibit at the workshops rail museum. It actually did a run from Brisbane to Toowoomba. And it took about six or seven hours to do the journey up the hill, had one and a half carriages behind it, and it arrived up here. The weather was much better that day. It's the single A10. And it managed to make its way up the Toowoomba Range in a row. And I think at that stage, the weather was beautiful. There were a couple of hundred people to see the train come in, you know. And it was a really remarkable recreation event. And how do I know? I was on the train.
The experience
Annette: So you briefly touched on what it was like being on the train coming up the range. What was it actually like?
Greg: It was remarkable. You read newspaper accounts and you read – there's a lot of other things, Annette. And a lot of people who came to Queensland, they honestly considered – this was, of course pre-Kuranda Railway and the Barron Gorge line – they actually always considered it one of the highlights. It was a different railway back then. It was very much narrow cuttings, spindly bridges. You've got tunnels. A couple of places some people thought, “The mountainsides are going to overwhelm us on the train." This little thing is snaking its way up the hill and the engine would be darting in and out of cuttings and that, and darting through tunnels. And they go along and there'd be – suddenly a bridge would appear underneath you. So it was – seemed like high adventure or something like that.
There was actually a wonderful description by a woman who came up here. And she said, “The scenery we saw while crossing the ranges was really grand. The railway spanning wide gorges, rushing through steep yellow cuttings" – which would be right, although it tends to be red soil up here – “burrowing under great hillsides that seemed ready to overwhelm us, winding around the ravines of deep slopes with the railway line running in parallel away on the opposite side of the ravines." It's almost like this train chasing its way up the hill. It would have been quite remarkable and quite a number of them actually said for many years after, you know, people travelling in and out of Queensland on the old Intercolonial line, the interstate line via Warwick, Wallangarra and that, they always said it was – the highlight in many ways was coming that 30 kilometres up the range. Yes, quite remarkable.
Annette: It would be interesting. So, if they're travelling back to New South Wales and around on the train, that's pretty flat, really. So the range would be all steep, and we've got all the tunnels and the cuttings. Totally different experience for them.
Greg: Pretty much, although if you come up to New England as you used to, coming up 5,000 feet in the old currency. And don't forget, if you go through places like Ben Lomond and Guyra, on what was the Great Northern Railway coming up through Tenterfield and those areas, in winter you go through blizzards, you go through snow, and then you come to Queensland as well. So, yes, basically it was a big climb up to Toowoomba, then you climb again to Stanthorpe and Wallangarra, and keep climbing to Tenterfield and Glen Innes and those areas as well. The railways used to promote it so well. They'd have special brochures and tourist brochures extolling the virtues, the wonderful mountain air and things like that, and travelling through this part of the world in the 1920s, and travelling down through Stanthorpe, where there were lots of apple orchards and things like that. It was really good for mental health and things like that. Yes, so from the 1860s, it was always considered something pretty grand indeed. But of course, as we always say, there's always another story to be told about such things, Annette, anyway, indeed.
Maintaining the Main Range today
Annette: Maintaining the Main Range today involves a lot of machinery. However, is there any work that gets carried out that you feel still takes us back to where the railway was built?
Gavin: Not a great deal on the range, because it's all concrete sleepers now, but we still do a lot of timber sleeper insertions, just using our basic hand tools, like picks and shovels, et cetera. But on the range now, we have a lot of concrete, bigger size rail. The bridges have disappeared. We still do a reasonable amount of culvert work, obviously still using heavy machinery, but a lot of the work now is done by machines. You can still see what they would have done in the olden days is incredible, you know. You still see all the brickwork and the cuttings, et cetera. That doesn't happen much, anymore. But we did do some work in a tunnel once where we had to get in a specialised brick person, because the bricks were falling out of the roof of the tunnel. And we had to – even trying to find bricks of that sort of nature, like historical looking bricks, or the olden type bricks, you just can't go to a brick place and get bricks that would actually match in with the historical stuff. So it was very interesting. And then, because the tunnels and the bricks are sort of lying three and four deep, and you can actually see where they'd fallen out, and we had to carry out the repairs. It was just good to see.
Annette: Yes, it was interesting. We've covered that in a previous podcast, how the bricks went from being just one layer at the start, to then the whole way through, to then three and four layers deep.
Greg: Yes, that was the Victoria tunnel, because they had so many problems when they built it, with all the different courses and skins of bricks and everything like that.
Gavin: I think we actually did the repairs to the bricks in tunnel three on the Toowoomba Range when I was there. Yes, it was good. You got the sort of – the smaller brick as the arch, and then your big sandstone sort of bricks down the sides.
Steeped in history
Annette: Do you think that sometimes you can feel the history of a railway line? Or is there anything about it that seems to you to really sum up the character of the place?
Gavin: You know, every time I go down on the range, you can just sense that it's just steeped, you know, just – I don't know how you really describe it; it's unique. It's just not like someone's just dropped the dozer in and dozed a new track in and put sleepers and that down. You just go down there and you can just sense it, you know, them old guys, back in them days just worked so hard to, to get something that looks so beautiful.
Annette: Yes, it gives you new respect when you go down there and you think about what they had.
Gavin: Yes, and just not any sort of cuttings, you know. When they've made them, they've put bricks in them and they just look really good.
Annette: Pride in their work.
Gavin: Yeah, exactly, yep. And to know that it was all done probably by man and horse. As soon as you go down there and you know that nothing's been carved out of there by a dozer; it's been all hard labour. It's just – even though the track now is all concrete and new rail and that, you can still see or sense that, “Geez, there's a lot of work gone into this and a lot of pride."
Greg: When you actually work on the range, do you see any evidence, I guess, from the 1860s, like any evidence of the old pick marks or anything like that there around the place?
Gavin: Yes, some of the cuttings have still got those that you can just see. It must have been extremely hard work in them days. You know, when I first started, it was still all manual labour, but nothing compared to what them guys would have done, using picks and that to dig your way through a mountain or through a cutting was incredible.
Toowoomba Range line uses
Annette: So the line was originally built as a passenger line, but do we still use it as a passenger line now?
Greg: Oh, it was built for everything, Annette. It was a general purpose railway. There was passenger services that were provided from the opening. There were mixed trains, which were carrying goods, livestock, passengers as well. They had the special passenger service, and until 1930, when they built the railway line that came up to Richmond Gap in New South Wales and into South Brisbane, this was the Intercolonial, this was the main line, this was the interstate railway. So everything would come up through here as well. The major passenger services, if you're coming up from Sydney, post 1930 that all changed. You came up through Kyogle and those areas as well. So, yes, but there was the passenger service and there was a lot of livestock, a lot of goods, a lot of grain, a lot of agricultural product, wool. In the early days, lots of wool – yes, always come back to wool.
In the more modern period, and I'm talking about over the past 20, 30 years, there's been the coal traffic that's developed. Still a lot of grain traffic, in fact, that comes out of this part of the world as well. Not as much passenger service in this day and age, because by virtue of the fact that railway route dates from the 1860s; it's faster, as you know, by the road journey and that. But the interesting thing is, they carry probably more in a week or even a month, down the Toowoomba Range Railway than was envisaged for an entire year of traffic or something like that when the line was built.
And there was one other interesting story. Annette, you reminded me earlier on with the tunnels. Robert Ballard, when he designed those tunnels in the 1860s, he calculated the amount of weight. You've got an entire mountain, basically, pressing down on these things that go through, pinches and ridges and things like that in the Toowoomba Range. He actually calculated the weight that would be pushing on these things. He calculated, I think, in 100 years, or it was in about – I forget how long – what they call lateral movement, which is the push, the weight on those tunnels, how much it pushed down the hillside. He calculated about three to four inches. Guess what? They measured it, I forget how many years ago, he was bang on the money. He actually calculated that force and how much it actually moved the tunnels downhill. That was remarkable.
Annette: I love that they were planning longevity instead of let's just build this and get it done.
Greg: Precisely, Annette. Anyway, yes an investment, an investment for the colony and for the future.
Annette: So, Greg, I think it's interesting that we don't have a passenger service out here and it's not commonly known either. I recently had a friend who's moved back to Australia from overseas after a long time. He went to buy a car in Toowoomba. He's like, I'm just going to buy a train ticket out to Toowoomba. Do you think that's interesting? Is it common knowledge?
Greg: Yes, it's an interesting story, all right. But, yes, there was actually for many years, actually – and I think it was until the late 1960s and that – but they actually had what they call a coordinated bus service. Up here, I think it was McCafferty's, ran it for many, many years going back. And basically, it was a shortcut. So, you catch the train up from Brisbane Rail Motor in later years and that to Helidon. And then you get on the bus and it'd have you up here in the hill without the hour and 20 minutes or thereabouts coming up the rest of the Toowoomba Range. And that would actually have started happening from an early era as well. The line was built in the 1860s. But now, Inland Rail and different alternatives and things like that. It'll be interesting to see where that all goes. And, well, as I said to someone at the beginning of the 21st century, I hope to see a railway line built to Redcliffe. That's happened. The Inland Railway, that's an old idea. It's been really going around since the 1880s. There's work happening on that too. So, it'll be interesting to see in years to come, you know, what the next eventuality is. But I'm fairly sure that a lot of the people who built the line in the 1860s and even after when that time does come, there'll be a lot of testaments to all the work that went on in the 1860s. 160 years ago, there'll still be the railway testament to it, Annette, fairly sure of that.
The next episode
Annette: Thank you for listening to our podcast today. I hope you've enjoyed learning about the Main Range. In the next episode of the Queensland Rail History podcast, we delve into the legacy of Queensland Rail's bloomin' wonderful gardens, well-kept lawns, flower pots and the garden competition that beautified our stations of the past. And we'll find out which stations are still flowering today.
Greg: Oh, be a bloomin' wonderful time, obviously. But I think we'll actually not nip it in the bud first up, and we'll actually talk about places like Burua; we'll talk about Holmes, Kuranda, Spring Bluff, which is still the great survivor of the old gardens competition today. And, oh well, hopefully it'll be a full blossoming exercise next time.
Annette: We want to thank you for listening to today's episode and Greg's bad puns. A huge thanks to our special guest, Gavin Anderson. If you have any questions about our rail history, please message us on the Queensland Rail Instagram or Facebook accounts. You can also email the team at communitypartnerships.com.au. We'd love to hear from you and what you love about our podcast, and what you'd like us to feature in a future episode. You've been listening to Queensland Rail History podcast, hosted by Greg and myself, Annette, with a new episode every month.