This Haughton Gap line, with a branch line running to Ayr, would have allowed Bowen to compete with Townsville for the western trade, delivered fruit, vegetables and dairy produce from the Burdekin to the gold miners at Charters Towers, allowed the Burdekin growers to ship their sugar out of Bowen and supplied the meatworks on Poole Island with livestock from the west.
The Queensland Parliament approved £150,000 for the line from Bowen through Haughton Gap, and it could have been the kick along that would guarantee Bowen the ascendancy over its northern rival.
Townsville and Ayr interests, on the other hand, wanted a coastal line between the two centres that would see Burdekin sugar exported through Townsville. While the line from Bowen did go ahead it reached Bobawaba (formerly known as Wangaratta) in 1891, then stopped there for a decade while the argument about its eventual destination proceeded.
In the end, proactive forces to the north of Bowen decided the matter. Ayr interests wanted a railway to the north rather than the west and south, and in 1899 the Townsville Municipal Council, the Thuringowa Divisional Board and the Ayr Divisional Board formed a joint entity called the Ayr Tramway Board, which constructed a 69km line to Townsville for around £77,000.
The line, which opened in 1901 effectively settled the issue, and the North Coast Railway Act of 1910 set the arrangements in stone with the Queensland Government taking a line that had paid its own way and ended up returning around£30,000 to the local authorities who’d put up the initial capital.
So the line from Bobawaba ran through Inkerman and Home Hill to Ayr, erather than out to the west through Clare and the Haughton Gap, and Bowen ended up in the doldrums. While they were waiting for things to be sorted out there was a triangular section of track at Bobawaba which allowed trains to be turned around for the trip back to Bowen and it remained in place until the high level bridge across the Burdekin was built. One leg of the triangular turn-around crossed the Bruce Highway though, fifty-plus years after it became redundant, there’s no sign of it today.
The link from Bobawaba to Home Hill was completed in July 1915, linking up with the section of line that linked Ayr and Home Hill via the Inkerman Bridge which opened in September 1913, a little over three years after they’d linked Proserpine and Bowen.
Wangaratta Creek, just north of Bobawaba, marks the boundary between the old Bowen and Wangarata Shires and the present Whitsunday Regional Council and the Burdekin local authority, and from there the highway loops around the foot of Mount Inkerman, with another turn off to one of those coastal hideaways (Wunjunga) along the way.
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