Then, when you get to Gumlu there’s another turn off, just before Molongle Creek, that’ll take you to Molongle Beach on the other side of Cape Upstart.
That’s a turn to the right. Turn left at Gumlu and drive around sixty kilometres and you’ll reach the mine at Mount Carlton on Strathbogie Station, between Gumlu and Collinsville. The mine opened for business in April 2013 with a processing plant capable of handling 800,000 tonnes of throughput each year yielding about 25,000 tonnes of precious metals concentrate per year and an anticipated lifespan of eight to twelve years as the mine works through reserves expected to yield 850,000 ounces of gold, 21 million ounces of silver and 38,500 ounces of copper.
Predictably, given that lifespan we’re talking a drive in drive out operation with a work force of up to 170, which has apparently had an affect on house prices in Gumlu, situated just off the highway on the opposite side of the main northern rail line, which was probably the raison d’etre for the township.
Back in the dim dark days of the steam train there were camps scattered along the railway lines, housing fettlers and their families with a one teacher school if the numbers were deemed sufficient. The school at Gumlu dates back to October 1913 and became Gumlu State School in 1920.
Most of those camps are, of course, long gone and those that survived have done so because some other form of economic activity kicked in before the Railways Department moved the fettlers away. In Gumlu’s case, underground water has provided the means to grow an enormous amount of produce, including capsicums, melons and mangoes, though one can deduce the order of importance from the township’s annual Capsicum Festival.
Gumlu was formerly known as Molongle Creek, with the new name for the railway station coming into effect on 15 January 1912. The new name, predictably, is attributed to an Aboriginal word meaning rock wallaby, though the pronunciation has been mangled and the language or dialect that supplied Gunyaloo is predictably indeterminate.
North of the township you’ll pass a couple of substantial dams, providing the wherewithal to irrigate farms around Rocky Ponds Creek en route to Wangaratta Creek, northern boundary of Whitsunday Regional Council. On the way there’s a stock yard beside the railway line at Bobawaba, a locality with a rather interesting story that ties in rather neatly with issues raised in The Parochial North.
It took quite a while before a continuous line connecting Brisbane to Cairns came into being, and the earliest railway lines tended to run from a coastal settlement into the hinterland, which explains lines from Cooktown to Laura, Cairns to Mareeba, Townsville to Hughenden and beyond and from Rockhampton to Longreach.
There was, however, nothing running along the coast between Gladstone and Cairns, and the first section of coastal line was slated to start at Bowen, heading north to Ayr. Surveys on the line started in 1883, working both ways from Bowen and Ayr and the main obstacle, predictably, was crossing the Burdekin River.
Rather than crossing the river at the current point on the outskirt of Home Hill the original plan seems to have involved a crossing higher up the river, around Clare, and there was a delegation from Bowen (read about it here) looking to have the line run through Haughton Gap, joining the Great Northern Railway around sixty kilometres west of Townsville.
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