Episode description
In this two-part episode, we’re going to dive into one of the most iconic pieces of railway in Australia, arguably in the world: The Kuranda Scenic Railway – the KSR - located in Far North Queensland. It has become such a popular tourist attraction in Cairns, truly a must-see experience.
We’ll chat with our historian, Greg and deep dive into how this railway came to exist and we’ll also chat with a Train Driver with over 25 years of experience driving on the Kuranda range.
Rising from sea level to 327m, the journey to Kuranda passes through flat farm fields outside of Cairns, heading up through a dense world heritage listed rainforest, winding through man-made tunnels, over the Barron Gorge, and over towering bridges, passing spectacular waterfalls along the way.
This year also marks the 130th anniversary since the Kuranda Scenic Railway was opened. But how did this railway get built? And why did they build it?
Construction of the Cairns to Kuranda Railway was an engineering feat of tremendous magnitude. This enthralling chapter in the history of North Queensland stands as testimony to the splendid ambitions, fortitude and suffering of the hundreds of men engaged in its construction. It also stands as a monument to the many men who lost their lives on this amazing project.
Footnote
Journal by the Royal Historical Society: Adoption of the 3ft. 6ins. gauge for Queensland Railways
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Podcast transcript
Introduction
Annette: Hi, I'm Annette and I'm so glad you've joined us again for the second episode of the Queensland Rail History podcast. Our podcast is all about discovering the story of the railways across our state and how they evolved, and the hardworking people who created them. If you haven't listened to our first episode yet, please go back and give it a listen. We chat through the beginnings of Queensland Railways and where it all began in Ipswich. In this two-part episode, we're going to dive into one of the most iconic pieces of railway in Australia – arguably in the world – the Kuranda Scenic Railway, the KSR, located in Far North Queensland. It has become such a popular tourist attraction in Cairns, truly a must-see experience. We'll chat with our historian, Greg, and deep dive into how the railway came to exist, and we'll also talk with a train driver with over 25 years' experience driving on the Kuranda Range:
“Going up the Kuranda Range is beautiful. Just the power of that Barron Falls, the water roaring over there and smashing down that thousand-foot drop. You can feel it rumbling. I loved it. I thought it was great."
Rising from sea level to 327 metres, the journey to Kuranda passes through flat farm fields outside of Cairns, heading up through a dense World Heritage-listed rainforest, winding through man-made tunnels over the Barron Gorge, and over towering bridges, passing spectacular waterfalls along the way. This year also marks the 130th anniversary since the Kuranda Scenic Railway was opened. But how did this railway get built? And why did it get built? To find out, we have gone back to 1875, when traceable measures of tin were found in a small town in Far North Queensland.
“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."
With me today, we have our historian, Greg Hallam. Greg, I've heard you've been with the Queensland Railway for 21 years today. Congratulations!
Greg: Thank you, Annette. Yes, 21 years with QR, and three generations in the railway. But as I said, I'm still learning lots of things every day, even in the role as a historian. I'm joining you via the clouds today, rather than the cloud.
Annette: Yes. Where are we recording today, you ask? Remotely from Toowoomba and here in Brisbane. We'll see how it goes today.
The beginning of the Cairns Railway
Greg: I found this remarkable quote in a tourism guidebook that was published in 1914. Margaret Clow wrote about the walks around the Barron Gorge and where to stay, et cetera. If memory serves me correct, I think she was a schoolmarm. It was later republished and rediscovered some of the old walks, et cetera, in the Barron Falls National Park. The quote, I think, nicely links the story of the railway, tourism, and the attraction of the Barron Falls nearly 110 years ago now. This is what Margaret wrote.
“It's a Friday afternoon. The 2:45 train steams into Kuranda Station. It is boarded by 20 visitors who hold tickets for the mile-and-a-half journey to the falls. No need to designate them; they are the falls. A bell rings. A door bangs. The engine emits a shrill whistle and the train is off. The journey to the falls is very short. Stepping out of the train, we 20 travellers, most of whom have come 2,000 or more miles to see what may justly be termed nature's masterpiece in Australia."
That lovely little book was called The Mecca of Our Desires, Kuranda and the Famous Barron Falls, and that was by Margaret Clow, and it was published in 1914. So to go back a little bit in that story, Annette, about 100 kilometres southwest of Cairns is a rural town called Herberton. The discovery of tin proved to be sufficiently profitable in that era to warrant a railway. But Herberton was located about 882 metres above sea level, therefore making the construction of any railway difficult. In common with building a railway anywhere, Annette, there's always rivalries. There's always someone wanting a railway, because a railway in the 19th century brought success; it brought prosperity. But whoever got the railway generally remained. Those who didn't get the railway, they lost out.
So there were three rival northern townships that were looking to be the outlet point for the railway. So you had Mourilyan Harbour, there was Cairns, and also Port Douglas. And each one of these three, they were all vying to be the port for those lucrative tin fields. It was actually a road, or a pack road, that had actually been constructed from Port Douglas. They called it the Bump Road, and it came up from Port Douglas. And actually, it provided the best access to the tin fields. And it was far easier than an alternative pack track from Cairns. Cairns had been proclaimed a port in October of 1876. And it actually provided a shorter route to the Hodgkinson Goldfields than even from Cooktown.
So at this stage, in that part of the 19th century, it was all about metals. It was about tin; it was about gold, if you're inland from Cooktown, on the lower end of the Palmer River, those areas. But the difficulties of crossing the coastal range meant that with the establishment of Port Douglas, it's a much easier track to the Hodgkinson goldfield. Cairns decreased in importance. Now the wet season of 1882, it was really the litmus test, I suppose you'd say, Annette, because it showed how urgent the need was for reliable transport of life's necessities into the area, as well as movement of mineral production out to a coastal port. There were desperate tin miners on the Herberton fields. They were unable to obtain supplies, and actually, they were even on the verge of famine. That was how difficult conditions were for the miners there.
The boggy road that led inland from Port Douglas was actually proving impassable. So, as a result, the settlers at Herberton raised very loud and very angry voices, and they began agitation for a railway to the coast. Annette, in that era, everyone wanted a railway because again, with a railway, not only did it bring permanency, but it brought reliable transport as well. So as a result the raised angry voices and agitation to Parliament. The region to the west of this part of Queensland was very rugged and was including mountainous rainforest. It was some of the most difficult landscape that you'd actually conceive of building a railway into. So in February of 1882, both Port Douglas and Cairns formed railway leagues, as they did in those days, and they engaged in a long and very, very bitter fight for the right to be the railway, and actually, to be the port. So actually, to bring in the miners and to take the tin and whatever comes in from the hinterland out to sea.
Not long after that, Geraldton, which was later renamed Innisfail, it entered the competition as well. So you've got these townships; you've got these small ports; you've got these people literally fighting with each other because they all wanted the railway. They wanted to be the railway point; they wanted to be the terminus or the beginning of the railway, whichever way you looked at it. So in March of 1882, the Minister for Works and Mines Mr Macrossan – there's actually a railway bridge in North Queensland called the Macrossan Bridge, and that's on the Burdekin River, if memory serves me correct – he announced a route for a railway from the Atherton Tablelands to the coast. He commissioned Christie Palmerston who was an expert bushman in North Queensland, and he was an incredibly colourful pioneering character, to find a suitable route.
So during the year Palmerston, he marked out several possible routes from the coast. There was inland along the Mossman River. There was the Barron Gorge or the Barron Valley up from Cairns. There was also the Mulgrave Valley. And then in November of 1882, Palmerston made the trip from Mourilyan to Herberton in nine days, and he repeatedly came across the track which an Inspector Douglas had marked previously, as they used to do in that era. Whenever they'd go out, surveyors, they'd go out, they'd blaze trees, they'd put marks basically to indicate when they took surveys and things like that. So Palmerston was pushing his way through this incredibly rugged countryside in rainforest. And then he comes across blazed trees and marks like that had been left by previous people who had been that way, or surveyors.
So, in March of 1884, there was a surveyor named Monk. So now a Monk enters the story. He had submitted reports from investigations that were carried out on all the routes that had been marked by Christie Palmerston. Now the Barron Valley Gorge was the route that was ultimately chosen. So, after two years of railway survey, the Government announced on the 10th of September 1884 that they'd chosen Cairns. It was considered the better port and then three surveyors come into it. So we've got surveyor Stewart, Amos and Monk. They considered that what they called the precipitous slopes of the Barron Gorge had offered a better route than railway lines coming up from Port Douglas or up the Mulgrave Valley.
Now, the survey of the Cairns to Kuranda Railway commenced under Robert Ballard, who was at that stage Chief Engineer for the Central and Northern Division of the Queensland Railways. I'll just digress for a little minute. Ballard is a very interesting character. When we talk about the railway being built up to the main range here in Toowoomba in the 1860s, Ballard was the Engineer-in-Chief. He actually was 25 years old. He was in charge of the heavy works coming up the Toowoomba Range, which includes the tunnels that are still there today from the 1860s. He was actually responsible for a workforce of about 1,500 at that stage and he was a 25-year-old engineer. Ballard actually remained in the railway story of Queensland until the 1880s.
If you look into railway history of Queensland, you'll find Ballard popping up a lot. And up here in Toowoomba, there's actually a suburb named after Ballard. You have Fitzgibbon down in Brisbane after Abraham Fitzgibbon; we've got Ballard up here named after Robert Ballard.
So back to the story. So Ballard, he was then the Chief Engineer of the Central and Northern Division of the Queensland Railways. The remainder of the survey, the design and works and the majority of the supervision, it was actually taken over by Willoughby Hannam. He was Chief Engineer of the Northern Division of the Queensland Government Railways. If memory serves me again, I think there's a Hannam's Gap, which is at the top of the climb when you come up the Drummond Range, which is between Bogantungan and Alpha on the Central Line.
Annette: I was going to say, I love it. They really shaped Queensland.
Greg: They did too.
Annette: So, these people who worked on our railways were so honoured and had such a big input into our lives that they've been honoured with towns named after them and gaps and amazing things. To think they were just going to work every day, but they were making a difference.
Greg: I think that's an interesting thing because the legacy of the railway, it's not only much about iron and steel and things like that. It is about people as well. You never know, maybe in 100 years there'll be an Annette something or other, remarking on our podcasts and things like that. But anyway, so Willoughby Hannam, if you go on the Spirit of the Outback, you go through Hannam's Gap and that's named after Willoughby Hannam. Anyway, the storm of indignation, which followed from Port Douglas and Geraldton, it was enormous. And mind you, Cairns was celebrating; they were jubilant because they got the railway. The Queensland Parliament, they actually approved the plans on the 30th of October 1885. They awarded the first contract, ironically, on the 1st of April of 1886.
Annette: I think that's really interesting too, Greg, because the miners had nearly famished in 1882, but it still took them another four years before they even awarded a contract.
Greg: Well, that's the thing with the railway in this era. It wasn't something you just wave a magic wand at, as if you're the sorcerer's apprentice or something like that. Building a railway was basically based on legislation and it's based on economics, it's based on money. As you saw in the history of Queensland, it was based on political matters as well because, the Government – it was a government railway. But it did take time. But I think it also indicates this was an extremely difficult railway for the colony to build. It was going to be expensive and it was going to require a lot of engineering works to be involved in it. And this is, again, similar to building the railway here in the 1860s. So much had to be imported for the railway, to actually construct our first railway line. 30 years on, when you're looking at it, the story hasn't changed too much 25, 30 years on.
Introduction to Shaun Wrobluskie, Driver in Charge in Cairns
Annette: Construction of the Cairns to Kuranda Railway was an engineering feat of tremendous magnitude. This enthralling chapter in the history of Northern Queensland stands as testimony to the splendid ambitions, fortitude and suffering of the hundreds of men engaged in its construction. It also stands as a monument to the many men who lost their lives on the amazing project. Someone who is passionate about the Kuranda Railway line is Shaun Wrobluskie. Shaun is third generation in the railway and started at Queensland Rail in 1973 at the age of 15. Working his way up through the ranks, Shaun is currently Driver in Charge, overseeing all the train drivers operating in Cairns. He first experienced the Kuranda line while training as a guard, before returning there as a train driver in 1995.
Shaun: So, when I come back – when I come back and you first go back up there after you've been away eight or nine years, it's just – you appreciate how beautiful and so exquisite that range is, and the heritage is just pouring out of it. When I was full-time driver, I used to love going up that range because the scenery is fantastic; just the smell of the rainforest, it's just absolutely beautiful. When you go up round places like Stoney Creek and you look back and you watch the train going round the tight corner there, curve, and you see Stoney Creek Falls behind, it looks absolutely magnificent. You're coming round the edge of the glacier rock as well and when you come round the corner of the mountain, you look out and you can see right out to Green Island, you can see all of Cairns, all the bay and everything, and it's just so breathtaking.
And that's what I used to say to people – I've got relatives down south and friends – I'd say, “Well, I get paid to do this and I love it." It's just a different view every day. Some days it's clear, some days it's stormy, some days it's cloudy, rainy, just every day is different and that's why I love driving up there and appreciate it. It's beautiful, magnificent.
Interesting facts and figures
Greg: I know there are quite a few of our listeners out here, they love their statistics and things like that. We had a look into it and we came up – well, on the line, there's 106 cuttings; there's 15 tunnels that total 1,746 metres in total length; there's 244 metres of steel bridge spans. There's 1,894 metres of timber bridges. The side slopes of the gorge are between 40 degrees and 50 degrees, so that's 45 degrees to the vertical, to 50 degrees. That's very, very steep. That's the side of the gorge that you go and build your railway up to. And basically, it also made – once you started clearing all the vegetation back – it made for a lot of loose material, made for a lot of scree and also would make ultimately for what could be very dangerous conditions as you decide to build the railway.
Annette: Can I digress for a second?
Greg: Of course you can.
Annette: What is scree?
Greg: Scree, excellent. Scree is loose rock that comes up on the slopes of hillsides and things like that, and mountain. It's loose rock so it's not basically that's held in by vegetation. And it's loose, which means it's like rubble, which means it moves. If you ever come up to Toowoomba, you come up through the Murphys Creek Road, which brings you up through Ballard and brings you up to Blue Mountains Heights. When you're coming up towards where the Spring Bluff turnoff is, if you look to your left, there's a hill up there, or a mountain, and it's called Ben Lomond. And if you have a look on that mountainside, it's volcanic scree. And virtually it's a continual landslide, very, very slow, but it's just a volcanic rock and it's continually moving. And it's a remarkable thing.
It's one of the reasons why when they built the railway here, an easier way would have been going to the left of the – basically to the left of the valley that they come up. But they couldn't because of all the volcanic scree on Ben Lomond. So it went to the right, which brings you up around Spring Bluff and that. It took longer to get up the hill anyway. I think, according to one engineering analysis, it's believed to be uniquely steeper and looser than any other mountain railway in Australia. The mountain railways in Australia, you think of the ones to the Adelaide Hills, to Toowoomba, the Blue Mountains line, and there's a couple of other mountain railways. But again, this is unique in its construction. It was also unique basically in its entire – well, there's no two ways about it – in the entire idea that went behind its construction.
Tough conditions and tough people: Construction begins
So, those first 39 kilometres of track, as we said, are approved by Parliament on the 30th of October 1885. The contract was provided to a Mr P Smith on the 1st of April 1886. But that was only for the first third of the distance going up the gorge. I think the other thing too is, because of the conditions that they're building into – so this is the wet season in North Queensland. We're talking about cyclones and all and everything that goes with the wet season in that part of Queensland. There was also delays in getting everything needed to construct the railway. So there's delays in ironwork, steelwork, bridgework. But it was also the delay of the actual rails that were going to be laid. And because of that delay – they were getting shipped in from overseas – it actually delayed the initial works until well into the wet season of that year.
And the workforce, there was sickness involved. And any railway in Queensland – one of the interesting things when they talk about railway construction, one of the things is the stories of sickness that came up, because in the 19th century there were diseases. There was cholera, which was in many of the camps here. You read of inquests from the 1860s through, and there's talk about diphtheria. There's croup for children, whooping cough. There's actually even dengue; there was a form of dengue and malaria. So this is parts of Queensland that had malaria in them. So, when they talk about this construction, they're talking about sickness, we're talking about people, Europeans, who are building railway into rainforest, into tropical rainforest, and the sickness that they would encounter. That'd come from anything. They'd be from any tropical disease, or even come from ticks, typhus, those sorts of things in there.
Annette: So these workmen, they didn't take their families up on these, did they? So we've seen from when we were talking about Ipswich to Grandchester, they were taking their families along. But they weren't having their families on the side of this mountain, were they?
Greg: It was quite often in railway construction works in Australia from the 1860s and even into the early 20th century, families did reside with the workers in the camps, the navvy camps and construction camps. I think the other interesting thing that went with it with the families, well, there was basically an intention that families would reside with the workers. Just to backtrack a little, when you're talking about those early years here in the 1860s, if memory serves me correct, about a third of those who came to build the railways in the 1860s with their families, about a third of them were married. They used to have about five or six children as well. But this one was a bit different because the Cairns-Kuranda, with the railway construction workers, there tended to be a lot of men who were employed for it and it was their role to do the work.
So it wasn't so much big families as in, say, the generation before where the railway works were different. This was a much tougher environment and living conditions were pretty tough, pretty tight up there, Annette.
Annette: Yes, that's why I thought they couldn't have their families up there with them on this one. You wouldn't want your family living on 40 or 50 degree slopes.
Greg: Well, that's exactly right, yes. Tough conditions, tough people, as they say. Because it was so difficult then, the contractors actually threw up the work.
Annette: What do you mean by 'they threw up the work'?
Greg: Yes, okay. Not the one that you're probably thinking about, but basically threw up was – it's a good question, because the work was deemed too difficult by the contractors. What they tendered for the price and what they anticipated constructing the work for, the difficulties were too great for them. So they literally said, we can't do this. So they threw up the work, as they said in that era. So they had to go back basically to other tenderers or other people who would be prepared to take on the work. It was taken over by McBride and Co. And actually, because of the difficulties involved for the contractors, the work was actually finished by the Queensland Government. They'd actually come in, took over the works themselves because of the difficulties involved and the problems the contractors were having and that, and eventually they took over and they finished it up themselves.
So, the first section, anyhow, it was officially opened on the 8th of October of 1887. It had taken about 18 months to finish about 10 miles of railway, which is probably – in the modern currency there, you're looking at about 20 kilometres of line. So for that first section, it took 18 months. That's even before they actually start getting up the gorge itself, as you'd appreciate. From the word go, they provided trains, about two return services a day on the first section that was open. That was on four days a week. It ran from Cairns to the end of the contracted works, as they called it. The trains would stop at the Eight Mile, and it was later renamed Redlynch. And that was within a couple of weeks of its opening, if memory serves me correct. The original survey to the base of the range was through a place called Brinsmead Gap.
Barron Gorge works begin
There was a cheaper – although there was a longer route that actually they surveyed, that went around Edge Hill, outside of Cairns – they adopted that. It's very simple why they adopted that – finances, money and ease. So it might take you longer, but if it was going to cost less, I think it was the – I even think at this stage, they were realising the enormity of the work they were going to carry out to actually get that line up to Kuranda, and eventually hopefully up to Mareeba and Herberton and those places. The major section of the ascent of the Barron Gorge began with the awarding of section two of the contract, and this was to John Robb. That was on the 26th of January 1887. That cost £290,984. So that's pretty big money for that era. And again, it's – if you translate it into this day and age, different. I think you could be brave in saying we're getting close to a couple of hundred million dollars' worth of territory here.
Annette: Wow! So did they actually stick to that price or did they go up and above?
Greg: Yes, it's a very interesting story with this one too. And quite often with contractors, if they couldn't deliver in the time they were asked to do it or they contracted to do it, they had to pay penalties. And a lot of contracts – and I think even this one on Cairns-Kuranda – it went to arbitration between the Queensland Government and contractors. They did on other lines, for sure, which is basically because of what they said they'd do the work for, how much it eventually cost. And there were people out of pocket, well and truly.
As I said, it was – to do that second section, this is a really tough one and probably the one that people find almost like some of the icon. So John Robb, he took over and he was an experienced railway contractor and that's where they're fortunate.
The workforce
And the interesting thing was, in common with the beginning of the railway in southern Queensland, they brought in a workforce from overseas. Now, this one was very interesting because it's the 1890s and they brought in about 1,500 workers to undertake the works, mainly Irish and Italians. And Italians are very interesting because they were deemed – there was a prevailing thought at that stage that Europeans couldn't labour in the tropics, that it was unhealthy and everything like that.
But to undertake the construction work, they actually actively recruited Italians because they were Italians, although Europeans, given a different climate and things like that, that they'd be able to adjust to the rigours of tropical life there, which is pretty interesting when you think about it. Coming from Italy, I don't know how many rainforests and things like that are in Italy, but they were deemed actually to be a better workforce. But they also recruited the Irish again, as well.
Annette: I know, definitely not built for the tropics.
Greg: Well, that's exactly right. But the Italians, they were a tough breed. There's no two ways about it. People were amazed at their abilities to work and things like that. Again, it was that entire contracted workforce that they had to bring in to undertake these works. And it's an investment because if you're bringing people halfway around the world and actively recruiting them, it's a major investment for you in the works and everything like that, that you're taking. So, yes, it's an enormous project when you think about how they're going to put it all together.
Annette: Sorry, quick question again, sorry.
Greg: Yes, please.
Annette: So, they brought in 1,500 workers. And I know we are talking about 20 years later, but could none of the workers that were brought in for the original section down in Brisbane be transferred up? They were all skilled migrant workers.
Greg: Well, they were, but you see, because they were actually skilled, a lot of those – you've got to think about when they were navvying, 20, 30 years before, a lot of them actually moved on. Quite a number of them remained in Queensland; they went on the land. Numbers of them actually went to the Queensland railways. And a lot of them, there was a very mobile workforce in that era as well too. We think this day and age, COVID aside, you know, we seem to think that it's a very mobile world. But they were able to move all around Australia. In the 1880s and into the 1890s, and then in the 1870s, there was huge amounts of railway construction work going around Australia. And again, if you had those skills that were in demand, if you had been able to prove you were on railway works, you could go anywhere in the colonies of Australia or beyond. So the recruitment – and because this large-scale labouring enterprise, there's a lot of people, but it was the distancing.
So it's almost like you needed to get your own workforce in to construct that work in that time period, and they're dedicated entirely to the task at hand, I'd suppose you'd say. And that's why they went through the recruitment process. It was obviously the thing too – there was an intention that the Italians would probably remain after the construction of the railway, and then they become part of the European settlement story of that part of Queensland as well. Think later on about the Italian cane farmers and those people that – they've left such a strong imprint in North Queensland. So, yes, so that was the Irish and the Italian. I would have loved to have been there to actually just see what it was like and the various accents and comments and that going on. There you go.
Horseshoe Bend
Annette: A part of this major section included a long horseshoe curve in the track to allow the train to gradually gain height. Shaun shares with us what this landmark is like and why it's a great photo opportunity for tourists today.
Shaun: It's just a pretty hard pull out of Redlynch with the train. So on your way up, we go up to a place called Horseshoe Bend. It is a horseshoe. It's the shape of a horseshoe. So what we do is we slow down to 10 k an hour and we go around, so people get photos of the whole train all the way around. If you're at the front, you turn around and shoot the back. If you're at the back, obviously you photograph a video of the front. There's been some funny things like, I remember one day we were going up on the train and I got on the radio and I told the onboard staff, I said, look to your right-hand side, there's a python lying there, and it just finished swallowing a kangaroo. So obviously it couldn't slide away. So for three days they kept pointing that out to all the tourists. They thought it was fantastic because the python couldn't move because it had this massive kangaroo in its stomach.
Greg: So there's a long horseshoe curve. It's a 15km long railway line that then follows. And in 15km you've got the 15 tunnels and that goes up to the gorge at the top of Barron Falls. It's located 317m above Redlynch. In the old currency, that would be around 1,000ft, I think, like that. Now interestingly, Annette, there were originally 19 tunnels that they originally planned, but they actually decided and opted, instead of building the 19 tunnels, four of those were going to be replaced by cuttings.
Annette: Sorry, Greg, for all those out there who aren't familiar with railway terms, what is a cutting?
Greg: A cutting, it's not obviously something that's going to end up on the floor of our podcast or anything like that. It's nothing from papers or anything, but cuttings is very much, well, in engineering, it's your construction term. A cutting is basically an excavation which is made during construction work. Literally dug into a hillside or dug into a raised area of ground. And the cutting actually, the spoil, as they call it, which is the material which is dug out the earth, a lot of the time it was removed and then it was used to make an embankment. So you remove spoil from one cutting, it's then transported and dumped and it's made to make an embankment. And the idea with that basically for the cutting and the embankment system is it maintains a fairly level line for you as well, which you need with a railway. And so it maintains some form of level ascent.
So remove spoil from cutting here, which is allowing the train to go through on a certain grade, on a certain level. Take that material, you've got a gully or something further up that you're not going to bridge, put the soil in there to make an embankment and that's how you build the railway up as well. That's what a cutting is anyway. Although if you're from Toowoomba, cuttings also mean orchids and things like that and flowers around, coming up to spring and everything like that.
Kamarunga
John Robb, as I said, very interesting fellow when it came to contracting. So he built a two-kilometre long branch line from Redlynch to the main construction camp at a place called Kamarunga. That's situated at the base of the range.
And then there's a short distance from – if you stand today beside the Barron River – and the Barron River is the central story, not only to the story of the indigenous people of North Queensland and the wonderful Aboriginal stories of creation, but that Barron River, of course, it's also the way the railway followed, of course, going up. So the railway, the river, they're very close together in this story. And for John Robb, Kamarunga actually became his headquarters. He had his main office there. The remarkable thing is, Annette, when you have a look at it, I think there were about 13 pubs or hotels or shanties, but definitely 13 hotels that were there at Kamarunga. So, there was a big thirst by the navvies or the workers on that line as well. So they obviously would have done a roaring trade as well.
Annette: So, wait a second. John Robb gets to stay down in this nice cushy hotel with his 13 pubs that he can choose where he wants to go. But the navvies are all camped up somewhere on this 40 to 50 degree angle with damp, wet camps to live in.
Greg: Oh, damp, wet, torrential – thank you very much, Annette – torrential. I know it seems hard for us, but whenever you build a railway, you had your base in construction camp and that was where all the – basically, all the bureaucratic side of things went, where all the administrative work was carried out. That was where the headquarters were. That's really the base work. John Robb, however, the contractors in this period, they may have seen – they didn't exactly stay in a pub somewhere or a nice hotel. They lived it rough. They used to go up the railway works; they'd be there every day; they'd be where the labouring was going on and everything like that.
But living under canvas in the Barron Gorge and things like that, it's certainly something – in this day and age, I certainly wouldn't want to try it myself. But we mentioned about the landform before there, Annette. I mean, there's no ways to change it. It was described as treacherous. The hillsides and that were treacherous:
Steep climbs and tough conditions: Respecting the Range
Shaun: We got a few places up in the range where the range actually climbs pretty strong.
Annette: That's Shaun Wroblewskie, train driver and Driver in Charge of Cairns.
Shaun: We're very fortunate these days. We've got multi-units on the trains; we've got two locos on the trains. Years ago we only ever had one, so it was pretty tricky. So you had to be careful, you couldn't get stuck. Kuranda Range is 150. People that understand what gradients are, it's how many feet you travel in a metre going up. So, yes, the Kuranda Range is quite steep, it's 150. So there is a few places there, if you don't know what you're doing, you will get stuck. You get bogged; they call it bogged. So what happens is the wheels start spinning and you don't go nowhere. So in the wet season, you've got to know where you're going and what you're doing. I remember an old driver said something to me once that really sticks in my mind. It's great driving the range, but the day you lose respect for that range is the day something's going to go wrong. So I teach that when I teach new people: don't ever take it for granted because you don't know what's around the corner. It could be a landslide, it could be a mudslide. You don't know.
Greg: The entire surface was covered with about – I think it was about 4.6 million or 7.60 million layers of disjointed rock. There was rotting vegetation; there was mould; there was soil; there was fallen trees; the whole box and dice. So a volume of just over 2.3 million cubic metres of earthworks had to be removed. And when it came to removing that, most of it was done by hand. So yes, working conditions in swamps and jungles – well, people described them as unbearable and things like that. Well, people in that era, whenever they were undertaking the works, it was tough. But that's how life was 120 years ago, 130 years ago, it was fairly difficult, the works that had to be undertaken. We mentioned before about sickness, and that came with the fact they were working in a tropical environment. It was also – they were of European stock as well; that would have been an absolute challenge for them as well.
Small townships
But there were small townships. And if you look at the photographs that were taken that document the construction work, you can see the small townships that were built up along the railway works. They were small townships. There was one at tunnel number three, Stoney Creek where the bridge is, Glacier Rock, there was the Camp Oven Creek and there was Rainbow Creek as well. And the KSR people, they've got a lovely line. And I really like what they said because they said, “The navvies tackled the jungle and mountains with strategy, fortitude, hand tools, dynamite buckets and bare hands." To me, that speaks volumes, literally, just about the working conditions. They had to literally remove parts of the hillside and remove it by hand and then by spoil and things like that.
Deaths building the railway
And then by trains, to take – they had to bring things up the range. You think about – they had to bring girders up, they had to bring sleepers and rails and things like that. Same point, they have to remove a lot of the soil, the material from the hillsides. Every loose rock and overhanging tree, well, that had to be cut by hand. It was during that type of work that the first fatal accident occurred and that was a place called Beard's Cutting. A man named – I think it was Gavin Hamilton, he stood on the wrong side of a log that was being rolled into a fire and got killed. And those who died on the works, they were documented. In that era, I know there's this thing, I think unfortunately from the American Wild West and things like that, about railways and people dying and never being noticed. It was different here in Queensland and Australia.
Again, if you're a contractor and you're undertaking the works and someone dies or gets injured, there are questions that could have been of compensation. But also the fact they always had inquests into a person who died, whether through illness or through accident. So that's why they got a fairly good and pretty reasonable understanding of how many people died in association with the railway works. And that was – as a historian, those inquests, when they're written up, they are gold in their own way. They give you a wonderful insight, especially if you're a social historian, into the conditions that people lived in, the conditions they were employed under, and the difficulties that they had to deal with on a daily basis. And it's all there verbatim. So it is quite remarkable. So that was Gavin Hamilton. That's why we know, according to the records, that he was the first one to die.
Officially, from the records, it's about 32 died whilst working on the railway. That was mainly through accidents. There was malaria. As in common with a lot of the navvy camps, there was brawling, brought on by possibly drink and things like that. Snakebite. Now, snakebite was another one that you see lots of references to, which is – when you look at other places in Queensland, people did get snakebite, but again, it seemed to be in the tropical environment, the rainforest environment. Being bitten by snakes was another one of these unique features. And there was also the mishandling of explosives as well, because they were working with dynamite at that stage. And working with dynamite, if you weren't fully proficient, as they say, it could end in disaster. If you weren't aware of what you were doing. And so there were those cases.
The tunnels and bridges of the Kuranda Line
Annette:The handmade tunnels and bridges of the Kuranda Line are a testament to all of the navvies who worked so hard to create this piece of the railway. And someone who sees and values their work firsthand every day is Cairns Driver in Charge, Shaun Wroblewskie.
Shaun:Well, I take my hat off to them old people, because most of them were migrants, and they were just coming here just to get work. So they got offered money to do a job. It wasn't the best of jobs. They had – the conditions were terrible. And they were going through rainforests, which is as thick as thick. And that's something else you see when you're travelling on the train, when you're going up there, you're going through thick, thick rainforest. And you hear the birds and everything, it's just absolutely beautiful. So them poor people that done that track, oh mate, I take my hat off to them, because there's no way could I ever do that in my lifetime, I can reassure you of that. Hard yards.
Questions and answers
Annette:We'll hit pause on our deep dive into the KSR there for now. The second part of our Kuranda Scenic Railway episode will cover how the KSR was completed and how it became an international tourist attraction. Thank you to everyone who has left a review, a comment or sent in a question on our social media channels. We really love hearing from you.
Queensland's narrow gauge
Our first question comes from @noodlewalktossed on Instagram. Noodle asked: can you cover why Queensland Rail ended up with narrow gauge? Greg, can you please answer Noodle's question?"
Greg: Oh, that's a very interesting one, Annette. But unfortunately, there's even been a PhD or two, I think, written about that topic. Tim Fisher, when he was alive, he used to ask a lot of the same questions. We'd have talks about narrow gauge. It is a bit of an involved topic as well. We did cover it briefly in our first episode, of course. But I'd say, for Noodle, it might be worthwhile to go back and then have a listen to it. It does go back to the time of Abraham Fitzgibbon who brought up the 3ft 6 gauge, and had been trialled in Norway and India and New Zealand as well. And there is a very good article, a journal article written in 1983, the Royal Historical Society of Queensland by the historian John Knowles, and it's about the adoption of the 3ft 6 gauge in Queensland. That's available online if Noodle was interested to read that one, because it really covers it off very well. And basically, I think the simplest message that came out from it, Annette, was it was a matter of the economy. We had to deliver the most service for the smallest number of people, being a small population. It goes back to that thing of Fitzgibbon, which was, you know, better to go 500 miles at 15 miles an hour than 215 miles at 25 miles an hour.
Queensland's up and down direction
Annette:We've got another one here from Facebook, from Ian Hayes: In the next podcast, will you be explaining how Queensland Rail came up with its vision of up and down direction and not following the UK, New South Wales, Victoria, WA or South Australia, and probably every other country where up means towards a major city and down means away from the major city. Greg, can you enlighten us here? What does it mean?
Greg:Well, up and down trains here, again for Ian, it's a little bit of an involved topic matter. But the railway systems that the Australians states, they generally follow the practices of railways in the United Kingdom. So, railway directions are described, of course, as up and down, with up being towards the major location or a town in most states; that's usually the capital city of the state. Now, for example, in New South Wales, trains running away from Sydney were down trains. In Victoria, trains running away from Melbourne are down trains. An interstate train travelling from Sydney to Melbourne is a down train. But then we're across the border at Albury, it changed into a classification as an up train. And even in states that follow this practice, exceptions exist for individual lines.
So, in the state of Queensland, up and down directions are individually defined for each line. Therefore, a train heading towards Roma Street is classed as an up train on some lines, but also as down trains on other lines. Whereas coming up to places like Toowoomba, it's an up train to the country and down train to the city. It also gets a bit more complicated because our signalling, when we introduced it in the 1860s from England, and that was on the left-hand side, the fireman's side, not on the right-hand side, which was the driver's side. And then, of course, the drivers and firemen on our locomotives, they followed the practice of the Great Western Railway in England. The driver's on the right-hand side and the fireman's on the left.
And there's the other colonies, and that was the reverse way around. It's basically the result of having very much an imported railway. And I think we mentioned in episode one, the railway was very much an imported system. Everything that came with it, lock, stock, boiler barrel, rule books, everything. So, yes, it's a little bit difficult to say, but again, it's one of those things. And the shorthand thing in Queensland was up to the country and down to the city."
The oldest interesting artefacts of Queensland
Annette: Adam Sedell at Kermist Capehas sent in: what are some of the oldest interesting artefacts of Queensland you have discovered?
Greg: I'd hate to – I'd really hate to disappoint Adam because I'm a historian, not an archaeologist. And as we know, archaeology is far more interesting and well, better portrayed. You only have to look at Indiana Jones, of course, for that. Recently down at Shorncliffe, there's been an archaeological project there where they've been looking under their station and finding all sorts of accumulation of items, you know, from the past 100 or more years. We were only talking up here in Toowoomba just before, about after the floods in 2011. And they came – where some of the earlier railway works were, dating back to the 1860s, and they undertook an archaeological study just to see if they could – anything from the 1860s could be found.
There wasn't much evidence at all from the camps back then, of course. They found a couple of old bottles, ginger beer bottles, along the line, which could date back to that period because the old... they were ceramic pottery bottles. They found some of those, apparently, at various locations. Anything that's in the ground now is actually – it's historical archaeology. So it's protected under Queensland legislation. So for myself, as a historian, it's not really archaeology. You do get people asking, finding interesting things. They've got something in their garage that's been there for decades and wondering what it is. But one of the more interesting ones is North Ipswich Railway Workshops. It was in the 1980s, I think, and where part of the museum is now, they dug up the old boiler room floor, I think it was, or the boiler shop, yes, the boiler shop.
And it was compacted earth because that's one of the best absorbers of sound – well, not sound, I should say, just vibrations in the boiler shop. But when they dug down, they found bits and pieces from steam locomotives that had been used as fill. They found bits and pieces of old smoke boxes. I think it was off an A12 steam locomotive. They actually had what they called the builder's plates still attached to it. And the builder's plates is like a birth certificate for a locomotive that's on the side window – its works number where it was built. I think these were Baldwins. And they were dated back to the 1880s or thereabout. I remember that one from the 1980s, and being told about that. But there's – yes, there's a lot of archaeology that goes with the railway, historical archaeology. And, yes, it's always interesting.
And in my job, honestly Annette, some days I get questions or things get fired through to me, a photograph of something that literally someone has. “I found this", or, “This has come down to me. What is it?" And it's a bit of a head-scratching exercise. So, yes, railways produced a lot of artefacts over the years and a lot of documentation. And, oh, well, as I said to one person only recently, it's not a case of what is it; it's more – I'm more interested sometimes how I got it, because that's always its own fascinating story that goes with it too.
The introduction of electric trains
Annette: We have another question here from Jas Raja: When was the first electric train launched in Queensland Rail?
Greg: Electric services were inaugurated in the Brisbane suburban system in November of 1979. And the first section that was inaugurated was between Corinda and Ferny Grove. There was a big celebration in the lead-up to that. There was a big pageant at Roma Street and they called it E-Day. Electric E-Day, Electrification Day. This is one of those historical things I can actually comment on, Annette, because I was there. I remember it as a 13-year-old and I remember seeing those first electric trains go through in November of 1979 from home as well. What happened was there were four electric EMUs. There were four EMUs in service and they were running – that was it.
And what people were doing, because you imagine, as you know, November in Brisbane, and you had the silver sets, stainless steel with open windows and the old Evans cars, the wooden ones. So guess what was happening? It's air-conditioned. It's November. All the other trains are going through. Everybody's waiting for the electric train, to get on for the air-conditioning. That's what happened anyway. But as they introduced more, it got much more, shall we say, civilised anyway. But yes, they didn't run – so they started off with four of them and I don't think they even ran them on Sundays. They still used to use rail motors, because there wasn't much in the way of passengers.
Conclusion
Annette: In the second instalment of the Kuranda Scenic Railway episode, we'll cover the completion of the railway and some of its key features.
“Surprise Creek is a creek that falls just above the power station. So when you look down, you're looking down nearly 1,000 feet down, you can see the power station. It's a big drop. You know, if you've got vertigo, you don't look down there too much."
We'll also find out how the KSR survived the downturn of two world wars and we'll chat to someone who's been involved with the KSR line for 27 years, and find out how it became the popular tourist attraction it is today.
“This tourism product's been operating for that long in this small city of Cairns, and pretty much Cairns City, as we know it, wouldn't be if this railway didn't actually commence."
If you're interested in travelling up to Cairns and experiencing the Kuranda Scenic Railway, head to Queensland Rail Travel and book a journey. 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@qr.com.au. We'd love to hear from you what you love about the podcast, what you'd like us to feature in the future.