Yeppoon railway station
| Yeppoon railway station | |
|---|---|
Yeppoon Station, circa 1991
|
|
| Location | James Street, Yeppoon, Shire of Livingstone, Queensland, Australia |
| Coordinates | 23°07′42″S 150°44′34″E / 23.1283°S 150.7429°ECoordinates: 23°07′42″S 150°44′34″E / 23.1283°S 150.7429°E |
| Official name: Yeppoon Station Building | |
| Type | state heritage (built) |
| Designated | 18 April 2008 |
| Reference no. | 602563 |
| Significant period | 1900s |
 Location of Yeppoon railway station in Queensland
Location of Yeppoon railway station in Queensland
|
|
Yeppoon railway station is a heritage-listed railway station at James Street, Yeppoon, Shire of Livingstone, Queensland, Australia. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 18 April 2008.
In 1867, residents of Rockhampton signed a petition asking the Surveyor-General to mark out a town at the nearest point on the central Queensland coast where they might be able to enjoy a day at the beach. Although Yeppoon, then known as "Bald Hills", was proclaimed as a Town Reserve, as a watering place for Rockhampton on 30 April 1868, for many years access to it was difficult, the first road with culverts being built in 1878. It suffered in its rivalry with Emu Park (declared a Town Reserve on 9 January 1869), where land was taken up by influential Rockhampton businessmen and squatters from further west who built holiday houses there. These two resort towns were among the first in Queensland and the first on the Great Barrier Reef lagoon.
Pastoralists and selectors were the first to settle and develop the Yeppoon area. The first land sale was held on 4 August 1873 when P. F. McDonald, the pastoralist and investor bought 15 of the 17 blocks sold, and local selectors two. Yeppoon town site lay in a hollow between steep hills, below the line of dunes, and in wet weather it was swampy. The only large enterprise was the Yeppoon Sugar Plantation, which in its twenty years of existence was handicapped by the lack of roads and rail. Yeppoon with a higher rainfall than Rockhampton or Emu Park, and fertile soil, became an agricultural area with land near the town occupied by selectors within 10 years of its proclamation and surrounding areas being used for grazing.
The beginning of the 1880s brought changes to the district as people began to take more of an interest in the town. Between 1881 and 1884, it was predominantly residents of the area who purchased the remaining 30 town lots. These lots had not sold at the first land sales in 1873. When an additional town area was surveyed in 1881, however, these lots had all sold out by 1885.
The first length of rail line in the region was opened to Westwood some thirty miles (fifty kilometres) from Rockhampton in 1867. The line was extended beyond the coastal ranges in 1872, reaching Emerald in 1879. The Central Western railway was progressively extended further west reaching Longreach in 1892, and remained an isolated railway system, with no connection to railways in southern Queensland railways until 1903 when the North Coast railway line connected them.
...
Wikipedia