The Birdsville Aboriginal Tracker’s Hut, Courthouse and Police Complex, comprises a Courthouse (1890) with an extension for Police and Customs Quarters (1896), an Aboriginal Tracker’s Hut (1948) and a Lock-up (1958). Located within the small town of Birdsville, in far western Queensland, this judiciary complex was the administrative centre for police and border customs along a major stock route from 1890. The site remained in use until the 1980s, and in police ownership until 2021.

The area encompassing Birdsville (Wirrarri) and extending into what is now South Australia is part of the traditional land of the Wangkangurru and Yarluyandi (or Jeljendi) people. Life in the country, subject to cycles of drought and flood, was based around mikiri (desert wells) in the dry times, with travel when water was plentiful. The Wangkangurru and Yarlunyandi people hold knowledge of the mikiri and the Dreaming tracks that cross the desert, and retain connections and duties to care for country.

Wirrarri was also a meeting place, exchange centre and distribution area for pituri, a hallucinogenic plant containing high levels of nicotine. The country between the Georgina and Mulligan rivers, just north of Wirrarri, was the primary source of pituri, which was used in hunting, ceremonies, and recreationally, and carried in traditional pituri bags. This placed Wirrarri near the centre of an important trade route, with people travelling hundreds of kilometres to the area to exchange high quality stone axes from Cloncurry and Mount Isa, medicines, and seashells for pituri. The route was also important for social and ritual trade, where songs, ceremonies, and knowledge were exchanged.

Non-Indigenous expeditions traversed the trade routes across the area that became the Diamantina district in the 1840s and early 1860s. European pastoralists took up large holdings in the semi-arid region from 1876, driving cattle along the traditional trade route. Roads were built on the trade routes, and homesteads and stockyards were often built on Aboriginal campsites. By the late 1870s a store and hotel were reportedly erected at the site of the present town of Birdsville to serve passing travellers, teamsters and drovers, and the pastoral stations in the region. The site was located adjacent to a permanent waterhole on the Diamantina River.

In 1881 a four square mile (1036ha) township reserve was gazetted on the Boundary and Boundary East runs on the Diamantina River. The township, which became known as Birdsville, was officially surveyed in 1885. Land sales in Birdsville town were held in 1886, and the Diamantina Divisional Board was established and based in Birdsville. By 1889 Birdsville boasted a population of 110, with two general stores, three hotels, two blacksmith shops, two bakers, a cordial manufacturer, bootmaker, saddler, auctioneer and commission agent, and a number of residences. The town also managed to raise nearly £200 prize money for its inaugural race day in 1882, reflecting the success of the surrounding pastoral areas.

Positioned halfway along the stock route which served stations between the Gulf of Carpentaria and Adelaide, Birdsville became an important marshalling point. Drovers paused for refreshments or waited out poor weather while moving cattle south to Adelaide markets, as Afghan cameleers carried goods north from the Marree railway station in central South Australia to Birdsville, along what quickly became known as the Birdsville Track. In 1883 a customs post was opened at Birdsville, the westernmost of 14 border posts established in Queensland before Federation to maintain tariff walls between the colonies. Located just 11 kilometres north of the border with South Australia, along the busy stock route, the Birdsville post was an important administrative centre for border customs. A customs officer was officially appointed in 1885.

Following violent clashes between Indigenous people and pastoralists in the region in the 1870s, the Queensland Government prioritised the establishment of a police force at the remote Birdsville settlement. The first purpose-built police station and gaol was built in 1884, and a sergeant, two constables, and an Aboriginal tracker were despatched to Birdsville in September 1884. A five-acre (2.02ha) police reserve at the western boundary of the town, surrounded by Macdonald, Adelaide and Graham Streets, was gazetted in December 1885.

While crime levels in Birdsville were generally low, serious offenders like horse thieves had to be transported for trial to Winton, more than 600km away. Civil matters and misdemeanours required attention at the nearest court of petty sessions, located more than 300km north in Boulia. After complaints from residents, the situation was partially resolved in 1884, when Birdsville was gazetted as a place where courts of petty sessions could be held. Police Sergeant McDonald was appointed as the acting court clerk. A police magistrate was appointed in January 1885, and in later years the role was coupled with clerk of petty sessions or customs officer.

The population of Birdsville peaked in 1895 at 220. Following Federation, the Birdsville customs depot was closed and the population slowly dwindled to approximately 50 throughout the 1950s. The livestock trade continued to be the primary industry of the town but in the last quarter of 20th century and with the growth in popularity of the Birdsville Races, tourism became the primary economic driver. In 2011 the population had risen to around 280, swelling to around 6000 for the 12 days of the racing carnival, but in 2016 the reported population had dropped to 140.

Introduced to Queensland police stations from 1874, Aboriginal trackers were employed to find missing persons, trace criminals, and search for lost or stolen stock. They could trace paths indistinguishable to Europeans, providing vital services in remote and rural areas. Trackers also carried out tasks around the police station, including caring for police animals; the wives of married trackers undertook domestic work at the station. Trackers had become part of the police forces across Australia after first working for Europeans in the 1820s, and the skills of Queensland trackers were particularly renowned. By 1896, 112 trackers were employed across the colony, though numbers varied from year to year. The number of trackers employed by the Queensland Police peaked at 127 in 1900, had fallen to 68 by 1925, and to only 26 by 1952. The last tracker employed by the Queensland Police retired in 2014, ending the 140-year operation.

An Aboriginal tracker was stationed at Birdsville with the initial contingent of police officers in 1884. Over the following seven decades, between one and three trackers at a time were stationed at Birdsville. The Birdsville trackers undertook a range of tasks – one tracker was charged with the care of the station’s camels, which had arrived in 1886 – while their wives performed ‘domestic duties’ at the station. The longest serving trackers, Tracker Billy (served 1885 - 1905) and Corporal Tommy (served 1905 - 1952), covered almost the duration of trackers stationed at Birdsville.

As part of their employment, trackers were to be provided with wages, food, and accommodation. Wages were well below the average rate (and later well below the minimum wage), and food was supplied by the officer in charge of the station. Trackers’ wives, though expected to work, were not paid. The standard of accommodation provided varied, from a large brick building at Townsville, to bark huts or storage rooms within the police building. Generally, tracker accommodation was rudimentary and located away from the other police station buildings, reflecting the treatment and status of Aboriginal trackers in the police force. The DPW provided plans for tracker accommodation (called ‘huts’) at Burketown (1906), Gilbert River (1908), Emerald (1917), Ingham (1927), Thursday Island (1928 and 1954), Toowoomba (1929), Almaden (1934), Cooktown (1935), and Mount Molloy (1936). None of these buildings are known to survive in 2022.

From 1898 to 1948, the Birdsville trackers were accommodated within a rudimentary hut with mud and stone walls and a galvanised iron roof, located at the rear of the site on the Adelaide Street boundary. In 1948 this was replaced by a simple, timber-framed building, clad on its walls and roof with corrugated metal sheets. The building had a single room 16ft x 11ft (4.8m x 3.3m) with a 2.4m wide awning on the eastern side. It was positioned away from the courthouse and lock-up, outside the fence that enclosed the police site.

Corporal Tommy occupied the new building until his retirement in 1952, 47 years after his engagement with the Birdsville police. In his final year of employment he appeared in the documentary Back of Beyond, filmed in 1952 and released in 1954. He was the last Birdsville tracker.

The Birdsville tracker’s hut is a rare surviving example of accommodation provided for Aboriginal trackers employed by the Queensland Police. Other trackers’ huts extant in Queensland in 2022 include the tracker’s hut at Bedourie, built in 1947 on the police reserve but later moved; and the Normanton trackers’ hut (unknown construction date), on the site of the Normanton Gaol. The Bedourie hut, 200km north of Birdsville, is similar in form and materials to the Birdsville hut, while the Normanton hut is clad on its walls with timber.

In December 1985, a severe storm badly damaged the Birdsville Aboriginal tracker's hut which, at the time, was being used for storage. The small structure lost sections of the wall and roof but these were reinstated.

Source: Queensland Heritage Register.

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Urandangi was found in 1885 and proclaimed a town in 1891 on the Georgina Stock Route. Here, the Boulia, Cloncurry, and Camooweal mail runs converged. It was also an important stopover for drovers taking Northern Territory cattle to market. In its heyday Urandangi boasted two stores, hotels, a dance hall, a post office, a police station, a school, and several private residences. From the 1920s to the 1940's there were over 400 people living in the area. The dispute over the name Urandangi or Urandangie remains unclear, as many early documents add the 'e' whilst some maps simply use 'i'.

Small rural cemeteries differ from those in towns. Fewer graves are marked: the headstones were often freighted from Townsville stonemasons like Melrose and Fenwick or Petrie of Brisbane. Many families could not afford such memorials, so timber was used, but in termite country, they rarely lasted. The epitaphs of people buried in the local cemetery may seem mundane, but their contribution in establishing homes and industries paved the way for present prosperity. Aboriginal custom does not allow the name of a deceased person to be mentioned after they have died nor are their photographs shown publicly.

A Country Women's Association (CWA) branch was formed at Urandangi in 1924. Anne Thomas, of Headingly Station, was elected President. She and the community raised funds for the hall and tennis court. They were open in May 1926. Two months later, Ann was buried in the cemetery. She was 56 years of age. The hall was used until its demolition in 1999.

Urandangi once had a terrible reputation for violence and drunkardness. This came to an end when Victorian born Pam Forster purchased the Urandangi Hotel in 2008, after relocating from Western Australia's Kimberley region to take over the notorious hotel. Determined to transform the outback village into a peaceful, clean, bush-connected community, having the keys to the pubs front door meant Forster had the upper hand over degenerate behaviour. If patrons caused trouble, she would close. Gradually, over time, Urandangi become a humble outback community and attracts tourism. There are only two publically accessible settlements between the Queensland and Northern Territory border; Urandangi and Camooweal.

In late 2022 and March 2023 the region saw intense flooding from the Georgina River when waters rose to 7m. Residents were forced to evacuate to Mount Isa whilst many have not returned. The hotel was severely damaged, with a repair bill quoted at half a million dollars. Without an operating hotel, which served the community as a post office, centrelink, and general shop, services in Urandangi are obsolete. The future of the community is uncertain.

Source: Queensland Heritage Trails Network, Boulia Shire Council & ABC News.

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The Bedourie Pisé House was built in 1897 as the residence of Mary Brodie, local landowner and proprietor of Bedourie’s Royal Hotel. The use of pisé (rammed earth construction) was an uncommon form of building in Queensland. The building was used as a dwelling, a council meeting place, and possibly a temporary hotel, but fell into disrepair before being purchased by the Diamantina Shire Council and restored in the early 21st century. Moved to stand behind the Pisé House in 2011, the Aboriginal Tracker’s Hut was built at the Bedourie Police Station in 1947 as lodgings for police tracker Doctor Jack and his wife Norah. The shelter is typical of the accommodation standard built for Aboriginal trackers employed by the Queensland police in the 20th century.

The small, isolated town of Bedourie is located near Eyre Creek in the Channel Country flood plains of central western Queensland, approximately 1,130km west of Rockhampton and 1,182km north of Adelaide. The town is on the edge of the traditional lands of the Wangkamadla, Pitta Pitta, Mithaka, and Wangkangurru people. These people retained important knowledge of soaks, vital in the often dry country, and used the major rivers, particularly the Georgina River, as water supply, travel route, and source of Dreaming stories.

The area now encompassing Bedourie was a meeting place, exchange centre and distribution area for pituri, a hallucinogenic plant containing high levels of nicotine. The country between the Georgina and Mulligan rivers was the primary source of pituri, which was used in hunting, ceremonies, and recreationally. This placed it at the centre of an important trade route, with people travelling hundreds of kilometres to the area to exchange high quality stone axes from Cloncurry and Mount Isa, medicines, and sea shells for pituri. The route was also significant for social and ritual trade, where songs, ceremonies, and knowledge were exchanged. Burke and Wills, on their ill-fated 1861 journey through inland Australia, were given food by local Aboriginal people and also "stuff they call bedgery or pedgery" to chew, which Wills found highly intoxicating even in small amounts.

Following European expeditions, pastoralists occupied the Channel Country in the 1860s, stocking runs with cattle and sheep from South Australia. From 1884 Afghan cameleers, following the Aboriginal trade routes, transported goods from the newly-opened Maree railway station in central South Australia, along the Channel Country rivers to Birdsville and Cloncurry. Afghan trading towns sprang up near the present sites of Birdsville and Bedourie, supporting camels transporting stores north and drovers moving stock south to the Adelaide sale yards.

In 1886, a township reserve named Bedouri – reputedly meaning ‘dust storm’ – was proclaimed on Eyre Creek. After locals advised of the flooding risk, a new site was chosen further north, on the road from the Gulf of Carpentaria to Adelaide. Situated about two days’ journey from Boulia in the north and Birdsville to the south, the township was one of six small settlements which became important refreshment and supply sites for surrounding pastoral stations and drovers bound for Adelaide. Blackall merchants AJ Haylock and Co established a general store and hotel in the yet-to-be proclaimed and surveyed township, importing building materials to the sparsely vegetated area. The survey of the township, completed in 1888, shows the location of the hotel, its kitchen, stable and horse yards (Allotment 1 of Section 1), and the store (Allotment 2 of Section 1), but no other structures.

Bedourie developed slowly, with the hotel at its centre. A publican’s licence was issued for the Bedourie hotel, named the Royal, in May 1888, but AJ Haylock and Co advertised the hotel and store for sale or let two months later. The businesses were still unsold in May 1889, when the Bedourie town sites were offered for sale in Birdsville. Eleven allotments, including the hotel, store, and future site of the pisé house, were purchased by Mary Dolan. Born Mary Ballard circa 1858, she had been raised in hotels in Victoria by her twice-widowed mother. In 1883 she married Andrew Carey Dolan, the manager of Breadalbane Station, on the Georgina River, and the couple moved to Birdsville. Andrew Dolan died in 1887, leaving Mary with one child and an £800 estate. The purchase of the Bedourie town land, particularly the hotel and store, enabled Mary to provide an income for herself and her daughter. Mary’s acquisition of the hotel also mirrored a tradition of female publicans in Australia, particularly of widows or deserted wives. Hotel keeping was one of the few occupations women could pursue in the 19th century, allowing childcare from a home base, and granting them legal and economic independence.

By 1891, Mary had become the principal business operator and service provider in Bedourie. Although very few people lived in the town, her hotel served passing drovers, pastoral station occupants, and visiting racegoers who attended Bedourie’s annual horse races, which began in 1887. In addition to being the hotel proprietor, Mary was the town’s postmistress, storekeeper, butcher, and wine and spirit merchant. She also grazed two flocks of sheep around Bedourie, and owned the town’s boat. In 1890, she married John Gray Brodie, of Cluny Station, and the hotel, butcher, store, and wine and spirit businesses were transferred to Brodie from 1892. John Brodie, however, died in January 1895, leaving Mary with a further two children and a third expected. She continued to run the Bedourie businesses, inheriting them along with Brodie’s £500 estate.

In 1897, the value of two of Mary’s previously undeveloped sites (allotments 1 and 2 of section 5), leapt from £60 to £200. The allotments stood opposite the hotel and store on Bedourie’s main street. The hotel and store were destroyed in a storm in October 1897, and the building erected on allotment 1 of section 5 – a small pisé house – may have served as a temporary hotel as well as residence, until a new hotel and store were built in 1898. It featured multiple external doors, and a large room with a fireplace at one end, similar to hotels in remote areas in South Australia.

The house employed an unusual construction method for Queensland, pisé de terre. Often known as pisé or mud construction, pisé de terre is an ancient building method in which loam (earth of low clay content) is rammed into temporary formwork to create rock-like walls. The compaction forces the soil particles together, requiring no additional strengthening. The method was traditionally used in Mediterranean, Central Asian countries, and parts of China, but fell out of use. It was ‘rediscovered’ in France in the mid-18th century, reaching England about 1787, the United States of America around 1810 - 1815 and Australia from the 1820s. It was one of several earthen building construction methods used in Australia, including structures made from mud brick, stones within a mud matrix, cob, adobe, and pisé.

While not widely used across Queensland, the method of pisé construction proved valuable in western Queensland, where building materials were difficult to come by. The limited vegetation provided insufficient material for construction, and while a sandstone quarry existed near Birdsville, allowing residents there to construct stone buildings, Bedourie, surrounded by desert sandhills and stony desert tableland soils, lacked a local stone cache. Pisé construction had several advantages, being ‘less than one-half the cost of Brick or Wood’, ‘equal in appearance and strength to any stone building’, and its material was ‘always procurable’. Pisé had particular benefits in the arid climate of western Queensland: the buildings were not prone to deterioration, and were ‘cool in summer, warm in winter’. A wide array of pisé buildings were constructed in the Channel Country, including Birdsville’s first hotel; Windorah’s original police station (1884); hotels in Jundah, Windorah, and Canterbury; and homestead buildings at Diamantina Lakes, Cullwilla, Daroo, Palpara, Mornay, Saint Albans, Toorajumpa, and Monika.

The ease of construction was another advantage, with minimal equipment and expert knowledge needed. Information on erecting pisé buildings was easily procurable in the 1890s, with contemporary publications and newspapers providing detailed, illustrated instructions on the construction process. A pisé building could be constructed by a single person, though ‘a tradesman who understands the principle of the system and the materials’ was recommended. Publications emphasised the strength and durability of the buildings, so long as a large projecting roof was provided to protect the walls from the weather, with verandahs on all sides also recommended.

In 1899, Mary Brodie married her third husband, James Craigie, owner of Alderley station and ‘uncrowned cattle king’ of Boulia. Craigie relocated his business headquarters to Bedourie in April 1900, and Mary’s property was transferred to James in 1901. Mary briefly moved to Winton in 1902, where she owned and operated the Tattersalls Hotel, but returned to Bedourie in 1904. In her absence, the Bedourie Pisé House was leased to the newly-formed Diamantina Shire Council. Council meetings were held in Bedourie until March 1919, likely all in the pisé house.

The house was – and remained – one of the few buildings in Bedourie, which in December 1904 consisted of a public house, store, blacksmith’s shop, a few dwellings, and a police station. A bore was added in 1905. Despite its small size, however, Bedourie’s attractions drew regular visitors. A traveller in October 1910 described Bedourie as a ‘caravansary… an oasis in the desert’ with hospitality courtesy of the Craigie family, and the town was ‘a favourite resort of cattlemen’. The hotel issued its own currency and the large race-going crowds were managed under the watchful eye of publican ‘Mother Bedourie’. ‘Mother Bedourie’ was compared with the ‘Eulo Queen’ Isabel Gray, also a thrice married publican who operated from a pisé building.

James Craigie died in 1912, and his property was transferred to Mary. Mary transferred her southwest Queensland property to pastoralist Sidney Kidman and retired in 1914 to Brisbane, dying there in 1941. Kidman had acquired a wealth of grazing properties along two major droving paths linking Adelaide and northern Australia, giving rise to his reputation as the ‘Cattle King’. By the time he acquired the Bedourie Hotel and pisé house, he was considering retirement. Kidman installed his cattle property manager, George Gaffney, as manager of the Bedourie Hotel, and Gaffney purchased the Pisé House in 1918, with a substantial mortgage of £1375.

The hotel and Pisé House remained in the ownership and occupation of the Gaffney family and descendants (including the Clanchys and Smiths) for the next several decades. The house, known variously as the ‘Mud House’, ‘Mud Hut’, or ‘The Cottage’, was the family’s residence through the school year. The generator shed and timber power poles behind the house were likely added during this time; Bedourie did not receive electricity until 1970, requiring residents to install their own generators to provide power. A bathhouse was also added.

In 1940, the Bedourie Pisé House was recognised as one of the ‘coolest houses in Queensland’, thanks largely to its pisé construction. Postwar building material shortages sparked a revival in the construction form, which had dwindled in the 20th century, as the cost of importing building materials to western Queensland decreased. By 1911, only 61 pisé houses were identified of Queensland’s 125,800 dwellings. Despite the postwar revival, however, the number of Queensland pisé houses did not significantly grow, and weather, neglect or replacement took their toll on the older pisé buildings.

Bedourie grew from the 1950s, with an airstrip, new residences, and a school constructed. The Diamantina Shire Council re-established itself in Bedourie in 1954, building a new shire hall. The Pisé House occupants departed in 1971, and the house was transferred to the Diamantina Shire Council in 1974. The land was resurveyed and in 1996, new land parcels were created to the south of the existing township, contiguous with the site of the Pisé House and the hotel. By 2002, the chimney and fireplace had been removed, the verandahs enclosed with corrugated iron sheets, and the house had fallen into disrepair. The council began repairs and stabilisation works on the Pisé House in 2003. In 2019, the Pisé House site also includes the generator shed and a bathhouse.

In 2019, both the Pisé House and the tracker’s hut serve as part of the tourist interpretation of Bedourie.

Source: Queensland Heritage Register & "Wills W. Successful exploration through the interior of Australia, from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria." Adelaide: State Library of South Australia; 1996.

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In the early Cretaceous period (95 - 98 million years ago) an inland sea, the Eromanga Sea, covered large parts of Queensland, central Australia, and this very place at least four times. The rivers that fed the sea brought with them sediment which flowed into the sea basin. To bring with them such a huge amount of sediment, the rivers must have been comparable in size to the present day Amazon or Mississippi rivers. As more sediment was brought in, the margins of the inland sea slowly contracted and by around 95 million years ago, the job was completed and the inland sea would never be the same again.

As the sea retreated to the north, western Queensland became a fringe of coastal wetlands and open forest. Huge conifers dominated the landscape amid a wealth of lush vegetation such as cycads, ginkgos, and ferns. Horsetail flourished amongst lakes and swamps; dragonflies flew through the marshes and winged reptiles soared above in search of prey. Heavy rain was common and the climate humid and cool. Rivers meandered northward - north to the inland sea where lungfish, turtles, and crocodiles indulged in their depths.

The rocks that cover large parts of Central Western Queensland are made up of the sediments from the river plains that filled the basin left by the Eromanga Sea. These rocks today tell us fascinating stories about that distant past.

The mesas and knolls of the Lilyvale Hills and in areas to the south are evidence of the erosion caused by the inland sea. These broad, often flat-topped hills are capped with a resistant rock layer. Scientists call this 'dissected residuals' because the sediments laid down by ancient lakes and seas have been carved over the millennia by runoff from countless summer storms. The soils are easily eroded while the hardened cap rocks are more erosion resistant, giving the mesas their distinctive flat tops.

Further information and evidence of the inland sea can be seen at Boulia in the Stone House Museum where fossils of the head and teeth of the Ichthyosaurus are on display. This reptile breathed air but lived a wholly marine life as a fast, agile, underwater hunter whose main method of propulsion was its tail.

Source: outbackway.org.au

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This singled-storeyed sandstone building is thought to have been erected circa 1883 as the Royal Hotel, Birdsville.

Although European explorers had passed through the Diamantina district in the 1840s and early 1860s, pastoralists did not occupy this semi-arid region until the mid-1870s when a number of runs were established. In the early 1880s the towns of Birdsville and Bedourie were established to service the newly taken up pastoral holdings of the Diamantina. Birdsville is reputed to have sprung up around a rough depot constructed by general merchant Matthew Flynn in the late 1870s at the site of the present town. It was then known as the Diamantina Crossing and was on the stock route from Boulia south to Adelaide. By mid-1885, when the township of Birdsville was officially surveyed, a number of buildings had already been erected including a police lock-up (1883), Groth's Royal Hotel (1883), Blair's Birdsville Hotel (1883), Curtain's Tattersalls Hotel, and at least 3 stores and a shop. Diamantina Shire was established in 1883, and its headquarters were at Birdsville until moved to Bedourie in 1953.

The name Birdsville was not adopted until the 1885 survey, and is thought to have been suggested by Robert Frew, owner of Pandie Pandie Station, who also had a store and shop at the Diamantina Crossing, in reference to the profuse bird life of the district. The township, over 1,000 miles west of Brisbane and 7 miles north of the Queensland-South Australian border, developed as an administrative centre for police and border customs. Nearly all the trade of the town was with Adelaide, and it became an important marshalling point for cattle being driven south to markets in South Australia. By 1889 the population of Birdsville was 110, and the town had 2 general stores, 3 hotels, a police station, school, 2 blacksmith shops, 2 bakers, a cordial manufacturer, bootmaker, saddler, auctioneer & commission agent, and a number of residences. The population peaked in 1895 at 220.

Almost all the buildings in the town were of local sandstone, there being no local timber available. Distance and the lack of good access roads or a railway created prohibitively high transportation costs, so imported building materials were kept to a minimum. Architecturally, the old stone buildings of Birdsville reflect the associations of the town with the entire central "strip" of the Australian continent. Similar buildings are found as far south as Robe in South Australia and as far north as Boulia in Queensland. They are of significance for their illustration of a vernacular style that spread throughout central Australia, across South Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland. The origin of the style is unknown, but the architectural characteristics are immediately identifiable: built of locally quarried stone with wide verandahs, they efficiently control the extremes of temperature in the hot arid interior of the continent.

The earliest section of the Royal Hotel is likely to have been constructed in 1883, as the first license for this hotel was issued to Alfred William Tucker in that year. In 1885 Tucker transferred the license to Johann H Groth, and on the official survey plan of 1885, the building is marked as Groth's hotel. On the 25th of January 1886, Groth secured his holding by the purchase of the allotment on which the hotel was located, for £260, and the unimproved allotment adjoining this to the south, for £10. Each block comprised 2 roods. Title to both blocks passed from Groth in 1898, but the building continued to function as an hotel under several proprietors and licensees until the early 1920s. Mrs Alice Maude Scott was the licensee and later owner from 1908 until at least 1920, when title passed to Harry Afford, station manager of Birdsville.

From 1923 to 1937, the Royal Hotel buildings were leased by the Presbyterian Australian Inland Mission (AIM) as their first bush nursing home, or hostel. It was staffed by two nursing sisters, the first two arriving in September 1923. At that time the main building consisted of 6 rooms and was unfurnished. A 1926 photograph shows that parts of two walls of a stone shed at the rear of the hostel had collapsed by this date, and was nicknamed the 'Hole in the Wall Hospital Store'. A 1927 photograph shows an old shed of corrugated-iron also at the rear of the main hostel building.

At that period the AIM was headed by the Rev. Dr John Flynn, who was working toward establishing a flying doctor and air ambulance service for remote central Australia. Such a service could only operate efficiently if it could be contacted quickly, so Flynn experimented with radio as a means of communicating between isolated station properties, the Mission's string of bush hostels (ultimately 13), and the flying doctor/air ambulance. In 1925 he undertook various radio experiments throughout central Australia, including an early attempt at receiving/transmitting from the AIM Hostel in Birdsville. However, it was not until 1929, with Alfred Traeger's invention of the pedal radio, that reliable radio communications were possible for the bush. In September 1929, Traeger installed at the AIM's Birdsville Hostel one of 6 experimental 'transceivers' linked to pedal generators, the others being placed at 4 head stations in far western Queensland and at the Aboriginal Mission at Mornington Island, with base station VJI established at Cloncurry. For the first 18 months, communication was by Morse code, but the system proved enormously popular, and soon revolutionised outback communications. Importantly, Birdsville became reliably connected to the station properties in the Diamantina district, and with the new Aerial Medical Service, established by Flynn in 1928 under the auspices of the AIM, and based at Cloncurry.

In 1934, nursing sisters Edna McLean and Amy Bishop of the AIM's Birdsville Hostel introduced a system of early morning radio calls to the station women in the Diamantina district who had access to radio. It proved highly popular, and although indecorously dubbed the 'Galah Session', is credited with being Australia's first radio talk-back program. Birdsville VKK became the 'Voice of the Diamantina Country'. In 1937 the AIM relinquished the former Royal Hotel premises in Birdsville and moved to a new, purpose-designed hostel just down the road. The old sandstone building was subsequently used for residential purposes, then abandoned, and later partially collapsed. Some restoration work was carried out in 1984, when sections of the collapsed walls were partly reconstructed. Further substantial stabilisation and restoration work was undertaken in 1994.

Source: Queensland Heritage Register.

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