On 1st February 1890, Stage 2 of the North Coast Line railway from Caboolture to Mellum Creek (Landsborough) – a distance of just under 20 miles was opened. This was an important significance to settlers and loggers, and later would provide the farming community with easy access to Brisbane markets for their produce, including Maleny butter.
The men who built the railway line used picks, shovels, spades, cross-cut saws, jacks, broadaxes, winches and horse drawn ploughs. Sleepers were made of tallow wood and blackbutt. A variety of men built the railway and apart from local settlers, loggers and teamsters were the hard-drinking and hard playing notorious ‘navvies’, moving camp alongside the track as the railway progressed.. The original ‘navvies’ were the ‘navigators’ who built the English canal system and then the British railways.