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Torrential rain on 21/22 February 1992 measuring 660mm (26 inches) caused flooding to the Mary River, sweeping away the 60 year old timber bridge at Kenilworth. A new bridge was built 8.6 metres higher and opened the following year.
In February 1999 the month’s total rainfall figure was 2¾ times the average, with much of it falling within a short space of time. The torrential downpour swept through the Range overflowed creeks and lapped the Maleny Library boardwalk and contributed in no small way to the flooding of Gympie and Maryborough. Ex-TC “Rona” and ex-TC “, as rain depressions were mainly responsible for Maleny’s weather pattern
Electricity came to Maleny town centre in February 1940. Maleny electrician, (Jack) Callaway wired most people’s homes; he had an electrical shop in Maple Street, now the Up Front Club
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.
RUTH LAVERICK
With heavy rainfall in the early days of settlement we can only imagine what it must have been like in 1886 when the first Europeans Robert Laverick and his wife, Ruth and their children James and Lilly took over a selection in Maleny’s Baroon Pocket. Ruth, from Central London was to spend two years before she saw another white woman, and told of how the Aborigines were frequent visitors to her bush home. Her husband, Robert, was a butcher in Cobb’s Camp (Wombye) and only walked home once a week over the Blackall Range from Wombye via the Hunchy Razorback and down, what was later to become Mill Hill Road, Montville. He would stay the night and walk back to Cobb’s Camp the next day
Possibly, Ruth encountered one of her greatest hardships when in the torrential rains of February 1893 while her husband was away working at Wombye she was trapped with her young children in their little home. All the food was gone and the vegetables were washed away. They faced starvation. Their faithful dog came to the rescue. He seemed to sense the need for food for Ruth and her children (and for himself). He left the house and not long after Ruth heard a lot of noise at the door. When she opened the door the dog chased a wallaby into the kitchen. Ruth killed the wallaby with a poker. She cooked the good eating part and the remainder she gave to the hungry dog. This food kept them going until the rain stopped.
The highest February rainfall ever recorded at Maleny was in 1893 with 2733 mm, or over 109 inches, well in excess of the average annual rainfall. In three days over 1715 mm of rainfall was recorded at Mooloolah On the 3rd the highest 24 hours rainfall in Queensland was recorded at Crohamhurst with 907 mm. It is said the Obi-Obi Creek rose to an enormous height, reaching a point in Maple Street above Coral Street, which would have been submerged.
It was during this tropical storm that Steamer SS Dicky was shipwrecked on a Caloundra beach, to be named after her. The ship sailed from Rockhampton and as it arrived to clear Caloundra Head it met lashing rain and cyclonic winds that sent the ship on her beam ends. Captain James Beattie was force to beach the ship to avoid hitting the rocks off Moffat Beach. On 4th February 1893 at 10.35 am the ship grounded stern first on the beach, where her ribs and keel until quite recently were a tourist attraction.
The tropical storm continued the following day when the northern half of Indooroopilly Rail Bridge was washed away and part of the Victoria Bridge, spanning the Brisbane River, collapsed
It is hard to imagine that only 150 years ago the Sunshine Coast was a land without roads and the inhabitants lived in a world without wheels.
In 1859, when the new state of Queensland was separated from New South Wales, the road north from Brisbane was extended and made good but only as far as Caboolture. Then when gold was discovered at Gympie in 1867, there was some sort of road from Caboolture to Gympie but this was often impassable in inclement weather due to deep mud. It was said the ‘road’ was often a quagmire, especially between Caboolture and Glass House Mountains. Wheels of drays were often buried to the axle in mud for a hundred yards at a stretch.
The first Cobb and Co coach from Brisbane to Gympie took place on November 12/13, 1868. The coach changed horses, about 10 times, consequently a good many horses and fodder were needed at the various stages of the journey.
Damage to the road was made worse by wheels of drays and coaches, and this prompted Caboolture Divisional Board to enforce a wheel tax to help with the cost of road upkeep. A narrow three-inch tyre was taxed three times as much as a six-inch tyre, on the grounds that a narrow tyre cut the roads about more than the wider six-inch tyre. The cost of a licence for three-inch wheel was 17/6 per year. However, in some years due to drought and other hardships the tax was suspended. This happened in 1896, when the wheel tax collected in 1895 was refunded, and collection for 1896 suspended altogether.
Never-the-less, the idea of a vehicle licence was born and today we have the all too familiar and expensive ‘Rego’ allowing us to use Queensland roads.
On 24th January 1974, a rain depression associated with ex-TC Wanda, caused torrential rain to fall during the last week of the month bringing the month’s rainfall at Maleny to a total of 1534 mm, five times in excess of the average and an all time record for the month. Falling as it did on the Stanley River catchments area near Maleny it contributed in no small way to the Brisbane Flood.
Flooding commenced of the Upper Stanley River on Friday 25th January and by Saturday the 26th, major flooding was also occurring in the Bremer and Upper Brisbane Rivers and the Lockyer Creek. The Brisbane River peaked in the city early on 29th January to become the city’s worst disaster this century
Twelve people were drowned in the Brisbane – Ipswich area; this figure is relatively low considering the extent of the flood and pays great tribute to the effectiveness of all emergency services.
Some 7000 houses were flooded in the Brisbane metropolitan area, many were washed away and others badly damaged by subsidence and landslides. In nearby Ipswich a further 1800 homes and commercial premises were inundated. The total damage was estimated at more than $200 million.
A good example of what a tropical ‘storm’ can do was in the early hours of New Years Day 1963 when overnight rainfall measured nearly 200 mm.
Over 300 revelers were dancing the old year away at a New Year’s Eve Ball in Maleny’s School of Arts unaware a rapidly developing rain depression was crossing the Sunshine Coast bringing havoc to Buderim and Flaxton before blowing part of the roof off Maleny Hospital in the early hours of New Years Day. The tropical storm then moved on to Peachester where St Andrews Church was completely destroyed exactly 55 years after it opened (the organ donated by Queensland’s first long range weather forecaster, Inigo Jones, the stool, the Prayer Seat, the alter cross and candlesticks were recovered and are now displayed in Landsborough Historical Museum)
The Nambour Chronicle newspaper reported the roof of the 40-year-old hospital blew off at 3.00am and so began thirteen hours of anxiety for Matron O’Laherty. “Rather frightening”- was the matron’s description of the ‘turbulent night’. “I realized at once what was happening when I heard the first sheet of roofing tearing off “- she said.
“The power went off with the roof. This left the hospital’s youngest patient, a two-week-old premature baby in an un-warmed humidicrib”.
While struggling to move the hospital’s other twelve patients to the only roofed ward, Matron O’Laherty and two night sisters devised a makeshift crib with blankets and hot water bottles’.
As the 50 knot winds shattered windows and the cyclonic rain poured in through the damaged roof the matron and her staff moved their patients in pitch darkness to the hospital’s one new wing. At first light, with the help of local residents the majority of patients were moved to a temporary ‘hospital’ in Maleny’s School of Arts”.
I was talking to my neighbour – Colin – the other day and he told me he was seeing the New Year in at the Ball. The first they all knew of the disaster was when they went out into the street and saw the sheets of iron flying through the air. Colin was one of the many residents helping to remove patients to the School of Arts.
It was on the 12th November 1878 when the Lands Department received an application from an Englishman, Isaac Burgess, when he became the first selector to acquire land in Maleny. His property extended over 790 acres. His main interest was logging, although he did have a gang of men to grow sugar cane for his bullock teams, and maize and oats for his horse teams.
At that time Red Cedar trees grew in abundance at Maleny and after felling it was often the heavy rain and mud that prevented removal from site. A huge log from one tree was shipped to England where it won a prize at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition that was being held in London from May to October 1886. A team of sixty bullocks was needed to haul the log off the Range. The centre of the log measured 247 inches (over 6 metres) in circumference. After the exhibition the log was cut in half. One half was polished and exhibited at the British Museum and the other half, after attempts were made to sell it entire, it was sold at a ridiculously low price and reduced into billets with explosives.
Two other logs from the same tree were shipped to Melbourne.
The story goes that another huge Red Cedar was felled on a boundary line with Crown Land and during an argument about its size Isaac Burgess made a bet of five pounds with a Mr Graves that he could turn a horse and dray on the stump without falling off. Cedar flitches were used to get the horse and dray on and off the stump. Isaac Burgess won the bet.
In November 1896 over 445 mm of rain was recorded at Maleny. Flash floods and mud slides made logging difficult and dangerous. Due to the steep terrain stretcher cases of anyone injured often had to be manhandled to Landsborough or Peachester.
The timber era of Maleny began to expand, gradually merging from timber to pasture. Sadly, Isaac Burgess was denied another first in the Maleny settlement. In 1905 Isaac had just secured the first contract for the cartage of butter from Maleny to Landsborough railway station when on 1st January 1905 the family home caught fire. Mrs Burgess died in the blaze and although Isaac escaped he died from his terrible burns later in the day.
In 1911, Bill Walker at the age of 17 joined the Ambulance Service at the Anne Street Centre, Brisbane and recalled his first job was to push patients on a two-wheel litter from Northgate to the Brisbane Hospital. Fourteen years later he became Superintendent of the Landsborough Ambulance Centre, covering the area of Mount Mellum, Maleny, Caloundra, Beerwah, Peachester, Kilkoy, Woodford and Mooloolah. In 1925, a butcher’s shop was moved from Glasshouse to Landsborough to serve as an ambulance garage and workshop. The casualty room was down in the corner of the yard between the Memorial Hall and the old Council Chambers. There was no telephone and communication was by the railway station telegraph. The Beerburrum Hospital – the hospital on the hill – built for ex-servicemen wounded in World War 1 – would wait to receive patients to arrive by Bill’s Dodge Four ambulance or by train. Most common accidents in those days were broken limbs, tree felling accidents, axe cuts ~ and there were several confinements in the ambulance. Bill also attended the Traveston train derailment disaster. This was on the 9th June 1925 when, at 2.00am in the morning the mail train from Brisbane became derailed 2½ Miles north of Traveston. One of the passenger carriages and a luggage van bound for Rockhampton toppled over the bridge known as 96-mile Creek between Traveston and Tandur railway stations. The carriage was literally smashed to matchwood on the rocky creek bed below. Another passenger carriage fell over on its side on the northern bank also adding to the mortality rate; which consisted of nine killed outright. Fifty-five were injured, many seriously. The disaster was caused by one of the wheels of the bogies of the luggage van jumped the rails on a curve about half a mile from Traveston. In this condition the wagon travelled two miles, and over two bridges, before the final crash came. Bill records vividly the scene that met his eyes on that tragic day.
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