Maleny Weather

On 26th July 1799 Lt. Matthew Flinders made the first inland exploration of Glass Houses Mountains.
First sited 29 years earlier by Captain Cook who named all the mountains in the group of volcanic cores as Glass Houses as they apparently reminded him of the glass making 100 ft. high kilns or cones of his childhood in Yorkshire.
Matthew Flinders anchored his sloop “Norfolk” in Pumice Stone Channel and by longboat rowed up as far as he could go in a waterway now known as Glass House Creek. He then climbed Mt. Beerburrum to take sightings for his maps.
An attempt the following day to climb Mt. Tibrogargan for triangulation failed.

Beerburrum Pioneers
Walking down Anzac Avenue, Beerburrum and talking to locals I found it hard to imagine this wide quiet residential road, with a splendid avenue of trees down the centre, was once the main street of a bustling country town.
It all started during World War 1 when the Government of the day decided the area would be suitable for small scale farming with its rich sandy soil and subtropical climate.

‘Diggers’ returning from Flanders shell shocked and wounded were rehabilitated in a new hospital constructed on a high knoll overlooking Anzac Avenue.

Over 500 selections of varying acreages had been surveyed and were offered to ex-servicemen by ballot. A pick of a marble decided the location and acreage for the settler.

The government provided basic tools including a spade a wheelbarrow and a long crow bar for clearing the property of scrub. Pineapples were to be the first crop with a promise of a guaranteed market at a canning factory to be built in Brisbane, in time for the first harvest in three years time. However, a change of Government and plans for the canning factory were dropped.

Some settlers found new markets; others were enterprising in growing alternative crops. For instance there is the story of one settler, asked to experiment in the suitability of growing groundnuts on his property was given six sacks of peanuts to sow. Due to a shortage of peanuts the price was high and the settler could not resist the temptation for some quick cash flow. After selling the seed peanuts at market he had to explain to the departmental officers come to inspect his crop that the bandicoots had eaten the lot!

On Tuesday June 22 the sun rises at Maleny at 6.38am and sets at 5.04pm, giving 10 hours and 27 minutes of official daylight. This is our shortest day of the year when the sun is directly overhead at the Tropic of Cancer.  Known as the Winter Solstice or Mid-winter’s Day, it is when a ‘night’ lasts for 24 hours on all places within the Antarctic Circle,

The question often asked is if the winter season in Australia covers the months of June, July and August so why isn’t our mid-winter’s day in July?

In many countries of the world the seasons are defined by the solstices and the equinoxes. For example our winter season is from June 21 to September 22.

The reason our mid-winter‘s day s near the beginning and not the middle of the season is due to the lag of the season – the time-lag between the movements of the sun and temperature and response of the land masses and oceans. In northern Australia the four seasons are of little relevance because the length of day doesn’t vary a great deal and at midday the sun is always high in the heavens. Here they have’ wet’ and ‘dry’ seasons – the monsoonal climates.

With all the rainfall we have had so far this year one marvels at just what the early settlers on the Range had to put up with when logging an area in deep mud. Before roads were built the Red Cedar trees were felled and hauled to the nearest ‘chute’. If you go along Maleny’s Mountain View Road to McCarthy’s Chute, ponder awhile to imagine how the logs were brought through the rain forest by bullock teams and rolled over the steep escarpment to the sawpit below. There they were either sawn into flitches or rafted down Coochin Creek to Bribie Passage. Sailing ships would then tow the rafts to Brisbane.

An old English traditional annual event called The Flitches of Dunmow in Essex where a side of a hog salted and cured and given yearly to any couple proving conjugal harmony for a year and a day

The beach at ANZAC, by Frank Crozier. 1919. Oil on canvas, 123.4 x 184cm. (Australian War Memorial (ART02161).

I saw a kid marchin’ with medals on his chest.
He marched alongside Diggers marching six abreast.
He knew that it was ANZAC Day – he walked along with pride.
He did his best to keep in step with the Diggers by his side.

And when the march was over the kid was rather tired.
A Digger said “Whose medals, son?” to which the kid replied:
“They belong to daddy, but he did not come back.
He died up in New Guinea on a lonely jungle track”.

The kid looked rather sad then and a tear came to his eye.
The Digger said “Don’t cry my son and I will tell you why.
Your daddy marched with us today – all the blooming way.
We Diggers know that he was there – it’s like that on ANZAC Day”.

The kid looked rather puzzled and didn’t understand,
But the Digger went on talking and started to wave his hand.
“For this great land we live in, there’s a price we have to pay
For we all love fun and merriment in this country where we live.
The price was that some soldier his precious life must give.

For you to go to school my lad and worship God at will,
Someone had to pay the price so the Diggers paid the bill.
Your daddy died for us my son – for all things good and true.
I wonder if you understand the things I’ve said to you”.

The kid looked up at the Digger – just for a little while
And with a changed expression, said, with a lovely smile:
“I know my dad marched here today – this is ANZAC Day.
I know he did. I know he did, all the bloomin’ way”.

Poem by: D. Hunter (A veteran of Shaggy Ridge with the 2/12 Battalion in WW2)

Interest in the recent re-construction and renovation of the Maleny community hall is a reminder the site was first used by Maleny School of Art.  This hall was built around 1908 for £219. The hall burned to the ground in 1952 and was rebuilt a few years later. In its early days the hall was used for every kind of community activity but the two remembered best are dancing to the music of an accordion that went on until 1.00 am and the Grand Balls with people coming from farther away on horseback and buggy. Dancing continuing all night with a substantial supper served at midnight to avoid the danger of travelling home through muddy bush tracks in the dark. For some, early morning breakfast was served before setting out for the long journey home.

When a Grand Ball was celebrated it was a good occasion for the gathering of the clans. Young and old folk arrived on horseback from all parts of the district. Grandmothers and grandfathers danced the lancers and the polka with erect carriage and an energy that puts the younger generation of today entirely in the shadow.

In 1921 a circus performance at the School of Arts resulted in a child, Mary McLean, being mauled about the head by a lion that was tied up on the stage. The local vet and butcher came to her rescue. The child was not seriously hurt.

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 1^st 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.