Stockman's Hall of Fame (Image Allison Watt)
Named after a ‘long reach’ of the Thomson River, this town in the geographic centre of Queensland has a fascinating pastoral history and lots to offer tourists including the famed Stockman’s Hall of Fame.
Longreach sits on the Tropic of Capricorn and is 690km west of Rockhampton. Close to the geographic centre of Queensland, the town stands at the junction of the east–west Landsborough Highway (which shadows the Central Western railway line) and the north–south Thomson Developmental Road. The Thomson River flows nearby on its way to join Cooper Creek deep in Channel Country to the southwest. In fact, the town is named for a ‘long reach’ of that river, which was a vital resource to pioneer settlers and pastoralists in the 1870s.
With a population of around 3720, Longreach is the largest town in central Queensland and the administrative centre of a regional council area that includes the smaller townships of Ilfracombe, Isisford and Yaraka. Capitalising on its strategic location, Longreach serves a prosperous agricultural industry (sheep and cattle), and a rapidly growing tourist sector driven by outstanding attractions, such as the Australian Stockman’s Hall of Fame, the Qantas Founders Outback Museum and the Powerhouse Museum.
Outback travellers are well-catered for with a visitor information centre, Olympic swimming pool, parks, shopping facilities, a base hospital and a wide range of accommodation options that includes hotels, motels and caravan parks with powered and unpowered sites.
Longreach Explore Centre, the Visitor Information Centre (Image Robert Crack)
Duffing, droving and development
Before the arrival of Europeans, the area was occupied by the Iningai Aboriginal people. The first Europeans to explore the area were Thomas Mitchell (1846) and Edmund Kennedy (1847). William Landsborough passed through in 1861 while searching for the missing Burke and Wills party. He was so impressed by the grazing potential of the region’s expansive grasslands that, in 1863, he and partners Nathaniel Buchanan and Edward Cornish took up a pastoral lease over more than half a million hectares of land stretching 228km along the Thomson River.
The cattle station, known as Bowen Downs, soon featured in one of the most notorious (and celebrated) cattle ‘duffing’ episodes in outback history. In 1870, Harry Readford and two associates, all stockmen on the property, secretly built stockyards in a remote corner of the station where they gradually assembled a mob of about 1000 cattle. Realising that the cattle would be recognised from their brands if Readford tried to sell them in Queensland, the ‘duffers’ drove the cattle into South Australia through the Channel Country and the Strzelecki Desert — a remarkable achievement spanning three months and almost 1300km. At Artracoona Native Well, Readford exchanged two cows and a white bull for rations, then moved the rest of the mob to Blanchewater Station, east of Marree, and sold them for £5000.
Meanwhile, workers at Bowen Downs discovered the clandestine yards, and the herd’s tracks heading south. A party of stockmen and Aboriginal trackers set out on the trail and reached Artracoona where they recognised the white bull. Readford was eventually apprehended in Sydney in 1872 and stood trial in Roma, Qld. However, the jury members were so impressed by his bushman skills and droving achievement that they found him not guilty, whereupon Judge Charles Blakeney remarked: “Thank God, gentlemen, that verdict is yours and not mine!” In response to the verdict, the Queensland government shut down the Roma District Criminal Court for two years.
Honouring working dogs in the Stockman's Hall of Fame
By the mid-1870s, several other pastoral leases had been taken up in the area, and a large waterhole on a long reach of the river became a favoured camp for teamsters who carried supplies to the surrounding properties. A township quickly developed at the site which, in 1887, was gazetted as Longreach.
The industrial age
By 1892 the railway from Barcaldine reached the town, spurring rapid growth around the terminus despite the shearer’s strike in 1894. By the turn of the century, Longreach had a population of 2000, with 14 hotels, a hospital, courthouse, police station, post and telegraph office, several churches and a school of arts.
Longreach Historic Railway Station (Image Robert Crack)
Quick to embrace new technology, Longreach attracted several businesses that expanded the town’s industrial base and cemented its position as the region’s unrivalled commercial centre. These included two cordial factories, a brewery, boiling down and wool scouring works, and a couple of motor car repair and body-building workshops. In 1921, the fledgling pioneer airline, Qantas, commenced operations from a hangar at the Longreach aerodrome — a commercial flight by an Avro 504K to Winton that took three hours and 10 minutes. Within five years the enterprise was expanded with a large factory where seven DH50 biplanes were later constructed.
Also in 1921, a powerhouse began generating electricity for the town and eventually the outlying areas. The complex was upgraded by the installation of 10 massive generators between 1948 and 1971, and a unique gas production system that was a first for Australia and later incorporated elsewhere in the electrical industry. The station ceased operating in 1985 when the region was linked to the state-wide grid.
Despite these innovations and relative prosperity into the 1940s, Longreach remained dependent on local goat herds for its fresh milk supply and suffered shortages of fresh vegetables when grasshopper plagues decimated local crops. The railway wasn’t always able to maintain supplies. The town’s fortunes faltered, and its population declined somewhat, between 1960–1980 when wool and beef prices fell. However, improved roads and transport solved supply issues and brought tourism, which has proven to be a growth industry and mainstay of the region’s economy.
The natural environment
Longreach basks in a semi-arid climate, with very hot summers, moderate rains and mild, dry winters. The region is part of the vast Mitchell Grass Downs, one of the most extensive natural grassland environments in the world. These native grasses thrive in clay soil formed as sediment on the bottom of ancient lakes and seabeds 100 million years ago. Modern-day ecosystems range from coolibah-fringed waterholes on sparsely vegetated floodplains to open gidgee woodlands on surrounding lowlands. These are habitats for numerous species of plants and animals, some of them seasonal, that are highly adapted to the arid climate.
About every two or three years, the Thomson River and its creeks overflow their banks in floods that may spread to the fringes of the town. Wildlife seizes this opportunity to breed and make use of the bountiful floodplains. A great place to see this is the Iningai Nature Reserve, part of the Longreach Town Common, where three walking tracks explore different parts of the riverine wetlands and showcase many of the region’s 130 bird species.
Another natural attraction is the Longreach Botanic Walkway. This 2.5km linear garden between the town centre and the Australian Stockman’s Hall of Fame displays and interprets the region’s native plants and demonstrates their potential for use in landscaping and horticulture. A particular feature of the garden is its focus on water-wise techniques for maintaining plants in the semi-arid conditions of western Queensland.
Australian Stockman’s Hall of Fame
From humble beginnings in the mid-1970s, an epic multi-million dollar make-over saw the construction of the present Australian Stockman’s Hall of Fame (ASHF) on the town’s eastern outskirts. Opened by HRH Queen Elizabeth II in 1988, it was hailed as “an immersive journey through the Long Paddock”, exploring key themes, characters and events that have shaped Australia’s outback heritage. In 11 exhibition spaces across three floors, the ASHF celebrates Aboriginal culture, major explorations, pioneering settlers, overlanders, pastoral expansion and life in the Aussie bush to the present day. It’s impossible to see it all in less than two hours and many people spend twice that time absorbing all there is on offer. Since its opening, millions of people have passed through its doors, making the ASHF the premier attraction in central Queensland. For more information phone 07 4658 2166 or click here.
Leatherwork in the Stockman's Hall of Fame (Image Chris Whitelaw)
Qantas Founders Museum
The Qantas Founders Museum is located across the Landsborough Highway from the Australian Stockman’s Hall of Fame. It was opened in 1996 in the original heritage-listed Qantas Hangar and underwent a $110 million expansion three years later as part the Queensland and Federal governments’ heritage trails project. The museum tells the story of Australia’s national airline (the world’s third oldest) from its early days in the Queensland outback through to its international operations in the present day, brought to life through historical artifacts, interactive displays and a collection of some of its most iconic aircraft.
Qantas Founders Museum (Image Allison Watt)
The aircrafts on display in the museum’s Airpark enclosure include a Douglas DC-3, a Consolidated PBY-6A Catalina Flying Boat, a Lockheed C-121 Constellation restored by volunteers and contractors to resemble the Qantas Super Constellation ‘Southern Spray’, Qantas’ first jet aircraft, a short body Boeing 707-138B (The City of Canberra), and the legendary Boeing 747-200 (The City of Bunbury). There are also full-scale replicas of some of the early Qantas fleet — de Havilland DH-61 Giant Moth, de Havilland DH-50, and the Avro 504K Dyak — Qantas’ first aircraft.
Guided tours are available for some of the aircrafts, with the opportunity to sit in the cockpit and walk on the wing of the 747 or experience a flight simulator. Tour spaces are limited, and bookings are essential.
Qantas flight attendant uniforms through the years (Image Allison Watt)
At night the Airpark transforms into a state-of-the-art sound and light show spectacular, ‘Luminescent Longreach’, which projects the Qantas story onto the aircraft fuselages. For bookings and more information phone 07 4658 4141 or 4658 4142 or click here.
Qantas Founders Museum (Image Robert Crack)
Powerhouse and History Museum
Located at 12 Swan Street, the heritage-listed Powerhouse Museum complex houses machinery used in the largest rural electricity generation plant in Australia. It includes eight enormous generators from different periods and the unique gas production system, all preserved as they were on the last day of operation. Also on display is a collection of agricultural and road maintenance machinery and a 1600-class diesel locomotive. The complex also features a local history collection comprising the Nogo Cottage (depicting family life between 1935–1955), a re-created schoolroom, some office equipment from as early as 1908, interesting artefacts with pastoral, commercial, social associations, and an unusual airport control centre from the 1970s. For more information click here.
Cobb & Co Stagecoach Experience
There are lots of folk museums around Australia where you can admire a beautifully preserved Cobb & Co coach, or step inside an old ticket office or staging post or have a beer in a pub used by coaches as waypoints for weary passengers. But there are few places where you can actually clamber aboard a Cobb & Co coach for a leisurely jaunt around town before galloping off along a dusty bush track. This is the unique thrill offered by the Outback Pioneers’ Cobb & Co Stagecoach Experience in Longreach. This four-hour adventure operates between March and October and includes a 45-minute stagecoach ride around Longreach, an outback smoko (morning tea), an Australian classic bush movie in an old theatrette, a one-hour Harry Redford Old Time Tent Show, and a stagecoach gallop on the original Longreach-Windorah mail route. For more information click here or phone 07 4658 1776.
Station tours
Longreach was founded on the prosperity of its pastoral industry and several local stations offer the opportunity to experience this iconic outback heritage and lifestyle on fully guided tours (including bus transfers). A 2.5-hour tour of Camden Park Station (where Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip visited and took morning tea when they opened the Australian Stockman’s Hall of Fame) includes a visit to a 1920s shearing shed, with sunset drink and nibblies. The Strathmore Station Tour (three hours) informs visitors about Santa Gertrudis cattle and merino sheep, the mainstay of local livestock, and includes morning tea. The four-hour Nogo Station tour treats visitors to a sheep shearing demonstration and an inspection of the ruins of Harry Readford’s infamous stockyards. For more information check out Outback Aussie Tours or Outback Pioneers.
Thomson River Cruises
The Thomson River has been the lifeblood of pastoralism in the district for more than 140 years and even provided the town with its name. A number of cruises reveal this beautiful waterway and its ecological significance in the semi-arid outback environment. The Drover’s Sunset Cruise departs at 4.15pm and includes sunset over the river and a dinner and outback show at Smithy’s Outback Dinner and Show, returning to Longreach around 8.30pm. The Explorer Cruise is an extension of the sunset cruise and includes the Flood Plains Nature Safari. Starlight’s Cruise Experience aboard a paddle steamer includes a traditional campfire dinner and an old-time sound and light picture show. For more information go to Outback Aussie Tours or Outback Pioneers.
Contacts and information
Longreach Region Explore Centre (Visitor Information)
99a Eagle Street, Longreach
P: 07 4658 4141 / 07 4658 4142
E: experience@longreach.qld.gov.au
Longreach Regional Council
96a Eagle Street, Longreach
P: 07 4658 4111
E: council@longreach.qld.gov.au
Longreach Tourist Park
12 Thrush Road, Longreach
P: 07 4658 1781
E: reservations@longreachtouristpark.com.au
Longreach Caravan Park
176–180 Ibis Street, Longreach
P: 07 4658 1770
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