Kuranda by train

Kuranda by train  

Construction of the Cairns - Kuranda railway was a tremendous engineering feat. Gold was discovered in 1873 in the mountains and the local area thrived, attracting miners and their families and tons were established.

The supply routes were slow and perilous into the mountains and in 1882 a devastating wet season flooded large areas and washed away roads which became impassable. Thousands came close to starvation. 

Legendary bushman Christie Palmerstone was tasked with finding a railway route to link the expending prosperous mining belt with Cairns on the seashore. Construction started in 1887 on one of the most ambitious construction project in the country and completed in 1891 to Kuranda but it took another decade to complete the next section of track going north. At any one time, 1,500 people worked on the project. It covers a distance of just 33 kilometres but took years to build and with the loss of 32 lives.

The railway rises a total of 327 metres in elevation, required excavating 2.3 million tons of rock, 15 hand cut tunnels (totalling 1,746 metres), 55 bridges (244 metres in steel and 1,894 metres in timber).

The railway is narrow gauge at 1,067mm (three foot six inches). Prior to 1901, each of the six colonies in Australia were responsible for infrastructure. Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania opted for narrow gauge. Other colonies, now states, opted for both standard and broad gauge. As a result of these decisions, Australian railways today are a mix of all three.

The first locomotive...

...and the second locomotive. These are 1720 class locomotives built between 1966 - 70 by Commonwealth Engineering, Brisbane under licence from Clyde Engineering and replaced the previous steam power locomotives on the Brisbane suburban services. As locomotives were upgraded, the 1720s were relocated to branch lines such as Kuranda. The are painted in Aboriginal art motifs.

A detail of the locomotive's brand.

The coach that I would be travelling in. These all date back to the early twentieth century,  the three oldest dating from 1909, 1911 and 1913. They are built of Silky Oak but when repairs are needed, more responsible sustainable sourced timber is used.

The inside of the carriage.

The Cairns railway station has occupied several sites over the decades and the original two storey timber building was located on Shields Street but the current building was relocated from McLeod Street in 1995. After leaving the urban sprawl, it was a straight and flat route past sugar cane fields. 

 

We stopped at Freshwater Station and picked up more passengers. This was traditionally the last place that railway builders could collect fresh water before climbing into the hills. They would find several streams en route but they had to build the railway track to reach them.

We passed through Redlynch. The railway reached here after just 17 months of construction but it would take four years for the railway to reach Kuranda.

People looking for work were told to go Red Lynch. Lynch was the Irish foreman who was in charge of hiring and firing workers. He had red hair and hence his nickname but many workers didn't know the reference and thought that Redlynch was the name of the place. 

When the community became large enough to be incorporated, it had to chose a name and Redlynch was already widely known and used. No one objected and it became the name of the town.

After Redlynch is the Horseshoe Bend which is a 180 degree bend and the start of the climb into the hills with a five chain radius curve (100.58 metres). Travellers can see the front of the train...

...and looking back, they can see the back of the train.

Many Australians of a certain age have visited here as during the Second World War when this was known as Jungara, it was the site of the largest field hospital in the southern hemisphere. The area was of major significance at the start of the Second World War when Japanese forces were surging through the Pacific and there was a real danger of a Japanese invasion of Australia.

Queensland was a major staging area for military forces. There was the Battle of the Coral Sea, there was a Japanese attack on Port Douglas and Australian troops tracked through muddy rain forest along the Kokoda Trail through Papua New Guinea just 200 kilometres from the most northerly point of Australia to oppose Japanese forces from occupying the area and using it as a launch pad to invade Australia. The track was probably used by locals but is claimed to have been created by European miners in the 1890s to access the Yodda Kokoda goldfields. 

Some of the scenery.

Soon after the Horseshoe Bend, we passed through our first tunnel, the first of 15 to reach Kuranda. The original plan included 19 tunnels but one was bypassed as the track was rerouted along the coastal plain to avoid a tunnel through a spur of mountain extending from Mount Whitfield and three other proposed tunnels were replaced with deep cuttings. 

At Tunnel No 6 in 1973, asked bandits stopped and robbed a train that was delivering bags of money to businesses in the Tablelands fro wages for staff. They escaped over dirt tracks using trail bikes and were never apprehended and remain at large. 

More scenery. 

Every tunnel has a number and the length of the tunnel in metres.

We passed through Stoney Creek Station. It once was a busy station but it is now just a sign post and an open sided shed to shelter under in the rain. When the railway was being built, a busy town developed in the gorge below. Many workers were based here to work on the tunnels and the bridges. The town had several amusement halls, pubs, it own brewery producing 2,000 gallons of beer a week and a Methodist Church. 

Just after the station is the amazing Stoney Creel Falls Bright, a steel trestle structure on a tight curve and on a rising gradient. On one side is a view down the tributary valley to the main gorge...

...and on the other side is a view of the falls...

...and if you look up, you can see the user section of the falls...

...and if you look back, travellers can see the back portion of the train following them up the gorge.

A little further up the the trail. a look back will show the bridge and the waterfall.

We had climbed up into the mountains and we could look down on the Barron River as it flows out of the gorge. The rivers original name was Bibhoora but was renamed by Europeans in 1875 when two police inspectors, Robert Arthur Johnstone and Alexander Douglas-Douglas named it after Thomas Barron (1835 - 1882) who was the chief clerk of police in Brisbane. 

We should never loose sight of the original occupiers of the land here who were the  Djabugay Bama. There are hundreds of different tribes with different languages, cultures and histories that are liberally collectively described as Aboriginal but I had not taken sufficient notice of all the subtle differences to date to actually name them but had just used the term Aboriginal but each tribe is very focused on their particular group so I must apologise for not not knowing that there are so so many subcultures.

As part of the culture, there are many stories and the one that is relevant here is that the Barron River (Bibhoora) was created by Gudju Gudju, the rainbow serpent.

                                         
A view of the gorge from the side.

A view up the side of the gorge. This part of the trackbed was the most difficult to build as it crossed a section of unstable rock. Workers were lowered on ropes to hack away at the rock to create a route but landslides were common and ruined all the work that they had worked so hard to create. They had to carry on hacking away at the rock until they found some solid bedrock on which to lay the track. This area today is represented by the Glacier Rock and Red Bluff landmarks. 

This is the portal to Tunnel No 15, the longest tunnel on the section at 490 metres and a major engineering challenge due to the length and geology. In order to contrast the tunnel quickly, not only was it mined from both ends but addicts or shafts were dug and there were eight tunnel faces being worked on at the same time. It is a monument to the engineers' skills that all the faces met up dead on true. 

There is a view across the gorge to the Bridal Veil Falls with a 305 metres fall. Down in the valley between the trees, there were glimpses of Barron Gorge Hydro Electric Station surface facilities but none of the station itself as it is constructed largely underground. Construction started in 1932 and it started producing electricity in 1935 as the country's first major underground HEP station. 

Then we came into Barron Falls Station, now being renamed to the original Din Din Falls.

A view of the falls.

And then it was into Kuranda Station.

The Heritage listed signal box at Kuranda.

A view inside the signal box with its 37 lever frame, one of only nine in Queensland that is still operational and used daily. The Kuranda track is a National Engineering Landmark and a tribute to all those that laboured to complete its construction.

The entrance to the station. 

A detail of the ticket office.