The famous Cactoblastis Hall 1936-1966 at Bonargo near Chinchilla

 

Chinchilla (including Boonargo)
Service Centre with an outstanding rural museum.
Located 294 km west of Brisbane on the Warrego Highway, 83 km west of Dalby and 302 m above sea level, Chinchilla is a thriving rural settlement which boasts one of the finest transportation museums in Australia.

The area around Chinchilla was first explored by Allan Cunningham in 1827 but it wasn't until the 1840s that Europeans began to take up land. By 1844, when Ludwig Leichhardt began his epic journey from Queensland to the Northern Territory, the furthest outpost of white settlement was Jimbour which was some kilometres to the east of the present site of Chinchilla. In fact on 9 October 1844 (they had left Jimbour on 1 October) Leichhardt and his party passed close to the site of the present town and that night they camped on Rocky Creek only a few kilometres from the present site of Chinchilla.

The excellent publication Chinchilla Centenary 1878-1978 captures the evolution of the town perfectly when it records the events of the mid-1840s which saw the town emerge.

'With the squatters, to tend the sheep came the herdsmen among whom were included Scottish and Chinese migrants. Contract hauliers with their teams were employed to take produce, the wool, tallow and hides to Ipswich, the nearest port, and to backload station and domestic supplies. As the railway extended steadily westwards, haulage distance decreased, and when the railway finally came to Chinchilla the haul was reduced again from the various runs to rail.

'Hauliers, previously itinerant, settled alongside the railway staff. So did the blacksmith and the sawyer, the builder, the butcher, the baker and the proprietor of the wayside inn. As numbers grew, so then government services commenced. To the town then came the police station, the court house and the school.'

Chinchilla Station was established in 1848 as an extension of Wongongera Station which had been leased in 1846. It was probably named after a corruption of the local Aboriginal word for cypress pine which Ludwig Leichhardt had recorded as 'jinchilla'.

The old Wongongera Slab Cottage, which dates from the 1880s, is currently housed in the grounds of the Chinchilla Folk Museum.

The railway reached the tiny settlement of Chinchilla in 1878 and made it an important depot for railway employees and a vital and efficient link to the coast.

In both the 1890s and the early part of the twentieth century the Queensland Government developed the area around Chinchilla with programs of closer settlement. While the first program failed the second one in 1906 was far more successful. The next decade saw the population of the area increase dramatically. The new settlers became successful dairy farmers and the economy of the area was driven by dairying for the next fifty years.

It was during this time that Chinchilla wrote itself into the history books as the town at the heart of the eradication of the dreaded prickly pear. It is hard to imagine today but by the 1920s there were 24 250 000 hectares of Australia covered with prickly pear. The cactus had been introduced into Australia in 1839 and by 1862 it had reached the Chinchilla area. By the turn of the century it was increasing at a rate of 400 000 hectares a year. Farmers tried to fight it by cutting and burning but their labours met with little success. In 1925 the Commonwealth Prickly Pear Board, realising the scale of the problem, introduced the cactoblastis moth and larva from South America. Initially 3000 eggs arrived from Argentina and from a population of 527 females a total of 100 605 eggs were hatched. Half these eggs were sent to the Chinchilla Prickly Pear Experimental Station and half were kept in Brisbane. The moth was spectacularly productive. The second generation yielded 2 539 506 eggs. At the height of the operation Chinchilla was sending out as many as 14 million cactoblastis eggs a day.

No wonder the locals decided to dedicate a hall to this small insect. Located 10 km east of Chinchilla on the Warrego Highway is the Boonargo Cactoblastis Hall which was built by the local farmers and dedicated to the redoubtable insect which had managed to eat its way through the jungles of prickly pear. It was seen as the true saviour of rural Australia and thus it is entirely reasonable that a hall should have been dedicated to its memory.

 

Things to see:   

Chinchilla Folk Museum
The highlight of any visit to Chinchilla must be a visit to the Chinchilla Folk Museum in Villiers Street (it is to the south of the town) which specialises in transportation and has one of the country's true rarities - the first ticket ever issued by Qantas to a Mr A. Kennedy for the first flight from Longreach to Cloncurry. The museum holds a photocopy. The original is in the local ANZ Bank. Apart from this the museum has a huge display of working steam engines, a rare three cylinder engine which can move effortlessly into a reverse cycle, and extensive displays of dairy equipment, clothing and the usual materials of a folk museum. It is also home to the old Wongongera Slab Cottage, which dates from the 1880s. It is one of the best folk museums in Queensland.

The museum prides itself in its steam driven sawmill which is fired up on special occasions. However, for people interested in sawmilling, there is a steam sawmill at Grandchester, near Ipswich, which still works five days a week.

 

Petrified Wood
The town's other major attraction is the presence of petrified wood in the area. There are some good examples at the Museum but the best example is in the main street of town next to the Library in Fuller Park.

There have also been finds of fossilised Pentoxlin trees, a rare tree where each branch grew separately from the tree roots to the branch extremities. The only other finds of these fossilised trees has been in Peru. It is possible to go fossicking for petrified wood, agate, quartz, and jasper in the area.

 

Boonargo Cactoblastis Hall
Located 10 km east of Chinchilla on the Warrego Highway is the Boonargo Cactoblastis Hall which was built by the local farmers and dedicated to the redoubtable insect which had managed to eat its way through the jungles of prickly pear. It was seen as the true saviour of rural Australia and thus it is entirely reasonable that a hall should have been dedicated to its memory.

 

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