Shaping Our Identity: Transport

Riverboats at work
On the regular trips up from Brisbane, the river steamers carried mail, parcels for local residents and supplies for Ipswich shops and country properties - everything from women's shawls to a load of roofing slates. During railway construction in the 1860s and 70s, the steamers and barges carried railway materials including locomotives, pre-fabricated buildings and pre-fabricated bridges. Loads of wheat were sometimes taken to the Bremer Mills at Bundamba.

The local newspapers carried lists of the parcels that had arrived at Ipswich as a notification for their owners to come and collect them. On the return trip, the steamers carried outward mail, parcels and produce including wool, hides and cotton. They sometimes called in at the various boiling-down works to collect tallow, or called at coal mines to collect a loaded coal barge to tow. Several of these businesses generated so much river traffic that they eventually bought their own riverboats. The steamers also carried passengers – both local people and immigrants who had recently arrived from overseas. There are countless stories about these passengers – an opera company going to perform in Ipswich Town Hall, navvies from Britain going to work on the railway, young immigrant women hoping to be employed as housemaids or governesses, a prisoner going to Brisbane for trial.

Immigrants were usually brought directly from their ship to Ipswich. The newly arrived ship anchored in Moreton Bay and a steamer took a doctor down to check the passengers. If there was disease on board, the ship was towed to the Quarantine Station at Dunwich. If the passengers were healthy, they were unloaded with their luggage and taken in to Brisbane. Some passengers disembarked there, the others were brought up to Ipswich.

For local people, catching a boat was a trickier business. Steamers left at varying hours according to the tide because of the difficulty in getting through the Seventeen Mile Rocks. Passengers often had trouble knowing exactly when they were to start, and “the vagaries of the Ipswich steamer” were described in a humorous newspaper article about a man who tried unsuccessfully to catch a boat scheduled to leave at 2am.

The Railways
In early Queensland, transport was difficult. Even in the centre of Ipswich, the main roads were poor and further into the countryside, they turned into ill-defined tracks, impassable in wet weather. A reliable means of getting produce to market was needed and a railway seemed to be the obvious answer. The logical place to start building was where there was already the greatest traffic: the wool route from the Darling Downs to Ipswich. There was considerable controversy about the type of railway needed. Many people opposed the narrow gauge light railway proposed, but Mr. Fitzgibbon who became Queensland's first Railway Commissioner stated that "to build the wider gauge would be like employing an elephant to do a horse's work," and continued with great short-sightedness: "3' 6" . . . would answer all the purposes of Queensland for 100 years."

The ceremony which marked the beginning of work took place at North Ipswich on 25th February, 1864. Lady Bowen cut "the First Sod" with a silver spade and placed it in a cedar wheelbarrow; an artillery salute was fired, the Volunteer Brigade marched, and the important guests adjourned to lunch. As work progressed, four trains arrived from England to be assembled: they were named 'Pioneer', 'Premier', Faugh-a-Ballagh' and 'Lady Bowen'. A railway workshop was built at North Ipswich and these Workshops still remain an important industry in Ipswich.

The first journey on the partly completed line took place on 22nd April, 1865; it went to Guilfoyle's Gully near present day Walloon. The official opening of the line to Bigge's Camp (now Grandchester) took place on 31st July, 1865. By this time, the bridge over the Bremer was finished and this trip started at the Ipswich Railway Station, crossed the Bremer River and went out through Brassall. The line was extended to to Toowoomba in 1867.