100 years of commerce

The pink tips of the red cedar beckoned the pioneers of the late 19th century into the Blackall Range.   For decades the riches of the hinterland had been out of bounds following the prohibition by the NSW Governor Sir George Gipps in 1842 on the occupation of land north of Moreton Bay “in which Bunya or Banya Bunya Tree is found”, with no licences to cut timber in these districts to be issued.

Ludwig Leichhardt had explored Conondale and attended an aborigine bunya feast at Baroon Pocket in 1884, marvelling at the giant bunya trees, with a girth of up to 5 metres.

There were some large stations but it was not until Queensland became a separate state in 1859 that land north of Brisbane opened up.

The parish of Maleny was cited in the Lands Act of 1868, Immigrant Scots were taking up land in the district and the name is believed to commemorate Maleny Bank, a small hamlet in the county of Midlothian, now a commuter village of Edinburgh.   The Blackall Range was named after Sir Samuel Blackall, governor of Queensland 1868 – 71, the name recorded in 1874 by CS Bradbury when surveying a timber reserve near the Brisbane Gympie road.

The Gympie gold rush of 1867 spurred the opening up of the area, with hopeful miners flooding north, passing through Durunder, in the Caboolture district, and Conondale and east of the range.   Isaac Hudson Burgess, the first selector in the Parish of Maleny, would today be called an entrepreneur.   He carried goods by horse team to the goldfields, then selected land at Mellum Creek (now Landsborough) and built a bark-roofed slab hut that became a Cobb & Co stopover point.   In 1877 he selected 572 acres on the Brisbane side of Mellum Creek and erected a hotel, store and butcher’s shop.

Photo left  Maleny in 1886 showing Lahey's Sawmill Then, on November 12,1878 he selected portion 98, the first application received by the Lands Department for the Maleny district.   He took up the land for timber, following on the heels of sawyer Jim Page, who had explored the area, what became known as McCarthy’s Chute, for Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy himself took up 640 acres along what is now Mountain view Road in 1879 and the rush was on.

A section of a map published in 1888 (below) shows the original selections, although by then some land had changed hands.

Mrs Elizabeth Dixon owned the 1885 acres originally selected in 1880 by Lawrence Graves and her husband Thomas bought the adjoining block, 1282, from John Pitt for 900 pounds.   These significant holdings were to form the basis of the township of Maleny.

Francis Dunlop’s mother, Jane Dunlop, a widow, had come to the range in August, 1875, with her four children to settle on land at Bald Hill, now Bald Knob, selected by Brisbane saw miller, W. Pettigrew.   They walked up from Mellum Creek – now Landsborough – making their way up a rough timber getters’ track and their first home was two bark huts.   Francis later joined another first selector, Joe Eyles, and Thomas Maddock in cutting the first road up from Landsborough.    The road was not sealed until the 1920s.   Francis built the first home in Maleny Township in Bunya Street in 1894, with a butcher shop added in 1898.

Joseph McCarthy settled in at his selection, operating a small store and post office.   In 1886 he was instrumental in setting up the first school on the range in a slab hut built on his property at Wootha.    William Livingstone selected 160 acres in North Maleny in 1887 and set up a school for his own and his neighbour’s children.    In 1897 the government set up a provisional school, a few hundred yards from Livingstone’s slab hut.

Teutoberg, changed to Witta during World War 1, opened up quickly to German settlers and the school was established there in 1892.

Another of the settlers was William Simpson.   Who took up 336 acres in May, 1880.   His wife joined him there in 1881 and their descendants, drawing a distinction between Maleny and locales such as Bald Knob, claim she was the first white woman to live in Maleny.

THE HARD LIFE

As the early settlers put up their rough shacks, sometimes just a frame with walls of pahn and tarpaulin to keep out the weather, the loggers cleared the land, many sending their timber to James Campbell’s timber mill on Coochin Creek.   Many of the logs found their way down the mountain via McCarthy’s Chute, near where is now McCarthy’s Lookout.   In 1890 the Lahey brothers came from the Pimpana district to the Blackall Range and after lining up a timber supply through John Graves bought land in Maleny and set up a sawmill.   Francis Dunlop, George Trail, J Collins and William Livingstone set up the OBI Obi Sawmill Co at the end of 1894, where the Maleny SEA Substation is.

As the land was cleared, agriculture took over and cows thrived on the lush pasture.   At first the farmers made butter at home and it was carted down to the railway line, which reached Mellum Creek at the end of 1889, prompting the name change when the station was named after Queensland explorer William Landsborough,

Tesch’s blacksmithing business was operating in what is now Tesch Park by 1904.   Soon AJK Cooke’s house was built.

In 1903 farmers gathered at Joseph McCarthy’s farm and formed an association to build a butter factory in the main street of the township that was taking shape on the banks of the Obi Obi.   It was not until December 18, 1904 that the Maleny Co-operative Dairy Company was registered and the first can of cream was delivered by AJ Bryce.    The factory was officially opened on January, 1903.   Isaac Burgess was confident enough that the town was well known to write to his solicitors with the return address “Maleny PO via Landsborough”.

The dairy company built a general store and the first bank, the EA & A, opened its doors.   John Tytherleigh set up shop in 1894, Landsborough with his brother Alf taking orders in the Maleny district, riding a horse from farm to farm, his samples wrapped in oilskin. Business was good enough to warrant opening a store in Maleny in 1906.   The next year saw a flurry of activity – Francis Dunlop gave land for the Union Church and sold land to Joe Pollock for Maleny’s first hotel, the site where the much expanded hotel still stands.   The same year Pollock built the Maleny Emporium where Boxells building stands.