We ventured down to the old Mt Morgan Railway Station this morning. As there is no trains to Mt Morgan anymore, the building now houses the tourist information centre and a museum. The museum has a rail focus and some history about the gold mine. We enjoyed exploring old carriages and station memorabilia. There were several audio presentations being played. One made you imagine you were at a busy railway station and another that was played while you were in a carriage, made you imagine that you were taking the journey in the carriage from Rockhampton up the Razorback mountain range to Mount Morgan. The line was built in 1889 and due to the steepness of the climb, part of the journey needed to be on a “rack” railway system e.g. using cogs. This was one of only 2 of these in Australia, the other being in Tasmania. The railway here closed down completely in 1987. From here we drove a short distance to the town’s dam. Up until a few weeks ago the dam was dry and town had been very short of water. Water trucks were carting water into the town daily to keep the water up. After receiving the recent rains the dam filled and water no longer needed to be brought in. The dam had a red/green algae alert so I decided I really didn’t need to go in it. We returned to the caravan for lunch and after lunch I walked to the huge cemetery, a 10 minute walk down the road. It was very interesting, historically and of course there were many sad stories about deaths from accidents in the mines. There was a very large memorial called the Linda Memorial which was erected in 1909, in memory of miners who perished in mining accidents. This was probably due to the fact that in September 1908, 7 miners lost their lives in a rock fall and then again in November of the same year another 5 miners were killed. (I think “Linda” was the name of one of the mines where one of the accidents occurred.)
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