Thinking of travelling? Have you ever wondered how the choices of transport came to Mount Isa? Trains. Planes. Automobiles. Take the railway and trains for instance. In the early years of the 20th century, there was limited choice for prospectors, pioneers and miners. Aeroplanes were in their infancy and yet to fly way out west, automobiles were expensive and not really conducive to the rough rocky roadways and trains needed rail lines to roll along so that left transport duties to horses.
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Teams of horses, sometimes numbering as many as 20, pulled wagons, drays and carts loaded with supplies and passengers along dusty tracks long before the Iron Horse made its way into the western mining fields. These horse teams were hauling heavy mining machinery, boilers, and just as importantly, building supplies such as corrugated iron and essential food supplies into the new mining camps.
The term 'horsepower' which we use today to differentiate the power of engines and motors comes from the power and might of these early haulage horse teams. Men had little choice of their mode of transport, they had to contend with humping their swag and taking 'Shank's Pony' (walk) or cadge a ride on the occasional dust churning albeit bone jarring Cobb & Co style coaches as they sought out the latest mineral fields looking for work. For 60 years, in the latter part of the 1800s mine towns and government grappled with the isolation and associated building costs when debating the concept of laying a railway line to move the western mineral ores to the coast for shipment south or overseas.
Finally, Cloncurry was successful in their arguments for a railhead. And in 1905 the line was extended from the original railhead at Richmond to the classified rich mineral and grazing country of the western and gulf savannah plains. With the discovery of ore south of Cloncurry the rail line was eventually laid to service the mines and communities of Mount Elliot, Kuridala, Ballara and the Duchess. 20 years later the campaign to again extend this line was in full swing.
But the question was whether the extension would go north from Cloncurry to the gulf ports or southwest through Duchess to the new lead mine of Mount Isa. With five possible routes identified, discussions included the possibility of a line from Cloncurry through Kajabbi to the Gulf of Carpentaria with both Normanton and Burketown likely railheads.
EA Cullen, state engineer, travelled to the Gulf of Carpentaria on several occasions to ascertain which of the proposed rail routes and which port would be more suitable for overseas ships to berth to load crude ore. During his last survey of likely routes both towns were equally considered however it was the problem of the shallow ports and prohibitive dredging costs that scuppered this idea. And without a railway to move the ores to the coastal shipping ports, the new Mount Isa mineral fields would soon be yet another crushed western mine in the Selwyn Ranges. Because without a rail line their efforts in raising capital for continued development of the new mine would be fruitless. No rail line - no profitable mine.
WH Corbould, mining engineer and a firm believer in the richness of the Mount Isa mineral fields, continued to push the state and federal governments to reconsider their financial involvement in building the new railway. Each government of the time was hesitant to fund the railway structure for a number of reasons; not least being the quality of ore mined in the first couple of years proved to be of a poor standard which did not bode well for such a large investment running into tens of thousands of pounds. Corbould persisted in his advocacy for Mount Isa and a rail head and his efforts proved successful albeit in a roundabout way. Wanting a railway at any price and willing to accept any route, the Mount Isa Mine directors eventually made an offer on the branch line.
This offer persuaded the Royal Commission on Public Works to recommend state government finance the extension line from Cloncurry through Duchess to the proposed railhead at Mount Isa. The offer? That Mount Isa Mines would defray large working losses on the branch line during its first ten years of operation. Mount Isa paid for the railway negotiations of 1925. And this arrangement often proved to be to the financial detriment of the mine as the state could always prove in its accounting that the line was operating at a loss. With the news the Duchess-Mount Isa Railway Act 1925 had passed in state government on November 12, 1925, jubilation and a new sense of purpose returned to the Mount Isa community.
At long last the pipe-dream of a 60-mile (100 kms) rail line extension linking Mount Isa to Duchess came to fruition. And in turn Mount Isa Mines would have a faster more reliable form of transport via Duchess and Cloncurry through to the eastern shipping port of Townsville. Several hundred railway navvies truly laboured through blood, sweat and tears during the three long years it took to lay the rail line as they blasted hillsides, chiselled out rocks, and built timber bridges over creeks before laying the timber sleepers and securing the steel rails with dog spikes.
And six years after John Campbell Miles was credited with founding the rich mineral fields of Mount Isa the last of the horse teams, used to haul mineral ore to the railhead at Duchess, were stabled to make way for the first Iron Horse aptly named "Progress and Prosper".
The excitement was palpable as the townsfolk celebrated the arrival of the first train into Mount Isa on Saturday, April 6 1929.
And on-board 'Progress and Prosper', swaddled in the arms of her mother was six weeks old, Edna Leahy who at the spritely age of 90 years lives in Mount Isa, today.
Photographs supplied by North Queensland History Collections. Information from Cloncurry News, Cloncurry Advocate, Mount Isa Mail, MIMAG, Mines in the Spinifex and the North West Star.
