Situated strategically on the border between Queensland and the Northern Territory, Camooweal has always had an importance its small size belies and its history predates Mount Isa.
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The reserve for a township on the Georgina River was proclaimed on August 21, 1884 which "will in future be called Camooweal".
The origin of the name is lost in time but early 20th century newspapers debated several options.
There was the Aboriginal suggestion it meant the "place of high winds" while the Argus suggested it was named by surveyor H. Stuart Russell for the cam wheel of his measuring apparatus.
A third explanation involving another surveyor was provided to the Brisbane Courier in 1926 by Mrs. Millicent A. Carr-Boyd, "The statement that the town of Camooweal was named by Mr. Surveyor Russell is incorrect," Mrs Carr-boyd wrote.
"The town of Camooweal was surveyed and named in the early 'eighties by my late father, Surveyor George T. Weale. The survey party was entirely dependent on camels for its progression, and my father in naming the place, had this dependence in mind. The second syllable in the name is his own name, slightly altered."
However it came about it was quickly established as an important outpost for carriers and drovers (a link that remains to this day with the Drovers Camp).
It was also a colonial customs post with the then-South Australian controlled Territory less than 10 miles away.
Queensland charged £3 a head of cattle and in 1890 the customs office recorded they had collected £33,375 for cattle headed to New South Wales that year.
A post office opened in 1885 and by the end of that year it was bustling with two hotels, two butchers, a borading house, a smithy, a saddler, a Chinese garden and several houses, and had a police barracks under construction.
What became Freckleton's store was built in 1885, and by 1901 was known as Synnot, Murray and Scholes Ltd, who acted as forwarding agents for their other shop at Burketown.
The store is heritage listed and "important in demonstrating the principal characteristics of early corrugated iron outback store buildings."
By 1926 Camooweal housed a 100 people and its remoteness was diminished by the fact it was now the northern terminus of the newly established Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services routes across western Queensland.
Sadly a Camooweal man, Rocklands station manager William Robert Donaldson, was one of three that died in QANTAS's first fatal air crash in 1927 near Tambo.
That plane was flying from Charleville to the newly established Mount Isa, which was starting to take the border focus away from Camooweal, as did the end of colonial customs collection in 1901.
The dirt track between the two towns was significantly improved in the Second World War.
The bitumen road was built with American funds as a link between the southern states and what threatened to become the 'front line' in the Northern Territory. Local wags called the road Tojo's Revenge for the Japanese military leader who had forced its hasty building.
Camooweal had been the administrative centre of the Barkly Tablelands Shire and the lovely heritage listed shire hall is where they had their meetings.
In 1962 the shire was renamed Mount Isa Shire, reflecting the reality that the Isa was now the dominant centre of the region.
But when the Shire was renamed the City of Mount Isa in 1968, the 190km road to Camooweal made it into the Guinness Book of Records as the longest city road in the world.
Derek Barry
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
