INTRODUCTION
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The abandoned huts, outbuildings and stockyards of Australia's early pioneers are fast disappearing. The old slab and bark cottage or humpy made from hand-sawn timbers has long gone. Yet scattered along a typical country drive you may still be lucky enough to get a quick glimpse into Australia's unique pioneering heritage.
AUSTRALIANA PRINTS brings you closer than you've ever been before to that heritage. It takes you on a nostalgic photographic journey into the hearth of the pioneers of South East Queensland. It brings you stunning images of the rustic beauty of weathered wood and iron and classic pioneering architecture, and where possible the stories behind them.
Stay tuned. It is an ongoing project!
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ABOUT ME
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Australiana Prints was founded by me, Christine Coles (nee Turner), an avid Photographer and lover of pioneering history.
Whenever I visit my elderly parents in my hometown of Millmerran, a small country town on the western fringe of the Darling Downs in Southeast Queensland, I always go on long drives around the district, particularly at the “golden hour”, to photograph the beautiful landscape west of the town, the old dwellings, windmills, stockyards. It saddens me that very few examples actually remain of early pioneering life here. The abandoned dwellings of Turallin which were explored as kids, are gone; the shops and butter factory of Koorangarra is boarded up; the aesthetics of early architecture seem unnoticed and forgotten.
It became important, indeed, urgent to record what physical history remained. Soon I was gathering some written and oral history to go with the photographs and here lies the genesis of Australiana Prints. It has now taken on a life of its own, with plans to include the once vast station of Yandilla, Tummaville, Canning Creek, Stonehenge, Western Creek, Leyburn, Warwick and others.
This photographic chronicle will be of interest to descendants of those pioneering spirits who made "The garden of Australia" (so-called by Allan Cunningham, discoverer of the Darling Downs at Warwick in 1840) their home. Early history is well worth preserving, given the links to it are being snapped daily, and the more accessible, the better for its safe-keeping.
I welcome invite your additions, corrections or general feedback, early photographs, and especially locations where more relics may exist to photograph and include on this website.
