Cunnamulla
Explore outback Australia including regional Queensland by joining a small group educational tour for senior couples and mature single travellers. This article on Cunnamulla is part of a series on regional Australian towns visited on an Odyssey program.
Pasture fuels growth of the town
By 1880 Cunnamulla had a population of about 200, was sprouting local industries and services, and growing into the proud centre of the Shire of Paroo. Profits from the surrounding pastoral stations were safeguarded at the local Queensland National Bank. In January that year the bank was robbed at gunpoint by a station hand, Joseph Wells, who accidentally shot a neighbouring storekeeper in the shoulder. Wells managed to flee the scene on foot, and might have evaded detection, camouflaged in the branches of a tree, had it not been for a sheep dog who sat barking underneath. Wells received the death penalty, but there was so much public debate about capital punishment, that his was the last execution in Queensland for armed robbery with wounding. The Robbers Tree stands testimony at the southern end of Stockyard Street and is listed on the Queensland Heritage Register.
In 1889 a successful artesian bore was drilled at Cunnamulla, and the first half of the twentieth century brought good sheep grazing seasons, high wool prices and population growth to a peak of 2200 in 1961. By the time the wool boom had faded, the town and its surrounds were well equipped to continue thriving. Cunnamulla has its own hospital and airport, and its racecourse hosts four meetings per year. Other inclusions on the Queensland heritage register are a strikingly elaborate war memorial fountain (1924) and the lavishly decorated pressed-copper Paroo Shire honour board (1918) in the civic centre.
Megafauna rich
The Visitor Centre provides a fascinating insight into the beginnings and significance of the Great Artesian Basin: the Artesian Time Tunnel incorporates an old mine lift which takes travellers back in time 100 million years to discover the geology, and the megafauna that roamed the Eromanga Inland Sea: marine reptiles, some of whose bones turned into opal. Fellow Shire townships Eulo – with its fossilised remains of a Diprotodon – and Yowah – known for its opal mining and the “Yowah Nut”, a local and distinctive type of opal – offer hands-on fossicking.
Although Cunnamulla was founded on a once reliable waterhole, the name of the Warrego River in the Bidjara language is believed to mean “bad” and “river of sand”. Indeed the Warrego is essentially an ephemeral stream: it is not unknown for years to pass without any flow in the basin and substantial amounts of water reach the Darling River only in wet years. The other extreme is also known, and in 1990 Cunnamulla was devastated by a flood which saw the Warrego River reach 10.15 metres.
The Cunnamulla fella
The “true blue” spirit of the people of Cunnamulla and its region is hard to miss. Right in front of the Paroo Shire Hall, Visitor Centre, Art Gallery and Museum sits a larger-than-life local on his swag holding his mug of tea. Cast in bronze the statue gazes across the centre of town. A tribute to the “ringers” of the bush, he is the subject of the enduring country music hit, “The Cunnamulla Fella”, written by Stan Coster and recorded by Slim Dusty. The town holds a festival in the cooler months, the Cunnamulla Annual Roundup, which celebrates the best of the Outback, including a Rodeo School held over three days, led by some of the country’s most admired stockmen.
