The ghost station of Many Peaks is surrounded by a series of rocky and wooded hills. Littlemore now has nothing but a farmhouse and a sign.
These sleepy and forgotten places in the central Boyne Valley Queensland were once linked by hundreds of kilometers of railway lines that ran in an inland arc between the ports of Maryborough and Gladstone. Now sections of these routes are gradually being converted for slower modes of transport: walking, horseback riding and cycling.
Rebuilding the entire proposed 271km Boyne Burnett Inland Rail route from Taragula to Gayndah will be a long journey – if completed, it will be the longest such route in the southern hemisphere.
But for retired farmer Mick Colyer, the venture could save the Boyne Valley where he first collected cattle as a young lad.
“When these railroads closed, so many people were forced out of their homes, there were no jobs,” says a member of the railroad committee. “Small provincial towns have practically died out.
“So to try to bring people into these small rural areas, to try to put some money into businesses in those towns that used to be thriving little communities… that's been our vision all along.”
It is a vision that will require a dramatic reversal of prevailing trends.
The 2006 census counted 646 people in the Boyne Valley. In 2011, this number had fallen to 379. By 2013, the Australian Bureau of Statistics no longer considered the four surviving settlements in the Boyne Valley to be “urban centers and settlements” – or towns – due to their declining populations.
Then, in 2020, the valley's only pub turned off its taps.
But there are already signs that prospects for the railway may have begun to gain momentum.
After several years of public meetings, the first section of the reconstructed road officially opened in late 2021. Walking approximately 26km from a disused railway siding in the Kalpowar Forest called Barrymun, it descends the Dawes Ridge through six tunnels and passes the Many Peaks to the village of Builian.
A year later, a second section of the trail opened south of the Boyne Valley, along the banks of the Burnett River. It runs approximately 30km from Mundubbera to Mount Debatable, a disused railway line near Gayndah. Both cities dispute the title of “Queensland's citrus capital”, with Gayndah claiming the Big Orange and Mundubbera the Big Mandarin. Between these two landmarks, the railroad now winds through citrus groves, past the wide arms of the Burnett and the abandoned wooden railroad bridges that cross its tributaries.
The first triumph of these sections of the new route came last December when the Many Peaks Grand Hotel opened its doors again under new management.
After serving for eight years on Gladstone Regional Council and playing a key role in setting up the community group that manages the railway route, Desley O'Grady and her husband Craig moved to Money Peaks, bought a historic pub adjacent to the old railway line and put out a call for volunteers to help tidy it up.
O'Grady says the turnout of more than 40 people was a testament to how much Valley locals missed the venue. But she knows she'll need more than their support to keep the doors open.
“There are actually only 25 people living in Money Peaks,” O’Grady says. “So we know we are a tourist hotel.”
And, she says, one of the Boyne Valley's greatest attractions is the railway.
“The reason we bought the hotel is because over the last 12 years we've been driving around on different railroad tracks, seeing what's going on in different states and different cities,” the pub owner says. “I think cycling tourism is the next big thing.”
This belief appears to be paying off. Last Sunday, O'Grady said, 180 meals were served at the Grand Hotel. Many of them were cyclists.
However, Boyne Burnett's initiative faces significant challenges. There are enormous distances involved, the amount of work required to make the rough and sandy terrain rideable and its gullies surmountable. The fact is that all this work is carried out by volunteers scattered throughout sparsely populated areas.
And not all of the Boyne Valley business community is involved in the railroad.
Hugh Harvey runs what he says is the only operating hospitality and retail business in the valley, a general store in the town of Ubobo, which has a population of about 20 people. Along with fuel, food and equipment, Harvey sells short coolers with the slogan: “I’m a hobo from Ubobo.”
Although the trail past Ubobo is not yet officially open, it has been graded, and Harvey recently noticed several cyclists riding past his store.
But he is “not at all interested” in the trail, which runs just meters from his nearly two-decade business.
“We've had a lot of different groups here over the years – and you can divide them into those who spend money and those who are tight-assed,” says Harvey. “Bushwalkers, cyclists, birdwatchers, riding groups… at the end of the day, they don't spend money.”
While some on the ground may still need to be convinced, Griffith University's Brent Moyle says other rail routes have proven to be a “boon to country towns” around Australia, providing “sustainable and reliable tourism”.
Further south, the Brisbane Valley Railway was completed in 2018, sparking an accommodation boom, reviving village pubs and creating jobs.
A tourism professor who specializes in regenerating remote communities, Moyle admits Boyne Burnett is “unlikely to attract a Brisbane Valley-level crowd overnight”. But, he says, it could “carve out a loyal niche of cyclists, hikers and caravanners seeking an authentic rural experience.”
“We've only scratched the surface of the Australian rail scene,” says Moyle.
And for Colyer, the railroad isn't just a matter of economics. Yes, an old grazier is volunteering his time and energy to a cause that he hopes will bring money back to the Boyne Valley. But he also does it on principle.
“This is a public asset,” Colyer says of the trail. “And that’s what we’ve all always strived for: just having an asset that belongs to the people that people can use.”
And while Colyer is not confident the dream of Australia's longest railway track will be realized in his lifetime, there is already a new group of pioneering cyclists making the most of this asset.
To mark the opening of the Barrimun Tunnels section of the trail in 2021, Andrew Demak of peak advocacy group Bicycle Queensland rode more than 680km over nine days, linking the Boyne Burnett with two other rail routes via a chain of back roads and several main roads, from Ipswich to Gladstone.
The trip took planning and experience, he said, but it proved that bike trails could one day cover such extensive routes.
“Well, it's ambitious, but it's certainly a dream that Bicycle Queensland is committed to,” he says.
Meanwhile, Demak says there is already a growing network of “great recreational trails.” And the stretch of the Boyne Burnett from Barrymun to Buylan, with its views of rainforested peaks, grassy valleys, gums and rolling paddocks, is, he says, “particularly magnificent.”
“This is one of the most impressive sections of railway in Queensland.”
