Pioneer’s Hut - QLD

Building a house out of the bush was a tough job for the early settlers. Their slab huts were roofed with bark that was stripped from paperbark trees and bound to the rafters with green hide. Walls were made from hand split timber slabs fastened with .. green hide or hand forged iron nails. The floor was 'ant bed'— crushed termite mound that was moistened, sometimes with.ox blood, then spread, compacted and smoothed as it dried. In 1873, Thomas Collins married his neighbour Mary Firth whose father, Ezra, was the pioneer settler of the Mount Surprise area. Thomas and Mary accepted the isolation and hardships of life in the bush, raising a family and building a viable cattle business. To help with the day-to-day work, the family employed only a couple of white stockmen, a handful of Aboriginal stockmen® and a Chinese worker to cook and tend the vegetable garden. With so few permanent workers, the help of family, neighbours and itinerant labour was essential on large cattle musters. Raising cattle has always been a challenging way to earn a living. Stock had to be mustered on horseback and driven long distances overland to markets.Beef prices were variable and the threat of drought was ever present. In dry years, stock losses were common, often compounded by ticks and diseases such as redwater fever.Hungry cattle were occasionally poisoned by browsing on the toxic leaves of Cooktown ironwood saplings. Rosella Plains'In 1901, on his retirement, Thomas Collins purchased the adjacent Rosella Plains Station which his younger son Bram then managed.Spring Creek was left in the hands of the elder son, Victor. The two stations remained the centrepiece of the - family's pastoral interests for five generations. In 1992, the* Queensland Government purchased Rosella Plains for inclusion in the newly created Undara Volcanic National Park.