Online Catalogue last updated 17th of September 2023
This book describes all the Queensland timber tramways known to the author when the manuscript was released for publication in 2005. For climatic and other reasons Queensland had fewer timber tramways than most other Australian states. As a result it is possible in this book of 100 pages to mention all of those known to exist when the manuscript was prepared. All were closed by the end of the 1930s.
They ranged from the engagingly primitive to the well engineered Laheys' Canungra Tramway.
The author, the late John Kerr, was well qualified to write this history. In 1998 he completed the Forest Industry Heritage Places Study, Sawmills and Tramways, South Eastern Queensland, for the Queensland Department of Environment. This was a detailed study of archaeological remains of timber industry activities in south-east Queensland.
John Kerr was a consultant statistician with the CSIRO, but became an active historian, specialising in railways, and the sugar, mining and timber industries of Queensland. He was a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland and of the Federation of Historical Societies, a Founder of the Professional Historians Association (Queensland), and was the author of many books on Queensland history.
Many of the photographs have not previously been published. They include reproductions of six superb hand-coloured photographs of Laheys’ Canungra Tramway dating from c.1912. One of these, showing a Shay locomotive crossing a bridge is reproduced as a double-page spread, two others are full page reproductions.
Code No. 014452, 104 pages, ISBN 9780909340469, $29.95