Stopes ??? Chimneys, Adits, scree and a cemetery and a two foot gauge railway.

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September 4th 2013

Published: September 4th 2013

Stopes ??? Chimneys, Adits, scree and a cemetery and a two foot gauge railway. Woke up and started to pack up, have brekky and get ready for our day and our eventual arrival at my brother Brian and his wife Vicki's home at Trinity Beach just north of Cairns. While making another coffee we spotted Simmo. Well we concluded that it must have been Simmo he was in the rural fire truck. He waved and took off in the direction of the fire and then I was resigned to not seeing the museum. Suck it up princess. Then some half hour later We saw Simmo return and we decided to drop into the rural fire brigade. He knew straight away who we were. He said "sorry love saving people's houses takes priority". We briefly discussed my grandfather and I asked if we came back on our way home from the cape would he open it for us. He said yes and that he would dig around for more information on James Sheehan. Resigned to the fact that it wasn't going to happen today we drove around the town looking at the old buildings, the beautiful and picturesque dam and the numerous diggings. Everywhere in Irvinebank is up on sharp rises. There is really only one building that is down that's the pub. And for good reason everything is built up - flood. This place has a very steep catchment area, gully upon gully upon gully. Almost all of them with a worked over mine pit. And stopes???? What's that? Having seen the town, and knowing we are coming back we left for Cairns. On the way we saw a sign on the road that said Stannary Hills. There is some discussion that old Jim had worked there so we drove in. Another 4wd track easy at first and then progressively harder the further in we went. Stannary hills is significant because the owner of the mine commissioned a tramway to be built on a two foot gauge rail for12 km through these steep hills to bring the ore out to Irvinebank. Two foot gauge is so tiny and you should see the carriages, no bigger than a tea chest they look hilarious. I imagine the hillbilly miners riding gunshot on one of them. Its likely that Old Jim was there as he was also a ganger on the construction crew on the Kuranda Rail line. After stopping at an old cemetery we kept going and came across this tiny cutting in a hill and soon realized it was the two foot gauge tramway used to cart the tin ore out in the tiniest almost miniature. It crossed it's way through hills and valleys to the mine . On reaching Stannary hills proper, we found a monument dedicated to the pioneers. This monument had a number of brass plaques surrounding the base. Each plate told a story of a pioneer. I asked Wayne to video it so I could read it later. He asked me to shade it from the sun and as we were slowly filming it I caught sight of very worn letters S H E E. I let out a yelp of excitement. There on a plaque were the words James Sheehan. I sunk to my knees to read it and found it was James Arthur Sheehan. Damn ... Not him but very exciting nevertheless. Moving on we found the town's water supply. A pretty little dam with a beautiful grassy island in the middle of it. I imagined children jumping off the banks to swim over to the island to play and sun themselves. Modern day campers would instantly find the serene beauty in this place as there was evidence of recent camp fires. We made our way further and further into the hills on increasingly rougher, steeper and narrower tracks and found the rail cutting, old mines, emerald green crystal clear lakes, and cows always lots of the skinny angry white cows. Running short on petrol it was time to leave this place that time forgot and nature is reclaiming and we headed off towards Herberton. After the excitement of the Stannary Hills find, it was hard to get into the spirit of the mining heritage centre in Herberton. We had a look around went to the pub for lunch and decided to head off to Trinity beach to my brother Brian's home. We dropped in to see Tinaroo Dam but we were being blown horizontal by the fiercest wind so we jumped back in the car and headed for the Barron falls and a look at the Kuranda railway. The Barron gorge is spectacular not much water at this time but still great to see. Kuranda is now very touristy and almost impossible to get out of it took us three attempts of cruising through town to find the way out. Down the mountain range around very tight bends we finally found our way to Brian's after driving through what was to me an unrecognizable Cairns. It's 28 years since I was last here. Give Brian a dvick a big hug and settle down to enjoy their hospitality and catch up. Sarah and paddy came over and we had great conversation about everything. So nice to relax, stop and sleep in a real bed with beautiful linen. Sleeeeep yesssssss.......

Stopes ??? Chimneys, Adits, scree and a cemetery and a two foot gauge railway.

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