Guide 4 of 6
What the railway built between Esk and Toogoolawah
Km 67 to km 86 of the trail: the 19 km from Esk to Toogoolawah. Both kilometres are running totals, worked below from the section lengths the department’s trail map gives; Esk is the trail’s fifth town, Toogoolawah its sixth.
Between Esk and Toogoolawah the trail crosses the dairy country the railway opened, 19 km that Somerset Regional Council grades “Moderate to high fitness level required”. The Queensland Heritage Register records the line reaching Esk on 9 August 1886 and Toogoolawah on 8 February 1904, seventeen and a half years apart.
The stretch
This stretch runs 19 km from Esk to Toogoolawah, and Somerset Regional Council grades it in its own words: “Moderate to high fitness level required”. The Department of Transport and Main Roads keeps a second difficulty vocabulary and describes the same ground as “a moderate to advanced section with a minor uphill gradient”, asking for “a medium level of fitness”.
Both kilometres at the two ends are running totals, worked here because no official page prints them: the trail map’s section lengths run 23 km from the start to Fernvale, 8 km more to Lowood, 12 km more to Coominya and 24 km more to Esk, which puts Esk at km 67; this stretch’s 19 km brings Toogoolawah to km 86 of the 161 km trail. The section lengths are the department’s; the sum is this guide’s own.
Through this stretch the trail travels adjacent to Camp Creek and crosses Cressbrook Creek, a tributary of the Brisbane River, at Toogoolawah. The same brochure notes the Brisbane Valley Rail Trail was one of three regional recreation trails funded by the Queensland Government until 2012, delivered through a partnership that included Ipswich City, South Burnett and Somerset Regional Councils.
The railway’s timeline here
Two official records carry the dates of this stretch, and between them they cover the ground from its southern end to the town at its north: the Queensland Heritage Register’s entries for the railway structures along the line, and TMR’s own brochures. Here is the timeline they give, with each date left beside the record that states it.
| Date | What the record says | Record |
|---|---|---|
| 2 December 1884 | The second section of the branch line, Lowood to Esk, was let on contract to H. A. Brigg. | Queensland Heritage Register, Lockyer Creek Railway Bridge entry |
| 9 August 1886 | The line opened for traffic between Lowood and Esk. | Queensland Heritage Register, Lockyer Creek Railway Bridge entry |
| 1886 | The line was extended to serve the beef cattle property known as Bellevue Station, later called Coominya. | TMR, Lowood to Coominya brochure |
| late 1880s | James McConnel established a condensed milk factory on Cressbrook Creek, and subdivided part of the Cressbrook run into dairy farms and the township first called Cressbrook Creek. | TMR, Esk to Toogoolawah brochure |
| February 1904 | The first section of the extension, to Toogoolawah, was completed. | Queensland Heritage Register, Yimbun Railway Tunnel entry |
| September 1904 | The line reached Yimbun, which became its terminus that September. | Queensland Heritage Register, Yimbun Railway Tunnel entry |
| 20 December 1907 | Nestlé took delivery of the Toogoolawah factory and began production the next morning. | Queensland Heritage Register, Inverness entry |
| 1911 to 1917 | Toogoolawah’s population more than doubled, from 500 to 1,100. | Queensland Heritage Register, Inverness entry |
| October 1930 | The bulk of the factory closed. | Queensland Heritage Register, Inverness entry |
Seventeen and a half years separate the line's opening to Esk on 9 August 1886 from its arrival at Toogoolawah on 8 February 1904, worked from the two stored dates, and it is the longest wait anywhere on the line. The register's Linville War Memorial entry records that the line to Toogoolawah opened on 8 February 1904. The register’s Yimbun entry records who pushed against the wait: the line was advocated by graziers, including James McConnel of Cressbrook station, who wanted the area opened up to dairying. The Inverness entry adds the campaign: Cressbrook’s McConnel sold small parcels of the run to his workers for dairying and joined local deputations pressing for the line to be extended from Esk to Cressbrook. The same entry records that the factory’s expansion was spurred by the opening of the railway extension to the factory in 1904.
Toogoolawah and the line
In the register’s account, Toogoolawah is a factory town on a railway. The Inverness entry describes its place in the industry: Queensland’s first successful condensed milk factory, working from 1898 to 1907, and then the first factory of Nestlé and Anglo-Swiss outside its home country, from 1907 to 1930.
TMR’s brochure for the stretch ties the town’s growth to the line: it records that the town’s expansion coincided with the rail connection to Ipswich in 1904 and with the purchase of the factory by the Nestlé and Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company in 1907. The Inverness entry adds a detail of place: the station stood opposite the factory and took the name Toogoolawah.
The records part on the date of the sale itself. The register’s Cressbrook Homestead entry says the factory and 3,000 acres were sold to the Nestlé Anglo-Swiss company in 1906; the Inverness entry dates Nestlé’s delivery of the factory to the day before production began, 20 December 1907. This guide holds the two dates apart rather than merging them, and names the entry that carries each.
The factory’s scale is in the same entries. Production climbed from around 600 cases in 1902, 28,800 tins a month to 3,500 cases in 1906, 168,000 tins; 46 people worked at the factory by 1906; and the town grew with it, its population more than doubling from 500 in 1911 to 1,100 in 1917. By 1919 the register reports the factory described as the Commonwealth’s largest of its kind, and up to 140 people worked at or in connection with the condensery, with Nestlé supplying the town’s electricity in 1927.
The end was abrupt. In October 1930 Nestlé closed the bulk of the factory; its staff went to Nestlé’s Victorian factory or left, and the town’s population halved. The unused buildings stood empty, an attempt to sell them for removal went nowhere, fire destroyed the factory in 1951, and the site was sold in 1956, leaving the packing shed, the only significant remains of the former factory. The register records the shed’s conversion into the Somerset Regional Art Gallery in 2016.
Walking or riding it today
The practical detail for this stretch comes from TMR’s trail map: food, toilets and water stations at Esk and Toogoolawah, with nothing in between, shade shelter and horse watering troughs at Coal Creek Bridge and Morden Road, horse holding yards in Esk and parking at both towns.
Ridden south to north, this stretch is the uphill direction. TMR notes the trail offers a more enjoyable downhill run heading south-east, and a more challenging uphill run the other way; the brochure map puts it plainly, calling the trail most rewarding when travelling from Yarraman in the north towards Wulkuraka in the south.