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Wallangarra, Queensland is situated Latitude: 28 55S Longitude: 151 55E at an elevation of 878 meters above Sea Level. Wallangarra is a village on the border between Queensland and New South Wales in Australia. It is the most southerly town in Queensland, 258 km south west of Brisbane. Wallangarra is on the Queensland side of the border and Jennings is on the New South Wales side. The original name, "Wallan-Garra", are Aboriginal words meaning "plenty of water". Wallangarra lies in a valley between two ranges of mountains, which each are branches of the Great Dividing Range.
There is a gap between the more Westerly range at Wyberba, about 5 kilometres north of Wallangarra. This gap has made Wallangarra the major inland border crossing for the New England Highway and what was the first railway line between Brisbane and Sydney.
During World War II, the Commonwealth Government created a General Army Store on the Queensland side of the border, and an Ammunition Dump on the New South Wales side. Dual gauge tracks were run to each of these stores. Access to the army stores was via Margetts St, one of the main roads in the town. The late Muriel Daphne Verdun Nicolson lived at 30 Margetts St from before WWII until her death in 2001.
During WWII she reported that the flow of trucks and materiel went on all day and night.
The ammunition dump, was, in the 1970s, the largest ammunition dump in the Southern Hemisphere.
As of 2004, it was the second largest in Australia.
Children going to the Wallangarra State Primary School are still entertained by the massive scheduled explosions of stale ammunition. The town was created to service a rail interchange between the differing rail gauges of the colonies of Queensland and New South Wales. Queensland still uses a narrow gauge of 3'6" (1067mm) and New South Wales a standard gauge of 4'8" (1435 mm). The railway was the only rail link between Queensland and New South Wales until a standard gauge track came into service in the 1930's. From that time on, the Wallangarra station lessened in importance. All rail services stopped in 1997. In 2003, after major refurbishment, the station was reopened as a museum. The railway line from Stanthorpe to Wallangarra has continued to be maintained. These days Steam trains taking tourists to Wallangarra occasionally operate from Warwick, Ipswich and Brisbane.
This PHOTO from 1887 shows the Royal Bank of Queensland on the left and in the distance is the old Commercial Hotel..
Did you notice the obvious design difference on opposing platforms at the Wallangarra Railway Station? This was a deliberate choice incorporated into the Station Plans from 1889. It was meant to reflect the difference in housing designs used for N.S.W.(Federation) and Qld.(Bull Nose).
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