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Mill Point Settlement Site

Elanda Pt, Lake Cootharaba

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Mill Point Settlement Site (2008); EHP

Mill Point Settlement Site (2008)

Mill Point Settlement Site - wharf remnants (2006); EHP

Mill Point Settlement Site - wharf remnants (2006)

Mill Point Settlement Site - archaeological dig (2006); EHP

Mill Point Settlement Site - archaeological dig (2006)

Mill Point Settlement Site - Remnant Boiler (2006); EHP

Mill Point Settlement Site - Remnant Boiler (2006)

Mill Point Settlement Site -  log holding yard (2006); EHP

Mill Point Settlement Site - log holding yard (2006)

Just north of the Elanda Point camping area are the remnants of a private timber town inhabited between 1869 and 1892. A group of Gympie men established the McGhie Luya Company’s Cootharaba Sawmills settlement in 1869. Logs were initially hauled to the mill by bullock teams. Constant bogging led to the construction of a tramway along a ridge for a distance of 4 miles to the west. After milling, flat-bottomed paddle boats towed punts of sawn timber through Lakes Cootharaba and Cooroibah to Tewantin, for loading on to the ‘SS Culgoa’ before being shipped to Brisbane for sale. An explosion in a sawmill boiler killed five men in July 1873. They are buried in the Mill Point Cemetery, about 2km to the west of the settlement. It included a school from 1874 and a hotel between 1876 and 1878. During the 1880s, there were between 100 and 150 employees and their families living here. The ‘Culgoa’ was wrecked on the Noosa River in 1891. Dwindling timber resources led to the mill’s closure in 1892. Mill Point was gazetted part of Cooloola National Park in 1985. The Queensland National Parks ‘Elanda circuit walk’ includes a self-guided walk through Mill Point.

Featured in this trail:

Coordinates: -26.24823214, 153.00751615

Full details of this heritage-registered place are in the Heritage register.

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Licence
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Last reviewed
1 July 2022
Last updated
28 February 2023