Mill Point Settlement Site

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.