A little republic in everything else but name, probably the most unique community of its kind" The Brisbane Courier Thursday 5 July 1877.

Mill Point (or Elanda Point) in the Cooloola Section of Great Sandy National Park is the site of one of the earliest timber settlements in Queensland. In 1991 a report on the site was produced for the then Department of Environment and Heritage and a full survey was recommended. In 2004, a project to map the site, clear vegetation, define the boundary and include the site in the Queensland Heritage Register commenced as a joint project developed by Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service/Environmental Protection Agency- http://www.epa.qld.gov.au/publications/p00159aa.pdf/Mill_Point.pdf
and the University of Queensland http://www.atsis.uq.edu.au/index.html?page=42037.
Arts and Heritage Noosa supported the project and Noosa Shire Council allocated funding for interpretive signage.



Exploration of the timber resources of southern Cooloola started in the early 1860s. William Pettigrew visited the area in 1863 and observed quantities of hardwood, cedar, bunya and kauri pine in various locations. Cedar-getters appear to have been working in the Noosa River area by the mid-1860s. Gold mining at Gympie brought people and wealth into the area and helped develop local industries, including the timber industry in southern Cooloola area. Four men involved in mining ventures in Gympie formed a partnership and established 'Luya and Co.'. The company built the Cootharaba sawmill in a swampy area at Elanda Point, on the western edge of Lake Cootharaba. The swamp was progressively filled in with sawdust to create, and extend, the timber yard. By the early 1870s loads of timber were being sent from the Cootharaba sawmills along Cootharaba Road to Gympie. Several problems associated with transporting timber had to be overcome. Bullocks frequently became bogged in the saturated sandy soil of the area, and Cootharaba Road included swampy sections, steep pinches and an "interminable seven miles of scrub" along Kin Kin and Tinana Creeks.


Remains of the timber posts for loading logs onto droghers are still visible in the shallow waters edge at Mill Point.


The difficulties of road transport were resolved when the company established an outlet by sea via a depot at Tewantin. Flat-bottomed paddle-wheel boats known as 'droghers' towed punts of sawn timber through Lakes Cootharaba and Cooroibah to Tewantin, where the timber was loaded onto the firm's steamer, the Culgoa, and taken to Brisbane. The Culgoa carried passengers, general cargo and 35,000 super feet of sawn timber on each trip between Tewantin and Brisbane until completion of the Brisbane-Gympie? rail link in 1891.




A cemetery was established at the Mill Point settlement, and 43 burials were recorded between 1873 and 1891. The first burials appear to have been four of the five men who died as a result of a boiler explosion at the sawmill on 29 July 1873. Thirty of the burials were those of children who died of causes such as "lung problems, wasting, thrush, convulsions or drowning." In 1993 the National Trust of Queensland erected a stone bearing the inscription "in memory of the European settlers buried at Mill Point Cemetery," and engraved with the names of persons buried at the cemetery.




For the period of its operation, the sawmill and associated settlement at Mill Point were a company enterprise, the only external employee being the schoolteacher. The company owned and rented cottages to married employees and humpies to single men. In 1871 the population of the settlement was recorded as 22, and by the 1880s it was estimated that there were between 100 and 150 employees at the sawmill.

Community life included picnics, excursions and sports days. New Year's Day in 1877 was celebrated with a cricket match between the timber-getters and bullock-drivers combined, against the sawmill hands. A journalist's account of a visit in May 1873 notes: "Leaving the works and passing to the rear we found a regular little township of workmen's houses and others directly connected with the establishment, a good store, well-equipped, conducted by the owners, a butcher's shop, and there seemed nothing wanting to complete the comfort of all connected with the establishment". The school was established around 1874, and was the first opened in the district. The school building, which included a library and reading room, and grounds were provided by the sawmill proprietors, and also served as a community hall. A hotel appears to have operated from 1876 until 1878 when the building burnt down.




From the mid-1880s, a series of events occurred that would influence the eventual decline and closure of the sawmill complex in the early 1890s. On the 29th July 1873, a Mill boiler exploded, killing 5 men, four of whom are buried at the Mill Point Cemetery. The Queensland Government introduced royalties in an effort to control wasteful cutting and competition from imported timbers, but it reduced the output of local sawmills and kept the price of timber down. By the early 1890s softwood resources near the sawmill were nearing "economic exhaustion", having been exploited for nearly 20 years. Completion of the Brisbane-Gympie? rail link in July 1891 ended the need for a ship and coach service between Brisbane and Gympie via Tewantin. Cooroy Railway station opened soon after the new line between Brisbane and Gympie was constructed in 1891.

There were approximately sixty families living at Mill Point until its closure in 1892.
When the mill closed down the Provisional School which was owned by the milling company also closed. The teacher was Mrs Winnet, who was the wife of the engineer. All the school belongings were given to the Tewantin State School. After the 1893 flood, Cootharaba began to backwards and things at the lake became very quiet.

Dairy farmers moved into the area in the early twentieth century, but dairy farming was never particularly successful in the Cootharaba area. The property changed ownership a number of times until it was transferred to the Queensland Government in 1983 and is now part of Cooloola National Park. Essay Service

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