The occupation of the rural tribal lands of Australia’s indigenous peoples began with the arrival of squatters, Europeans who commenced pastoral activities on what were considered to be the unoccupied lands beyond the official coastal Colonial settlements.
To bring order to the European settlement and development of land within their territories, Colonial Governments introduced a system called selection. The term describes the free selection before survey of crown land under land legislation introduced in the 1860s. These acts were intended to encourage closer settlement, based on intensive agriculture, such as wheat-growing, rather than extensive agriculture, such as wool production. Selectors often came into conflict with squatters, who already occupied the land and often managed to circumvent the law.
The first eastbound train on then newly-opened Trans-Australian Rail Line, 1917. Photo: Rail Heritage WA/State Library of Western Australia)
Government surveyors were employed to lay out towns to support the selectors, not only with supplies and services, but to provide focal points where produce could be gathered and dispatched in bulk to the bigger towns and cities. The invention of railways as a means of carrying people and goods safely and cost effectively from one location to another was just what the colonies needed, and the various Colonial Governments were quick to build networks of railway lines and branches which radiated out from each colony’s capital city.
Many towns had already been established before the arrival of the railway; at these places the stations and sidings were built on the edge of town, where they remain today (though often towns later grew beyond them). In many instances, however, railways were built to service isolated groups of selectors who were not serviced by a town. Where this occurred, towns quickly sprung up around the sidings and stations even before the railway lines were completed, to support these communities. This explains why some regional towns have their railway station at their heart, whilst others have their railway infrastructure away from the town centre.
Serviceton station, near the South Australia/Victoria border
A typical station included a platform with a waiting room/booking office, and often accommodation for the stationmaster and his family. Opposite the station platform there was usually a siding comprised of a number of lines and a storage shed from which goods were loaded and unloaded onto goods wagons parked alongside the goods platform. Sidings with more than one line generally had a signal box to control the movement of trains through the station, via a bank of levers to open and close the points to allow access to the siding from the through line, and to change their associated signals. The two have to be interlocked so that it isn't possible for a signal to indicate that a train is permitted to go in a certain direction while the points are set for another.
The turntable and roundhouse at Junee, NSW
Where the station was either a terminus or entry point for a branch line, engine sheds to store and service locomotives were built, often with a manually operated turntable to change the direction of travel of a locomotive, as well as give locomotives and rolling stock access to storage and repair facilities. Where the railway yard functioned as a depot, engines were often stored or worked on in a roundhouse.
Up until Federation in 1901, there were no Australian states or territories, only colonies run by colonial governors appointed by the British crown. Each governor was responsible for the building, development and maintenance of infrastructure within their colonies, and that included railways. The result was a lack of cohesion between the colonies, which, in terms of their railways, extended right down to what gauge they built their railway lines, and not just what rolling stock they chose to use. This resulted in major headaches once the railway lines they built reached their borders and they tried to link their own rail infrastructure with that of neighbouring colonies.
Not only did they have to build railway stations with different gauges on either sides of their platforms at each border crossing, but also border towns to house the railway staff needed to man these railway stations, the government officials who documented the passage of people and groods across these borders, and the customs officers who collected import duties on goods as they passed from one jurisdiction to another.
Albury, NSW
Towns where two different gauges met literally became railway junctions where travellers had to change trains. This necessitated a town on each side of the border - Wallangarra in Qld and Jennings in NSW, for example - requiring two schools, two police stations, two pubs, two railway ticket offices, two customs offices to collect the import duty on goods passing through the town in both directions, and a population of a few hundred between them. To change trains, passengers had to alight from one train, cross to the other side of the platform and board a different train. In the case of Wallangarra and Jennings, even though most of the station was in Queensland, one side of the railway station platform was for Queensland trains, the other side (which had to be rented from Qld Railways by NSW Railways) was for New South Wales trains - even the style of architecture of the awnings on each side of the platform was different to let passengers know which state's train they were about to board!
Wallangarra railway station, Queensland
The ridiculous ritual of buying separate tickets and crossing of platforms took place from the completion of the railway in 1887 until common sense prevailed in 1930 when a common gauge was adopted. Other border towns had to wait until the 1970s where the Standard Gauge was adopted for all interstate rail services.
Just as passengers had to change trains at the break of gauge, so too did goods. In its heyday the double-sided goods platform would have been a hive of frenzied activity as goods were transferred from one train to the other. A further complication was that, before Federation, each state charged import duties on goods that passed from one colony to another, all of which had to be calculated and paid to the customs officer at the border of whichever state the goods were entering. Goods carried from Sydney to Perth made three border crossings where subject to three lots of import duty.
Due to their remoteness, a few border crossings did not warrant the building of border towns, and regional centres away from their borders continue to fulfil the role of the border towns today. Such is the case with the NSW/SA outback border crossing. Broken Hill in New South Wales is 30 km from the border; Peterborough, the closest South Australian town of any substance to the border, is 253 km from where the Barrier Highway and Trans Australian railway line cross it.
Gladstone, South Australia, was colloquially known as "Spaghetti Junction" with any and all trackwork combinations of the three gauges and associated pointwork in the station vicinity and a second triple gauge turntable. It was a platelayer's (track maintainer's) worst nightmare.
Because they are all "end of the line" towns where a state's railway lines stop upon reaching the border, these towns often have additional infrastructure not found at most stations along the line, which can include storage facilities, workshops and maintenance sheds, along with extensive marshalling yards and a turntable so that the direction of travel for locomotives can be reversed. In most instances, these border railway towns are also "break of gauge" towns where multiple gauge tracks may still be seen side by side, even though the introduction of a standard gauge across Australia for interstate trains in the 1970s has removed the need for changing trains at state and territory borders.
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