Travel Australia

Classic Railway Stations: Marree, South Australia

Marree, South Australia (formerly Hergott Springs), is located in a remote area, 589 kilometres (366 mi) north of Adelaide. A small community at the junction of the infamous Oodnadatta Track and the Birdsville Track, it is the centre for an area which, though arid saltbush country, has produced good wool. Marree mainly serves tourists and station owners. At the heart of the town is a defunct railway station with two derelict narrow gauge Ghan locomotives waiting patiently.

The locomotives were used by Goss Brothers for removal of Central Australia Railway narrow gauge infrastructure, 1982–1983. On completion of their task, the contractors left the locomotives behind because it wasn't cost effective to truck them out and sell them for scrap. The two Commonwealth Railways NSU class locomotives at the station - NSU57 and NSU60 - along with two wagons are now owned by the Marree Progress Association. NSU60 had hauled the last Commonwealth Railways diesel-hauled freight to Hawker on 6 January 1961. NSU56, another NSU within the township, though in derelict condition, was also used by Goss Brothers for removal of Central Australia Railway narrow gauge infrastructure.


NSU52, now owed by the Pichi Richi Railway

The narrow gauge (3 ft 6 in) NSU class diesel-electric locomotives were built in 1954 and 1955 by the Birmingham Railway Carriage and Wagon Company, England, for the Commonwealth Railways for use on the narrow-gauge Central Australia Railway and North Australia Railway. Fourteen examples were built, entering service on 12 June 1954. The class spent their entire service with their bodies painted in Commonwealth Railways maroon and silver, and bogies (except for a pair of silver-painted standard-gauge bogies) in black. The NSU fleet remained intact until the Central Australia Railway was superseded by the opening of a new standard-gauge line to Alice Springs in 1980. Two were then transferred to Gladstone for use on the Wilmington line and one to Peterborough for use on the Quorn line. They had all been withdrawn by August 1987.

Marree: A Change of Gauge Station

Wool and livestock were also produced in the region, and Marree became an important service centre for these industries. Most produce came to town on the narrow gauge Great Northern line. However, another rail line was built with a more direct route to Port Augusta, but on a different gauge, the two different gauges meeting at Marree railway station. A sizeable workforce and rail depot were required to handle goods shifted from one gauge to the other.

A notorious hindrance to the economic development of Australia was each State operating its railways to different gauges – a problem no better illustrated than in SA, which by 1917, had lines built in three different gauges. The problem was greatly reduced in 1995 with the "One Nation" project ensuring each Australian mainland capital city was connected with uninterrupted standard gauge lines.



Railways built primarily for the transport of grain to the nearest port did not require the speed or comfort provided by broader gauges. Narrow gauge was chosen for faster, less expensive construction throughout the mid-north, south-east and Eyre Peninsula. Longer lines to Cockburn (on the SA/NSW border) and Alice Springs were also built to this gauge. Today only the isolated grain lines of Eyre Peninsula remind us of the importance of 1067mm gauge to the economic development of SA. Few realised that these lightly laid lines could not support the tonnages required to turn a profit in the future.

The first standard gauge line in SA was the Trans-Australian Railway running between Port Augusta and Kalgoorlie in WA, built by the Commonwealth Railways, and opened in 1917. In 1937, standard gauge stretched to Port Pirie from Port Augusta, and to Marree in 1955. In 1970, the narrow gauge Port Pirie to Cockburn line, and the 56km privately run link through to Broken Hill was replaced by a standard gauge line, for the first time linking the East and West coasts of Australia - Sydney and Perth – with a single uninterrupted standard gauge line.

Terowie, in the state's mid-north, was the first site selected to become a 'break of gauge' station on the basis that wool from the north and east could be carried via broad gauge to the processing and marketing facilities at Port Adelaide, whilst grain could be carted on the narrow gauge to Port Pirie, the nearest coastal port.


A long abandoned boiler of a steam engine

As the rail network was consolidated breaks of gauge also occurred at Hamley Bridge, Wolseley, Gladstone, Port Pirie, Port Augusta and Marree. When standard gauge connected Port Pirie with Broken Hill in 1970, triple gauge stations were created at Peterborough and Gladstone. In 1980 the narrow gauge line from Marree to Alice Springs closed when a new standard gauge line opened from Tarcoola to Alice Springs along a less flood-prone route. In 1986 the standard gauge line from Leigh Creek coalfields to Marree was closed and the town lost its railway connection completely.

About Marree

The explorer, Edward John Eyre, passed through the Marree area in 1840 and John McDouall Stuart visited in 1859. Marree, which was originally known as Hergott Springs, when the town was surveyed in 1883, was named after the German botanist who accompanied John McDouall Stuart, as he found a series of waterholes in the area. Later the name was changed by an Act of Parliament, during World War I, as it was too German-sounding. Interestingly, Norman B. Tindale, who was the anthropologist at the South Australian Museum, wrote in 1955, that the Dieri people called the area, Marina or Mari, meaning 'place of opossums', according to the Lutheran The Rev Reuther.



Long before steam trains arrived, Hergott Springs was established as a staging post for camel trains, which were once used to transport freight into the outback. The so-called "Afghan" cameleers or "Ghans" (actually Afghani, Pakistani and Turkish), were the camel handlers who transported food and other goods and equipment, to and from isolated stations, mines and government camps. These were the first Muslims to settle permanently in Australia. Australia's first mosque completed about 1882, was built at Marree by camel breeder Abdul Kadir, owner of Wangamanna Station and cameleer, Mullah Assim Khan, who became the imam.


Marree's Mosque

Marree was on the cattle route from Queensland and thousands of cattle would come through here. In Marree's heyday, from 1900 to 1910, when a mining boom occurred in the region, there were three stores, a butcher, baker and a blacksmith. The Great Norther Railway reached Marree in 1884, what became known as the Afghan Express ran between Port Augusta and Alice Springs. From then onwards the town had two distinct sides. On the western side of the town you would find the camels and the cameleers and in the opposite direction, a small railway town with its two-storey hotel with forty rooms, a post office, a school and various houses.


Marree Hotel

The Marree Hotel, once known as The Great Northern Hotel, built by Charlie Chapple, was the place where stockmen and drovers could have a drink and rest after a long journey, or as a break from the never-ending work and heat. The story goes, that when the hotel first opened, a whole trainload of beer was sent there but it only lasted one week. Business dropped off for the hotel when the Cordillo Downs Station, which once had 85,000 sheep, closed down.

The cameleers, with their camels, had carted stores to the outback pastoral and mining settlements and retuned carrying wool or ores, from the 1860s to the 1930s. They had also been used by police in South Australia from 1881, until the 1950s and in the construction of the Overland Telegraph line. The coming of the railway, however, replaced the need for the cameleers and many of the camels were set free and turned feral. In the 1930s more than 150 camels were shot on one day, in an attempt to control the problem. tonnages required to turn a profit in the future.



Marree was also the home of Tom Kruse (above), one of the men who drove the mail trucks from Marree to Birdsville in Queensland, a distance of some 700 kilometres. This route crosses some of the most challenging sandy and stony desert country in Australia, and it was a remarkable feat for fully loaded trucks to make the run at all. A collection of hundreds of photographs, documents and memorabilia from Kruse's Birdsville mail run are on display at the Marree Hotel.

The track layout at Marree featured a huge balloon loop known as the 'teardrop' rising from the unusual shape. It aslo featured a unique section of track work where the loop demanded that the third rail change sides of the track. Marree's status as a dual gauge station came to an abrupt end with the commissioning of the all weather Tarcoola - Alice Springs line in 1980, and the consequent abandoning of the narrow gauge north of Marree.