Wairuna Homestead is a heritage-listed homestead at Wairuna Road, Wairuna, Tablelands Region, Queensland, Australia. It was built in 1940s by Harold and Norman Johnston. It is also known as Wairuna Station Homestead and Cemetery. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 9 August 2013.
History Wairuna Homestead, located approximately south of Mount Garnet in the watershed of the Burdekin River, comprises a 1940s timber residence, early cottage, head stockman's house, barracks, sheds, butchering hut and a small cemetery established in 1899. From 1881 until 1976 Wairuna station was operated by the Atkinson family, an important north Queensland pastoral family. From the 1930s Wairuna station was a centre for the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) partnered research into the suitability of Brahman-cross cattle in northern Australia and later for the establishment of the Australian Brahman breed. For more than two decades it was the home of Kenneth Edward James Atkinson, a significant initiator of the Australian Brahman breed, who co-established the Australian Brahman Breeders' Association in 1946 and played an important role in the development of Brahman and Brahman-cross cattle in Australia.
The northern part of the Kennedy district in north Queensland, where Wairuna is located, was settled quickly by pastoralists in the early 1860s. By the end of 1861 the best of the country had been selected, including the entire Burdekin River frontage. During this initial rush James Atkinson (1824–1899), in partnership with Ezra Firth, attempted to establish a run on land later claimed to be part of the early station The Valley of Lagoons. Subsequently, c.1863 Atkinson and Firth formed Mt Surprise station to the north. Their partnership lasted for about seven years before Atkinson took up land in the lower Herbert district, where he established the cattle run and cane farm Farnham near the site of Ingham. Atkinson, the son of a linen manufacturer of Scottish descent, was born in County Armagh, Ireland in 1824. After service in the British army he migrated to Victoria in , spent time on the Ballarat goldfield and farmed in the Port Fairy district. He married Kate Good in 1859. He, his wife and daughter travelled to north Queensland in the early 1860s to take up pastoral land.
During the 1860s north Queensland's early pastoralists struggled to survive for a number of reasons. Within a decade they found that footrot, fluke, lung worm and spear grass made most of the area unsuitable for sheep. There was no ready market for cattle because population centres were too far away. Until boiling down works opened in Townsville and Burketown in 1866 almost the only means of disposing of surplus cattle locally was to sell them to other squatters stocking new runs. Ports were distant and getting to them difficult, the Aboriginal people were hostile, the climate was challenging and from 1866 Queensland was in financial crisis.
Queensland's monetary situation badly affected squatters in the Burke, Cook and Kennedy districts. They appealed to the government for more secure and extended tenure and for rental relief. Despite new land legislation enacted in 1868 extending leases, reducing rental and giving pastoralists the option of buying one block of 2560 acres per run, four times as many runs were abandoned in 1869 as in the previous year. In the six years from 1866 no new pastoral leases were taken up in the Kennedy district and most passed out of the hands of the original owners. Few of the remainder had prospered, and the failure of sheep and unsatisfactory markets for cattle gave no promise of an early improvement.
However, the 1870s brought some relief to pastoralists as the establishment of northern goldfields created a local market for fresh meat. From 1872 buyers from Ravenswood and Charters Towers goldfields provided strong demand on stations in the vicinity. The Palmer River rush in 1873 sent cattle prices up to an average of £10 a head.
The new demand for beef as a result of the establishment of goldfields, the growth of the sugar industry, the establishment of ports and a run of fair seasons restarted squatting in north Queensland. This second wave of expansion, from 1874, created a demand for stores and breeders not only in north Queensland but in Western Australia and the Northern Territory. While this eased the pastoralists' financial situation in the short run, it exacerbated the problem in the long term as the grossly oversupplied market caused extremely low cattle prices at the end of the 1870s. By 1880 north Queensland cattle numbers were estimated at 450,000 - almost three times the 1874 figure. The Townsville boiling down works re-opened in 1880 to deal with the excess.
Nevertheless, in 1881 James Atkinson sold some of his land in the lower Herbert to the Colonial Sugar Refining Co (CSR), purchased Wairuna station in the upper Burdekin and moved there with his wife, daughter, three sons and cattle herd. The Wairuna lease had been established in 1879 by Henry Stone and Duncan McAuslan while Henry Stone applied for Wairuna No 2 lease a year later.
The siting of the homestead on its flood-free position enabled management of the land from then onwards. Early writers commented on the homestead's siting and the beauty of its setting. It was "very prettily situated on a hill overlooking a grassy margined lake of considerable size, surrounded by high hills, and when you first catch sight of it, you naturally say, 'well, this takes a lot of beating'. And so it does, for beauty of landscape". A second wrote, "This well-known station home...is beautifully situated on a rise overlooking the Herbert, just before that river takes its plunge down the scrub-clad gullies to the level of the coast".
From the 1880s north Queensland cattlemen began to participate in southern markets, especially Melbourne and Adelaide. Although growth slowed during the dry years of 1884–1885 and 1888–1889, in the 5 years from 1889 cattle numbers increased quickly, to reach a peak of 1,390,899 head or 19.8 per cent of all Queensland cattle in 1894.
Up to 1890 the cattle industry in north Queensland struggled for profitability because the supply of cattle greatly exceeded demand, and cattle prices were depressed. This appears to be borne out by the Wairuna lease being held by the Bank of New South Wales as mortgagor for James Atkinson from 26 September 1887, which was still the case in 1900. However, Geoffrey Bolton states that "[g]radually between 1870 and 1890 most of the northern graziers achieved, if not prosperity, a modest standard of comfort". The usual type of homestead residence was represented by Gunnawarra, "a comfortable house with slab walls and floors and a very large stone and antbed fireplace". Similarly, the Wairuna residence in 1900 was a modest slab house with a corrugated iron roof on the site of the current residence.
Three major structural changes in the beef cattle industry took place in the 1890s. The Australian banking crisis of 1893, combined with low cattle prices and restricted markets, caused a change in the pattern of ownership, with many large stations passing to banks and pastoral finance companies. Secondly, a new type of owner was created: grazing selectors, initially given 30 year leases on areas not larger than 20,000 acres (subsequently increased to 60,000 acres). The third major change was the successful establishment of freezing plants in north Queensland, enabling cattle producers to enter the world market. Coinciding with these changes was the severe reduction in stock numbers from due to cattle tick, which killed a third or more of the cattle herd, and from the drought of 1898–1902. Wairuna experienced a 50 per cent loss of stock from the disease in 1896 when it first broke out on the property.
By the time of Aktinson's death and burial in Wairuna Cemetery in 1899 he was semi-retired and in equal shares partnership with his three sons - Henry John, Robert James and Thomas Joseph. His quarter share of the lease passed to his sons. Subsequently, the Atkinson brothers' partnership increased its land and stock.
The partnership continued until 6 May 1914 when the eldest brother, Henry John, withdrew. Wairuna station was initially transferred to him with a number of other properties, but was later sold to his brothers.
From the 1890s until the 1950s, the north Queensland beef cattle industry was hampered by a number of factors. The prevalence of cattle tick meant that dipping was required to control it, although some tick resistance in the cattle did occur. Markets fluctuated: for example, the World War I boom was followed by a collapse of the beef export trade in 1921 resulting in a long and serious depression until 1939. Additionally, during the interwar period, three new diseases in northern stock were recognised - buffalo fly, Pegleg (due to phosphate deficiency) and ephemeral fever. Drought and long dry seasons remained a problem for northern cattlemen. Markets improved again during World War II but it was not until 1953 that the herd numbers surpassed the 1894 level.
In an effort to resolve some of these problems, a few northern beef cattle producers began investigating the suitability of Brahman or Zebu (Bos indicus) cattle and Brahman cross-bred cattle for their tick-resistance and tolerance of hot, dry conditions. As early as 1910 William McDowall of Christmas Creek station purchased two Brahman bulls from Melbourne Zoo. The last of these bulls died in 1921. From their progeny, the best calves were kept for bulls and crosses were bred from them with station cattle. The cross-bred progeny were subsequently sold to various north Queensland stations. Descendants of these early Brahman were used by Henry John Atkinson on his adjacent Greenvale station and by his nephew Ken Atkinson of Wairuna. By 1923 Henry John Atkinson on his Greenvale property was "demonstrating the possibility of improving the existing types of beef cattle in the North by mating Zebu bulls with shorthorn stock, his object being the production of a hardier type, ... practically tick resistant and capable of withstanding the drought conditions to which the popular strains succumb". Ken Atkinson's older brother, Robert La Mont Atkinson (1902–1986), recalled that from 1926 he determined to try and form a new breed with a Brahman base which would be better for north Queensland conditions than the British breeds and more able to cope with ticks and droughts.
Parallel with these initiatives was scientific interest in developing cattle suitable for the tropics. In 1920 veterinarian and former administrator of the Northern Territory, Dr John Anderson Gilruth (1871–1937), toured Texas, USA which strengthened his conviction that "vigorously controlled cattle breeding experiments in north Queensland would be wise". In 1929 a Joint Commission appointed to enquire into the beef cattle industry of northern Australia reported that there should be investigation of "problems of animal genetics with the object of creating a new breed of tropical cattle". Subsequently, when preparing a research program for CSIR in north Queensland, Gilruth (acting chief of the division of animal health within CSIR) included a tropical cattle breeding project which was approved by CSIR council. In 1930 money was made available "for an inquiry into Zebu crossbreeding experiments carried out by the US Bureau of Animal Industry and others in the southern USA".