To the Setting Sun – A History of Railway Construction Rockhampton to Longreach 1865-1892

A rare book by Isabel Hoch published by Robert Brown and Associates in 1992
60 Pages with Black & White Images
ISBN: 1 86273 065 2

Construction of a railway from Rockhampton to Longreach, between 1865 and 1892, was a prodigious undertaking of the last
century. As the rails reached out year after year through heat and bitter cold, through dust and flood, built with sweat and strain and hand tools, the towns along its length were created and the surrounding districts opened up.
The railway was not planned to link Rockhampton and Longreach. Longreach did not even exist as a town in 1865. The line was simply aimed westward with demand growing as it went. It was the real pioneering of Central Queensland, employing hundreds of men, most of whom remained on in the west as the project neared completion. They created a huge pool of unemployment. The shearers’ strike of 1891 was a culmination of the unrest that followed……