Cloncurry Post Office

Cloncurry Post Office is a heritage-listed post office at 47 Scarr Street, Cloncurry, Shire of Cloncurry, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Queensland Works Department and built in 1906. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 27 May 2005.HistoryThe Cloncurry Post Office is a single storey timber building, which was built in 1906 and superseded an 1883 post office on site.Land in the Cloncurry district was taken up by pastoralists from the mid-1860s. Access to artesian water from the 1890s enabled the grazing of sheep and cattle to flourish in what is essentially a semi-arid environment and pastoralism has been the major industry in this area.Mining also proved a significant activity in the district, although a less stable one than pastoralism. Gold was first discovered in the area in 1867, and from the late 1860s through the last three decades of the 19th century, gold was found and mined throughout the district, although as a series of short lived fields. In 1867 Ernest Henry, often referred to as "the father of Cloncurry", discovered copper in the area, not far from the present town of Cloncurry, although the boom era for copper mining was not reached until the early twentieth century. The township of Cloncurry was established in the early 1870s to serve a remote and isolated area in the far north west of Queensland. It was officially designated a Country Post Office in 1871 and in June that year the first postmaster was appointed, operating from temporary accommodation. In 1872 a general store and a hotel were opened, forming the nucleus for a service township. Early transportation was by horse, bullock and camel teams. Mail contractors using pack horses operated mail runs along routes radiating from Cloncurry as the demand for postal services increased in subsequent years. Cloncurry prospered in the 1880s, when prices for pastoral produce remained buoyant and mining activity increased. The first Cobb & Co coach arrived in Cloncurry in 1884, and for almost a quarter of a century provided the district with both a passenger and a mail service in the absence of a railway. The Great Northern railway reached Cloncurry in 1908.