Majestic Theatre, Pomona

Majestic Theatre is a heritage-listed theatre at 3 Factory Street, Pomona, Shire of Noosa, Queensland, Australia. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 5 February 2009.HistoryThe Majestic Theatre at 3 Factory Street Pomona, which was originally built as a social hall with attached shops in 1921, has been promoted as the oldest authentic silent movie theatre in the world, and the longest continuously operating movie theatre in Australia. Although the building's fabric was extensively refurbished recently, the timber and fibrous cement sheeted building is still a rare, and functional, example of a pre-World War II country hall that was converted into a picture theatre.By the 1860s timber getting was the main local industry in the Pomona area. The Co-Operative Communities Land Settlement Act 1893 led to two experimental farming communes being established in the Noosa Shire, and although the Protestant Unity Group near Pomona only lasted from 1894 to 1896, some of the group's settlers stayed on the land as individual selectors. The North Coast railway line from Brisbane to Gympie was completed in 1891, and the bend where local settlers hailed the train to send their goods to market was called the Cooroora railway siding, after the nearby mountain. The name was later changed to the Pinbarren siding, but when a town was surveyed in 1900, the name of Pomona, the Roman Goddess of fruit, was chosen. The Pomona Hotel was licensed in 1906, west of the railway line, and this was followed by the Railway Hotel in 1911, east of the railway line on today's Factory Street. Noosa Shire was created in 1910, and the Shire Council office was based in Pomona until 1980.