Wandoan, Queensland

Wandoan is a town and locality in the Western Downs Region, Queensland, Australia. It was formerly known as Juandah. It is on the Leichhardt Highway about halfway between Taroom and Miles and is the centre for the local cattle industry. At the, Wandoan had a population of 665.HistoryThe beginnings of the Wandoan township can be traced back to 1853 when 'Juandah' Station was established at this location in 1849. When Herbert Salway and Percival Sydney Francis Stephen first tendered for a huge area of land: Juandah of 23000acre and two other runs Coringa of 21000acre and Cherwondah of 19200acre. This area, defined in accordance with the 1847 Orders-in-Council, falls far short of the actual size of the holding, which has been estimated at 449sqmi—five and a half times as much. The aggregation of these three runs became known as Juandah and records show Percival Stephen was living on Juandah before August 1849.After the Hornet Bank massacre in October of 1857, one of the many reprisals against Aboriginal people in the area included the Juandah massacre. Frederick Walker wrote to the Colonial Secretary of Queensland describing how after a number of aboriginals were declared innocent of involvement at Hornet Bank by a bench of magistrates at Juandah, local whites proceeded to murder them. Some were shot on the verandah of the magistrate's residence and others in the kitchen. Two aboriginals were kept alive in order to bury the corpses and once this was done, one of them was shot and the other was spared as "possibly the supply of cartridges was running short".