G'day all, I'm listening to the ABC broadcast of the Fourth Test ,Australia v England, and it's pretty depressing, Australia all out for 98, the Poms rampant.
So time to lift the mood a bit with some pictures taken around Rockhampton, Queensland back in late '64. The weather was hot and very humid, it always is late in the year in coastal Queensland. As can be seen from the photos the cloud cover was mostly heavy, in fact sometimes it felt like we were walking around in cloud.
...............Now it's Monday arvo, family Christmas duties intervened before I had time to complete this on Boxing Day.
The cricket news is no better so back to hot and humid Rocky 1964 and a visit to the Loco Depot.
At this time Rockhampton was home to all 30 Beyer Garratts but as can be seen some were already out of use. Of those that were still operational six are present in the photo of the running shed and Pb15 737, a product of Walker's Engineering 1926, is shunting the coal stage. You would be hard put to find a scene like this anywhere in the world today, perhaps on an industrial railway in China, but this is what a working loco depot looked like in steam days, it was busy, dirty, grimey, noisy and above all interesting. It was a monochrome scene on this day with an overcast sky, the Garratts provided the colour, they were Midland Red lined out in Yellow.
I've also included a couple of pictures of the old Rockhampton station, C16 421 has just emerged from the train shed and is in Denison Street passing McConnell's Hotel and it's Ultra-Modern Bottle Store. We didn't sample it's wares but we did try Mac's Rockhampton Beer in the station Refreshment Room, it was truly vile. I think the brand died a deserved death just a few years later.
I've got plenty more Rockhampton photos so there will probably be at least another couple of weeks postings at least.
The next posting will be in 2011.
So all the best to all for the New Year,
Peter Bruce.
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