Mary & Susan - Sisters Rivers

LINDSAY TITMARSH

WE OCCASIONALLY hear impatient motorists describing the Maryborough-Hervey Bay Road as a ‘goat-track’.

If you have similar thoughts, maybe after reading this story you will discover what a real goattrack was like.

Before a bridge was constructed over the tidal section of Saltwater Creek, any heavy loads hauled between the two settlements by bullock team, had to cross the creek somewhere.

The only place to successfully do that was on a ground level crossing where the creek had turned into a string of freshwater lagoons at Aldershot.

‘Back in the day’, to journey from Maryborough to ‘The Bay’, as everyone called it, this is what was required.

Proceed up Walker Street, Maryborough, until you get to a winding bush track at the end, which, after a few miles, will take you to the creek at Aldershot.

If the weather has been kind, the crossing will not be flooded.

Once across, proceed for many miles along the ‘rough as guts’, sometimes boggy, bush track, which travelled parallel, but some distance away from the creek.

You will eventually emerge at a location between Red Hill, (now Saltwater Creek Hill), and where Churchill Mines Road now intersects the Hervey Bay Road.

Remnants of the bush ‘highway’ can still be seen in a nearby property owned by Alan and Pat Lenthall.

A similar ‘road’ extended all the way to the beachside settlement of Pialba.

A bush shanty near Halfway Hill, catered for those travellers who could not complete the trip in one day.

Bullock teams hauling heavy loads are limited in their travelling distance every day, especially during hot weather.

It was a TWO-DAY trip from Maryborough to Hervey Bay.

Now a truck hauling 40 tonnes, can negotiate the goat track to The Bay in half an hour.

A wooden bridge spanning the large tidal Saltwater Creek, was completed in 1865.

It saw service until it ungraciously collapsed in 1893, after being destroyed by termites and wood-eating teredo worms. A temporary one lane wooden structure did the job for nearly thirty years until a permanent concrete bridge was built.

The ‘permanent’ one has been used as a fishing platform since the fourth bridge was constructed in 1968.

A hotel named ‘The Sawyers Arms’, was erected on the Maryborough side of the bridge in 1866.

It catered for residents living nearby at the large sawmill settlement of Dundathu and also the farming area of Island Plantation.

In 1914, the modernised hotel was renamed the ‘Saltwater Creek Hotel’, and had an upper story added.

The building was dismantled in 1939.

A small shed still standing behind the creek-side residence now there, once belonged to the hotel.

During the heyday of the pub, a horse racing track operated on the flat on the Maryborough side of the hotel. Before the railway between Maryborough and Gympie was completed in 1880, a rough track connected the two settlements.

To transport heavy equipment by bullock team from Maryborough port to Gympie goldfield, involved almost a weeklong trip, one way. Now one hour. Toughen up Aussies.

Never in the history of mankind, have we had it so easy when travelling.