The Ross River Meatworks Chimney is a heritage-listed abattoir at Stuart Drive, Idalia, City of Townsville, Queensland, Australia. It is the 11th tallest structure in Townsville. It was built as part of the Ross River Meatworks in 1891 William McCallum Park and is now a major landmark as part of Fairfield Waters and part of Lancinis Springbank urban village. It was listed on the Queensland Heritage Register on 14 August 2009.
History
The Ross River Meatworks was established by the Queensland Meat Export and Agency Company during 1891-1892 as the first purpose-built meat freezing works in Queensland. Located on the banks of Ross River in suburban Townsville, the high brick chimney remains the principal surviving evidence of an important meatworks in Queensland during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. The only Queensland meatworks from this era still in operation is at Lakes Creek, near Rockhampton, established in 1871 for the production of canned beef before shifting to frozen beef for export in the 1880s. Its early brick chimney has not survived.
Although the wool industry was the impetus for early pastoral activity in Queensland, cattle soon proved better suited to the wetter conditions in northern areas. However, early development of a Queensland cattle industry was hindered by the lack of a sufficiently large market for fresh beef. In the 1860s excess stock were disposed of by selling to other graziers or to boiling down works.
Ports to service the new pastoral runs being taken up in northern and far north-western Queensland in the early 1860s were established at Port Denison (Bowen) in 1861 and Cleveland Bay (Townsville) in 1864, with Cleveland Bay declared a Port of Entry in 1865. Entrepreneur and businessman Robert Towns (after whom Townsville is named) and his business partner John Melton Black founded the settlement at Cleveland Bay to supply their pastoral leases in the hinterland.
By the mid-1860s, drought and recession had led to a collapse in the pastoral industry in north Queensland. In order to salvage some profit, squatters turned to the boiling down of sheep and cattle for tallow (for candles and soap). Hoofs and horns were utilised for oil, and hides for leather. In 1864 a number of small-scale boiling down works were established on pastoral properties in the Kennedy and gulf districts, but the boiling down industry became more professional in 1866, when Towns & Co. opened a boiling down plant at Cleveland Bay, and Morehead & Young, partners in the Scottish Australian Pastoral Company, opened a similar operation on the Albert River where the settlement of Burketown had been established in 1865. Neither of these establishments survived for any length of time. At Cleveland Bay, the Queensland Meat Export Company established a meatworks south of Townsville on Alligator Creek in 1879, using some of the equipment from Towns' factory.
Following the discovery of gold at Charters Towers in 1871, a railway from Townsville to the goldfield was constructed between 1879 and 1882. The first trains carried both gold and wool from local graziers back to the port of Townsville. Demand led to the approval of a western extension to Hughenden to service the cattle grazing industry. The Northern Railway opened in 1887 and soon became the most profitable in Queensland as graziers took up land along its route. During the 1870s the increase in population at newly opened Queensland gold fields, particularly on the Palmer River, provided a ready market for beef. By the end of the decade there was an oversupply. Following the drought of 1884-1886 cattle were driven overland to southern markets, but droving costs led to a huge reduction in profitability. There was a need to establish a processing industry in north Queensland to supply meat for an export market. Frozen meat proved to be the solution.
Australian experimentation with meat-freezing works and the fitting out of refrigerated ships to carry frozen meat to Britain was initiated in Sydney and Melbourne, with mixed results. Refinements in processing and shipping led to a successful shipment in 1880. The Central Queensland Meat Export Company's works at Lakes Creek installed freezing equipment in 1883, but was burnt down shortly after. A meat freezing works was established at Poole Island off Bowen in 1884, but its first shipment was lost in a tornado. In 1889 the North Queensland Meat Export Company restarted the Alligator Creek works, initially for boiling down and preserving, and later utilising the freezing equipment from Poole Island.