Location: Barcaldine, Queensland
Description: Roof of the West End Hotel has collapsed in the fire. The photograph was taken from the verandah of the Shakespeare Hotel.
Barcaldine is a town in the central west of Queensland 108kms east of Longreach. It is situated on Lagoon Creek and is the centre of a pastoral area devoted to the production of sheep and some beef cattle. There is good supply of artesian water and the town's wide streets are lined with flowering shade trees. Barcaldine is known as the Garden City of the West. The town takes its name from Barcaldine Downs Station, which was named by Donald Charles Cameron, a pioneer pastoralist who had stayed with family in Barcaldine, Ayrshire before migrating to Australia.
Barcaldine figured prominently in the 1891 shearers' strike, when 400 shearers camped on the fringes of the town for several months protesting the use of non-union labour. The strike gave birth to the political Labor movement. In the following year Thomas Ryan, a member of the state committee, became the first endorsed Labor candidate in the Australian parliament. The Australian Worker's Heritage Centre celebrates the contribution made by workers in pioneering and building Australia.(Information taken from 'The Australian Encyclopedia' v.1,1965)
View this image at the State Library of Queensland: http://hdl.handle.net/10462/deriv/142560