Qualla: Blackall Woolscour https://qualla.com/blackall-woolscour en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:28 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/r/5/x/m/blackall-woolscour-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Blackall Woolscour https://qualla.com/blackall-woolscour Blackall Woolscour: Introduction https://qualla.com/blackall-woolscour/ Photo credit Heritage branch staff, CC BY 3.0. Strike a match to the firebox, build up the steam, and a piece of 1908 wakes up. The boiler ticks and groans, the great engine turns over, belts begin to slap against pulleys, and the Blackall Woolscour - a rambling huddle of corrugated-iron sheds four kilometres outside town - starts doing the only thing it was ever built to do. It is the last steam-operated wool-washing plant left in Australia, and it is not a museum mock-up. The original engine, more than a century old, still drives the works during the cooler months. To stand inside while it runs is to hear an entire vanished industry breathing again.

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Image: Heritage branch staff | CC BY 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/5/x/m/blackall-woolscour-wp/r5xm-blackall-woolscour-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Blackall Woolscour: Water Was the Whole Point https://qualla.com/blackall-woolscour/ Photo credit Heritage branch staff, CC BY 3.0. Raw wool comes off a sheep's back heavy with grease, dirt, and lanolin, and before it could be sold at its best it had to be scoured - washed clean. That took enormous quantities of soft, warm water, which is exactly what central-west Queensland could not spare from the sky but c...

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Image: Heritage branch staff | CC BY 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/5/x/m/blackall-woolscour-wp/r5xm-blackall-woolscour-water-was-the-whole-point.mp3 0:06 2 full Blackall Woolscour: Built in Four Months https://qualla.com/blackall-woolscour/ Photo credit Heritage branch staff, CC BY 3.0. The Blackall Proprietary Woolscouring Company was the work of five local grazing and business men, with John Henry Hart as chairman. In September 1906 they contracted Rockhampton builders Renshaw and Ricketts to throw up the shearing and scouring sheds in just four months, framin...

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Image: Heritage branch staff | CC BY 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/5/x/m/blackall-woolscour-wp/r5xm-blackall-woolscour-built-in-four-months.mp3 0:06 3 full Blackall Woolscour: The Peak Years https://qualla.com/blackall-woolscour/ Photo credit Heritage branch staff, CC BY 3.0. Under its new owners the scour boomed. The company tinkered and upgraded relentlessly, and by 1918 it had more than doubled its 1913 output to 7,640 bales - the largest in the works' history. The peak years, 1916 to 1920, coincided with wool's importance to a world at war and jus...

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Image: Heritage branch staff | CC BY 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/5/x/m/blackall-woolscour-wp/r5xm-blackall-woolscour-the-peak-years.mp3 0:06 4 full Blackall Woolscour: The Last One Standing https://qualla.com/blackall-woolscour/ Photo credit Heritage branch staff, CC BY 3.0. The Blackall Woolscour finally closed in 1978, the last of its kind in western Queensland to stop work - and, as it turned out, the last steam-driven scour anywhere in the country. What saved it was simple neglect of the right sort: nobody stripped it for parts. The engine, the b...

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Image: Heritage branch staff | CC BY 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/5/x/m/blackall-woolscour-wp/r5xm-blackall-woolscour-the-last-one-standing.mp3 0:06 5 full