Missed opportunity

WITH the sale of Westbrook Homestead and auction of all the antique furniture, I believe the people of this area have let slip a ready-made educational/tourist facility.

It must have been hard for the owners to see the twenty years of collecting the right period items, over 1500, be dispersed to other district collections.

Westbrook Homestead had a big part in the history of this district and agriculture on the Darling Downs.

As well as wool, it also had a meat exporting facility at Oakey Creek Siding and over time was a dairy stud, a Clydesdale stud, an agricultural school and a shorthorn stud.

Westbrook also was where a forerunner to the DPI operated and fallow deer were introduced. There was also a fair amount of scandal, treachery, misery and court cases.

Unlike a lot of other Squatter Stations, most of the Westbrook money stayed in Australia.

The Glengallan Homestead near Warwick was given to a Public Trust after it fell into disrepair.

After much lobbying, they received two million dollars from the Centenary of Federation Fund and it is now a Heritage Centre and coffee shop open five days a week.

The main reason Glengallan received this funding was because it was one of only three remaining stone pastoral homesteads in Queensland.

Westbrook, which was built in 1864-67 of bluestone with a slate roof, would probably cost too much to maintain to ever make a profit, being open to the public so it could be locked way without some kind of Government assistance.

On a similar subject, I was recently talking to a friend from the Sunshine Coast Council and he could not understand how the palace (old Courthouse) in the middle of town was a private residence. He thought the people of the Sunshine Coast would love to have it. — J. DAVIDSON, Glenvale