In the 1990s, when the then Member for Rockhampton, Robert Schwarten, visited the historic Archer Park Railway Station on Denison St he found a torrid site.
Dirt was piled up near the famous archway entrance.
For decades the site had been used as a freight warehouse and the once proud example of Federation architecture was at risk of being lost for good.
To Robert’s great credit, he fought for some funding to clean the site up and preserve an important part of Rockhampton’s history.
Today the site looks as good as it probably ever has.
It is now a railway museum, open to the public and offering the world’s only remaining working, French-built Purrey steam tram, available for families to ride every week.
I was fortunate enough to join Robert at the 125th birthday celebrations of the Archer Park Rail Museum last weekend.
The Museum is now run by the Rockhampton council, which is apt because it was the Council who originally donated the land to build the railway station on.
Back in the 19th century, the Queensland Government was beginning to build railways to connect the vast Queensland landscape.
When the first major Bill was presented to the Queensland Parliament to fund rail lines, it only envisaged spending money in south-east Queensland.
Not much has changed!
But the locals of Central Queensland did not have a bar of it.
After a public outcry an amended Bill was narrowly passed with funding to connect the river port of Rockhampton with outlying areas.
Denison St became the first place in Queensland outside of the south-east with a dual track. The construction of the Archer Park Railway marked the beginning of Rockhampton’s history as a “rail town”.
Eventually, the rail needs of the region outgrew the small station at Archer Park.
It became the connection for passenger trains to the coast but then even they disappeared with the rise of the car.
But Rockhampton’s connection to rail grew with the rapid expansion of coal mining and the location of a rollingstock workshop in the city.
That workshop has now closed but Aurizon (formerly Queensland Rail) continues to employ a large number of people conducting the complex task of signalling and planning for the vast Central Queensland rail network.
It is hard to meet someone in Rocky who does not have a connection to the railways either through a relative or a friend.
While rail is a big part of our history, it may have a much bigger role in our future than people realise.
Rockhampton is no longer a port city but Gladstone has grown into one of the biggest ports in Australia, and it has one of our best natural harbours, second perhaps only to Sydney.
While Gladstone largely focuses on bulk goods like coal and grain, it has the potential to take a much bigger amount of Australia’s general freight task.
The current Federal Government is finalising a review of whether to extend the inland rail from Toowoomba to Gladstone.
This would make sense because you can send a train to Melbourne in around 24 hours, whereas it takes a couple of days by ship.
Gladstone’s proximity to Asia makes it a common sense location for the extensive trade in consumer items that come to us from our north.
In return agricultural goods (from beef, to cotton and grain) are now increasingly transported in boxes.
It remains perplexing to me that the beef from the beef capital gets sent past Gladstone to Brisbane for export.
Archer Park Railway Museum is a wonderful place to take the family and remember the heritage that made Rockhampton a great place.
But it is also a reminder of the future opportunity our region has if we can crack the capital city focus and remind others how much wealth there is in our regional areas.
