Hotels in Blackall, Queensland

Blackall
Located in Central Qld. In 1892 the legendary Jackie Howe set the record of shearing sheep with blades. 321 in 8 hours at Alice Downs Station. In Shamrock Street you will find a petrified tree stump, millions of years old.

An attractive and interesting Western Queensland town.
It is not widely known now but Blackall's claim to fame was once based on the popular, and for the time, risque limerick:

A popular girl of Blackall / Wore a newspaper dress to a ball / Her rig-out caught fire / And burned her entire, / Front page, sporting section and all.

Equally 'Banjo' Paterson made much of the town's river, the famous Barcoo, including the memorable lines: 'On the outer Barcoo, where churches are few / and men of religion are scanty, / On a road seldom crossed save by folk who are lost / One Michael Magee had a shanty.'

Could he have had somewhere around Blackall in mind?

Since those heady days the town has achieved much greater fame.It claims to be 'the home of the fair dinkum black stump' and boasts 'You are in Jackie Howe country - the world's greatest ever blade shearer'.

s said to have originated. A replica Black Stump and rest area has been established 9 kilometres from Coolah to mark its historic location.

The story is that surveyors used a stump to rest their equipment and the story goes that before long people considered anything west of Blackall to be - beyond the black stump. Coolah NSW also lays claim to that honour though. Would be good to get to the truth of that.

The statue of 'World Champion Blade Shearer Jackie Howe (John Robert Howe) 1861-1920 Blade shore 321 sheep in 7 hours 40 minutes at 'Alice Downs' Blackall on Monday 10 October 1892.

Courtesy SMH, February 8, 2004