The industrial end of town with its brewery, scour and meat processing plant and a piggery, made employment for at least 200 men but produced revolting odours and problems of infection that kept the nearby hospital busy. The boiling down plant in particular was regarded with mixed feelings by townspeople who suffered its appalling smells with stoicism while it prospered for three years.
Westbourne Wool Scour
The Western Queensland Meat Company was established at Westbourne in 1893 after a successful bore was sunk there in February. Shareholders were pastoralists who purchased the land from H. H. C. Peut, one of the early settlers of Barcaldine area. It was originally set up as a boiling down works to dispose of stock during drought when losses were inevitable, giving the companies a way to avoid a total loss of income. After the bore was put down, they’d started boiling down and tallow manufacture operations. Operation changed to wool scouring in 1897 when drought made boiling down unprofitable because sheep were too poor to yield fat, the premises were enlarged, and modern machinery bought from the south.
The scouring room was large, 130 ft. by 70 ft. with a storage shed next to it, 60 ft. by 60 ft. A McNaught scourer was used to clean the wool and a Petrie dryer to dry it. The wool travelled eighty-seven feet through machinery during the processes of scouring and drying. A ten horse power Tangye-Tchnson engine drove the scouring and drying machinery, with the capacity to shut off the steam from the cylinder if anything went wrong – like a belt breaking. A six-horse power Tangye engine drove the pumps and steam presses. The boiling down building covered three floors, each one 100 ft. by 80ft. Sheep were taken up a race to the top floor to be slaughtered and then the different parts went through quite a few actions on each floor before ending up on the bottom floor. There were six digestors and two refiners for the tallow. Soap was also made there. Not only the share holders used the plant – other graziers made use of the facilities.
A. M. Ferguson managed the works from 1894 to 1912 and his son, P. Ferguson ran the plant from 1933 until the scour closed in 1957.
By 1954 nine properties on the east of the shire were reported to be stocked with cattle. The fifties were such wet years that sheep men had to battle to save their stock from fly strike, worms, lice, water logged feet and burr infested wool. In March 1950, the Longreach Leader reported 40,000 sheep lost from fly strike in the Aramac district alone. But wool was so valuable at that time that graziers attempted to retrieve the fleeces from dead animals and pack them for sale. Even skins were of value but there was no longer need to scour wool prior to sale and by 1957 Westbourne Scour, which had peaked its output in 1917 (with 15,000 scoured bales out from 20,000 greasy bales in) found it uneconomic to carry on. The property was sold to M. I. and M. K. Nicholson, who disposed of the machinery for scrap and most of the buildings for removal.
McLaughlin’s Wool Scour
McLaughlin’s bore was put down in 1889 and the scour opened at the beginning of the 1890 season.
It had a shearing board for small flocks, using Wolseleys shearing machines, with about twelve shearers working nearly all year round with a number of shed hands also employed – sheep shearing, wool scouring, fell-mongering (when the wool was separated from the skin after it had been taken off the carcass by the butchers), classing and pressing. Petrie’s scouring machines and dryer did the scouring and drying. Clients could have the fell-mongering done by a chemical method straight after the skins arrived from the butchers and have the wool scoured all in the one place so nothing was wasted in the process.
Sheep used to be shorn after the whole animal was washed. Then ‘greasy wool’ shearing was brought in and the wool washed after shearing. Bales of washed wool didn’t cost as much to transport – bullock teamsters charged by weight and the wool was lighter after washing. There was also plenty of hot bore water, and washing the wool rather than the sheep meant hotter water could be used. The shorn wool was washed by soaking in a tank, then passing it into another tank to remove all the dirt, grass and burrs, worked out by forks with-out damaging the fibre or what made it stretchy as that was the best condition for the finest woollen goods. After that, it was rinsed and moved on into the Petrie’s dryers. Hot air was forced through a series of tubes to create a hot blast and a current of air from a fan carried the wool to the top of the machine, where it gravitated by horizontal trays to the lower part of the dryer. The process was repeated five times until the wool was finally ejected and spread out to cool. Then it was pressed into bales and hoisted to the second floor to be loaded into the railway trucks waiting on the railway siding next to the plant.
Barcaldine Meat Processing Company 
Also known as the ‘Boiling Down’, the Barcaldine Meat Processing Company was established in September 1892, by local subscription. Shareholders were J. Cronin, E. Peel, J. Meacham, J. Lloyd Jones. A. Parnell, G. Shakspeare and H. Savage. It was in the industrial end of town east of the brewery and separated from it by McLaughlin’s wool scour from which it drew water.
The plant processed sheep by boiling the carcasses in huge vats called digesters until the fat or ‘tallow’ could be drawn off and filled into casks. Skins from the animals were fellmongered (preserved) at the scour. Only skin and tallow of sheep were worth the cost of transport at that time.
In September 1895 it was destroyed in a spectacular fire described as ‘awful and grand’ by the Champion. Flames, first noticed about 8pm brought the population scurrying and scrambling. Some were said to have fallen into the ‘odiferous’ wool scour drain and to have arrived ‘hatless, coatless and bootless’ while one lady lost half her dress on a barbed wire fence.
The spectacle was probably worth the scramble for the fat soaked timber hissed and spat, throwing a pall of black smoke across the moon. The steam engine which drove the plant built up pressure almost to explosion, while sheep awaiting the kill were incinerated in their pens. Little could be saved and next morning the town’s chief industry was a smoking ruin, all twisted iron, bloated tanks, hundreds of hoops and the burnt carcasses of sheep. Damage was assessed at about £5,000 and, as some insurance was carried, the shareholders considered starting again, but abandoned the idea and expansion was made at Westbourne instead.
The fire was caused by the ‘ priming ‘ of one of the digestors, the steam from which (highly impregnated with tallow) blowing off through the safety valve, became ignited at one of the slush lamps. In a moment the whole of the platform alongside the digesters, and the roof overhead, were in a blaze, and the flames spread with frightful rapidity to the refining and tallow room, where about twenty casks of tallow was waiting to be loaded up. As cask after cask became ignited, the flames bunt upwards with increased fury. It became at once apparent there was not the slightest chance of saving any portion of the buildings, and all the efforts of the men were directed to keeping the fire from damaging the steam boiler, which was separated by a few feet from the rest of the buildings. Two trucks, one laden with tallow, the other with sheepskins, were with great difficulty drawn out of danger, although both were badly scorched. Some hundreds of casks and cask material were completely destroyed. The fire which had broken out on Friday night, at seven o’clock, costumed to burn till late on Saturday morning. The Capricornian 5 October 1895.
The destruction of the plant put nearly 100 men out of work.
