Elgin Vale Sawmill, Steam-powered sawmill complex in Elgin Vale, Queensland, Australia.
Elgin Vale Sawmill is an open-air timber structure housing a steam-operated mill, built in 1944 by Wilson Hart Limited of Maryborough on Manumbar Road in the Gympie Region. It replaced an earlier mill established on the site in 1927 and stands within a former Camping and Water Reserve at the confluence of the Gallangowan and Moonda-Waamba Creeks.
The first sawmill on Camping and Water Reserve 81, also called Scrubby Paddock, was set up by Ross and Company in 1908 and is thought to have moved to Goomeri in 1914. In 1926 T H (Harry) Spencer negotiated to shift his Sefton mill to the reserve, moving machinery and materials during 1926–27, with commercial processing under way by late 1927. Wilson Hart Company Limited of Maryborough took over operations at the end of 1927, and in 1944 the firm built the present open-air timber structure housing a steam-operated mill.
The site formed the heart of the local timber community, providing housing for workers and a school for their children. These facilities shaped how people lived and worked together in the area.
The site sits on Manumbar Road and now operates as a museum showing how steam-powered timber processing worked. Visitors can view the open structures and machinery, though the ground may be uneven in places.
The mill that stands today dates from 1944, when Wilson Hart Limited of Maryborough replaced the 1927 structure; the earlier mill had been moved from Sefton, north of Kilkivan, in 1926–27. Harry Spencer, who set it up, then ran it for Wilson Hart and kept the logging contract hauling milled timber to Goomeri railway station into the 1940s.
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