Conondale Timbers Sawmill, Heritage-listed sawmill in Conondale, Australia.
Conondale Timbers Sawmill is a timber production facility established in the 1930s, situated along Aherns Road in the Sunshine Coast Region. The site contains a main production building, several machinery sheds, and five workers' cottages arranged across the grounds.
Conondale Timbers Sawmill was built in the early 1930s by M.R. Hornibrook Pty Ltd, then among Queensland's leading civil engineering firms, to cut hardwood for the Hornibrook Highway Bridge linking the Redcliffe Peninsula to Brighton and Sandgate across the North Pine River and Hays Inlet. After that project the mill passed to Hornibrook subsidiary Hamilton Sawmills, then to Thurecht and Sons in the 1960s and later the Green family as Conondale Timbers. It was decommissioned in the late 1990s and added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 27 November 2008.
The site is private and closed, so the cottages cannot be visited; they stand along the southern boundary, five detached two-room dwellings each with a veranda to the east and a fireplace projecting north. Later owners Thurecht and Sons and the Green family, trading as Conondale Timbers, kept the mill cutting native hardwoods into the 1970s.
The mill was decommissioned in the late 1990s and no longer operates; it is private property and trespassers are prosecuted, so the site cannot be entered. It stands at the corner of Aherns Road and Harper Creek Road, about 5 km south of Conondale and 15 km northwest of Maleny, on an elevated area above Harper Creek.
A former ship's crane from the bridge construction period still stands on the grounds, revealing the engineering methods of that era. This artifact directly links the sawmill to the larger infrastructure project it supplied materials for.
The community of curious travelers
AroundUs brings together thousands of curated places, local tips, and hidden gems, enriched daily by 94,023 contributors worldwide.