Kingaroy in Regional Queensland

Kingaroy is in agricultural Regional Queensland, and is Australia’s 100th largest town. It is also the peanut capital of Australia with the Country’s biggest processing plant.

Rural settlement commenced in 1843 with the arrival of squatter and explorer Henry Russell. The first sheep flocks arrived in the 1850’s. What was Taabinga Station eventually became Kingaroy and was well established by the time the Railway arrived 1904.

The town has experienced some growth in population in recent years which currently stands at approx 10,400 people. It is about 220 kms north-west of Brisbane. However a trip to the area should include a visit to the spectacular Bunya Mountains National Park, this means returning via Dalby on the Southern Downs.

You will find picture galleries of other old houses and landscapes here.

Kingaroy Council Chambers 1913 — The old Council Chambers built in 1913 with some of the peanut silos in the background.

From the Queensland Heritage Register

“The Kingaroy Peanut Silos located in Haly Street, Kingaroy are a group of three concrete silos (Nos 2, 3 and 4) that were constructed between 1938 and 1951 by the Queensland Peanut Marketing Board for storage of peanuts before their processing and marketing.

These large structures dominate the skyline of Kingaroy and the surrounding landscape. They are widely recognised symbols of the peanut growing and processing industry in Queensland that developed as a commercial enterprise in the South Burnett centred upon Kingaroy and which has been managed from this town since the 1920s.

Although initial pastoral settlement in the Kingaroy area commenced in the 1840s when Taabinga station and Burrandowan station were taken up, the town of Kingaroy owes its establishment to the arrival of the Kilkivan branch railway in 1904. In 1898 the only resident in the vicinity of Kingaroy was Daniel Carroll who had selected a 160 acre block abutting the 3430 acre (1388.07 ha) Kingaroy Paddock selection in 1891 and built a hut and yard for his horses. By 1900 he had erected a cottage and had selected further blocks of land adjoining his original portion.

Peanuts have been grown in Queensland since Chinese cultivators planted them on the Palmer River goldfield in the 1870s. Small acreages were grown by several farmers in the South Burnett from about 1901”