Kidston is a ghost town within the rural
locality
Locality may refer to:
* Locality, a historical named location or place in Canada
* Locality (association), an association of community regeneration organizations in England
* Locality (linguistics)
* Locality (settlement)
* Suburbs and localitie ...
of
Einasleigh,
Shire of Etheridge
The Shire of Etheridge is a Local government in Australia, local government area in Far North Queensland, Australia in what is known as the Savannah Gulf region. Its economy is based on cattle grazing and mining.
It covers an area of , and has ...
,
Queensland
Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...
, Australia.
What remains of the built structure of the town is
heritage-listed
This list is of heritage registers, inventories of cultural properties, natural and human-made, tangible and intangible, movable and immovable, that are deemed to be of sufficient heritage value to be separately identified and recorded. In ma ...
as the
Kidston State Battery & Township.
History
Oak's Rush was a gold mining area. A small amount of gold was found there by Charles Mack who then teamed up with Charles Hawkins and together found more substantial quantities of gold in September 1907.
By 1908 there were three hotels in the town.
It is unclear when the Oaks Rush Post Office opened, but in March-April 1908 it was announced it would be renamed ''Kidston'' in honour of the
Queensland Premier
The premier of Queensland is the head of government in the Australian state of Queensland.
By convention the premier is the leader of the party with a parliamentary majority in the Legislative Assembly of Queensland. The premier is appointed ...
William Kidston
William Kidston (17 August 1849 – 25 October 1919) was an Australian bookseller, politician and Premier of Queensland, from January 1906 to November 1907 and again from February 1908 to February 1911.
Early life
William Kidston was born in F ...
. It closed in 1988.
By December 1907, at least 120 oz of alluvial gold had been obtained through working about four gullies of tributaries of the
Copperfield River, and about 120 men on the field. The
Einasleigh Copper Mine had halted as the workers had left for the gold field.
Kidston Provisional School opened on 1 January 1909. On 25 September 1911, it became Kidston State School. It closed on 10 February 1954.
Percyville Provisional School opened in 1914. On 1 April 1915, it became Percyville State School. It closed circa 1915.
Mining ceased in the 1940s. The
Kidston Gold Mine resumed as a large open cut mine in the 1980s, and closed in 2001. The tailings heap is now the site of the
Kidston Solar Project and the mine and
Kidston Dam are being developed for pumped hydro energy storage.
References
External links
*
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Towns in Queensland
Einasleigh, Queensland
Ghost towns in Queensland