About 120 km south of Winton, on the Diamantina River, are the ruins of Old Cork Station. It was first established in the 1870’s and served as the mail distribution point for the region before the town of Winton existed. It’s a sad sight to see what must have been an impressive sandstone building in such a remote area, slowly crumble into the dust. Unfortunately talk of saving and stablising the building have amounted to nothing. White ants, souvenir gatherers, government inertia and the weather have put an end to saving an impressive piece of our history
Old Cork Waterhole is part of the Diamantina River. Supposedly full of Yellow Belly.
Scattered around the area are remnants of old station life – broken plates and bottles, buttons, nails, wire, even unused bullets.
If you remember the Redgum song, Diamantina Drover listen to this version by Christy Moore
Splashing Paint 
There’s a beautiful coffee table picture book just waiting to be produced of your travels and beautiful photographs. Pencil me in for one, please..
Hi Pam,
You’ll be top of the list!
Cheers
John
Reminds me of my painting “Staging Post Ruins”. The roof is completely gone from this old stone building in the wheatbelt region of Western Australia. When will you come and visit the West?
Hi Christine
Looking forward to getting back over to WA. Not sure when but hopefully soon.
Cheers
John
Thank you for sharing your photographs and this bit of history. Christy Moore does my type of music. Great post!
Thanks Linda
Christy Moore can sure send a shiver up your spine. His version of Diamantina Drover certainly does that.
Cheers John
I see a series of paintings in the future…….
Definitely Betsi – looking forward to working on all these new ideas
John
its hard to believe it has deteriorated so much, I was shearing not far from there in 1991 and we went fishing at the waterhole and caught lots of fish, camped for two days in the house, the roof was still intact and the rest of the building seemed ok fond memories
Alec.