Qualla: Old Westmoreland Homestead

Old Westmoreland Homestead: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Heritage branch staff, CC BY 3.0. Look at the little stone house and you can read the fear in its walls. They are thick. The doors open inward. The windows are few and small. This is not the design of a home built only for shade and shelter - it is the design of a home built for defence. Constructed around 1882 near the Northern Territory border and close to the Gulf of Carpentaria, Old Westmoreland Homestead survives as one of the oldest buildings in this remote corner of Queensland, and its modest architecture is a frank record of the violence that came with the cattle.

Image: Heritage branch staff | CC BY 3.0

Old Westmoreland Homestead: Built Like a Refuge

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Heritage branch staff, CC BY 3.0. Westmoreland Station was taken up in 1881 by Thomas and Robert McIntosh, Robert Philp and William Kirk, sprawling across some 640 square miles of Gulf country. Thomas Brassey McIntosh managed the run and built the two-roomed stone house that still stands. He used what the land ga...

Image: Heritage branch staff | CC BY 3.0

Old Westmoreland Homestead: A Frontier at War

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Heritage branch staff, CC BY 3.0. When Westmoreland was settled in the early 1880s, the Gulf was a war zone. This is Gangalidda and Garawa country, and the Aboriginal people who had lived here for many thousands of years did not cede it quietly. Across the district, conflict between the traditional owners and the...

Image: Heritage branch staff | CC BY 3.0

Old Westmoreland Homestead: A Premier Among the Partners

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Heritage branch staff, CC BY 3.0. The men who founded Westmoreland were no minor figures. Robert Philp, one of the original 1881 partners, went on to become Premier of Queensland and was a founder of the great trading house Burns, Philp & Company. Later directors included Sir William Charles Angliss, the Melbourn...

Image: Heritage branch staff | CC BY 3.0

Old Westmoreland Homestead: What Drought and Termites Left

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Heritage branch staff, CC BY 3.0. The station's fortunes rose and fell hard. Severe drought struck the Gulf in the late 1890s, and in 1897 the Westmoreland lease was forfeited; the run sat empty for about fifteen years. When a new leaseholder took it up in 1912, he found the roof of the stone homestead eaten thro...

Image: Heritage branch staff | CC BY 3.0