Qualla: Strathmore Homestead https://qualla.com/strathmore-homestead en-us © 2026 Bendyline Thu, 23 Jul 2026 20:34:04 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/r/k/2/g/strathmore-homestead-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Strathmore Homestead https://qualla.com/strathmore-homestead Strathmore Homestead: Introduction https://qualla.com/strathmore-homestead/ Photo credit Heritage branch staff, CC BY 4.0. Drive twenty-seven kilometres of red dirt north-west of Collinsville and you reach a place that measures time in generations rather than years. Strathmore is a working cattle station of forty-one thousand hectares, but it is also a small world unto itself: a homestead wrapped in deep verandahs, an avenue of Canary Island date palms, a disused swimming pool, a private cemetery, and the bones of a former zoo that once held a camel and a crocodile. At its heart sits a hut of vertical timber slabs that may date to the 1860s, when this corner of the Kennedy District was raw frontier and the Cunningham family who still hold the lease had not yet arrived.

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Image: Heritage branch staff | CC BY 4.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/k/2/g/strathmore-homestead-wp/rk2g-strathmore-homestead-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Strathmore Homestead: Opening the Kennedy https://qualla.com/strathmore-homestead/ Photo credit Heritage branch staff, CC BY 3.0. In April 1861, Edward Cunningham rode out of Port Denison with four other men, looking for grass. The country west of Bowen was newly opened to pastoralists, and the men who got there first could take up vast leases of unfenced land. Strathmore itself was first leased in 1862 by ...

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Image: Heritage branch staff | CC BY 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/k/2/g/strathmore-homestead-wp/rk2g-strathmore-homestead-opening-the-kennedy.mp3 0:06 2 full Strathmore Homestead: A Family Takes Root https://qualla.com/strathmore-homestead/ Photo credit Heritage branch staff, CC BY 3.0. The Cunninghams came to Strathmore in 1902, and they have never left. Arthur Henry Wickham Cunningham had been managing the nearby Woodhouse Station when a brutal season killed eighty-five percent of the herd, and he needed fresh country to rebuild. On his recommendation the firm...

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Image: Heritage branch staff | CC BY 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/k/2/g/strathmore-homestead-wp/rk2g-strathmore-homestead-a-family-takes-root.mp3 0:06 3 full Strathmore Homestead: Horses, Cattle and a Camel https://qualla.com/strathmore-homestead/ Photo credit Heritage branch staff, CC BY 3.0. A.H.W. Cunningham loved racing. He kept a thoroughbred stud, and the Strathmore colours of green and orange were a familiar sight at North Queensland meetings; he helped found the local amateur turf club and served as its president until he died in 1942. His son Edward took the s...

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Image: Heritage branch staff | CC BY 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/k/2/g/strathmore-homestead-wp/rk2g-strathmore-homestead-horses-cattle-and-a-camel.mp3 0:06 4 full Strathmore Homestead: Reading the Station https://qualla.com/strathmore-homestead/ Photo credit Heritage branch staff, CC BY 3.0. What makes Strathmore rare is that almost nothing was thrown away. An 1888-era slab hut survives as staff quarters. Drop-slab meathouses still hold their chopping blocks, meat hooks and draining tables, with flat iron tacked over the gaps in the timber to keep flies off the carca...

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Image: Heritage branch staff | CC BY 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/k/2/g/strathmore-homestead-wp/rk2g-strathmore-homestead-reading-the-station.mp3 0:06 5 full Strathmore Homestead: The Cemetery by the Creek https://qualla.com/strathmore-homestead/ Photo credit Heritage branch staff, CC BY 3.0. Several hundred metres east of the homestead, on the southern bank of Crush Creek, three graves mark three generations of one family. Edward Cunningham, killed in an accident in 1993, lies beneath a stone carved with a horse and a bull and the words 'Don't fence me in.' Beside hi...

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Image: Heritage branch staff | CC BY 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/k/2/g/strathmore-homestead-wp/rk2g-strathmore-homestead-the-cemetery-by-the-creek.mp3 0:06 6 full