Qualla: Quamby

Quamby: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The name itself is an invitation. Quamby comes from an Aboriginal word meaning to stop and rest a while, and that is now very nearly all there is to do here. Forty-four kilometres north of Cloncurry, on the eastern side of the Burke Developmental Road, the town has dwindled to a single hotel, a cluster of workers' dongas, and a scatter of sheds, water tanks, and salvaged station memorabilia. Travellers still pull off the road for exactly the reason the name suggests, ordering a cold drink in a pub that has been telling outback Queensland's story, in one form or another, since the 1860s.

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Quamby: The Pub in the Scrub

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Quamby Hotel did not begin as a hotel at all. The building went up in the 1860s as a customs house, and only around 1921 was it converted into the pub it remains today. In between, it earned its keep on the road, serving as a staging post for Cobb & Co coaches, which needed f...

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Quamby: The Shooting Affray

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For all its sleepiness, Quamby has known sudden violence. In 1934 the town was the scene of what the newspapers of the day called a 'Shooting Affray.' Charles Cameron, the local schoolteacher, shot a man named James Croke after a dispute inside Croke's home. Croke was rushed to h...

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Quamby: When the Trains Left

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Quamby was once more than a pub. In the 1930s the town reputedly held around forty homes, supported by the railway and by the cattle and mining traffic that flowed through this stretch of the north-west. A state school ran from 1924 to 1969. But the outback rewards nothing so rel...

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Quamby: Rodeos and Renewable Power

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The country around Quamby is not finished yet. Once a year the town fills up for the Quamby rodeo, part of the Queensland circuit, where novelty events like the donkey ride and calf scruffing draw as many as 1,300 spectators and 280 competitors to a place that otherwise counts it...

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