Australia So Much to See

Isisford: Home of the crocodile ancestor Isisfordia Duncani and the Isis Downs Shearing Shed

The last 10,000 sheep to be shorn in the shed were shorn and sold in 2004, marking the end of 138 years of sheep farming on the station. Only cattle are now run on this large former sheep station. 

Videos on the discovery are shown on entry to the Centre before going upstairs to see the displays. 

A complete animal was discovered with the exception of the front portion of the skull. In 2005, paleontologists discovered a complete skull from the same species which differed from the original specimen in size only, enabling them to create a complete picture of the animal.  The discovery of the fossilised remains led paleontologists to believe that modern crocodilians first evolved thirty million years earlier than previously thought, and here in what became Australia.  Read more about the significance of the discoveryhere  

Clancy of the Overflow Hotel in the wide main street features Jackie Howe memorabilia.  Jackie Howe was a record breaking shearer in the era of blade shears.  Read more about Jackie Howe when we visit Blackall. Old shop buildings  remain are open to the public.  Many of the original buildings in the town were lost during fires. 

We went to Isis Downs station twenty kilometres to the east of the town to see the unusual 52 stand circular shearing shed. This shed was completed in 1914 to replace the 100 stand shearing shed which burnt down in 1912.  It is believed that 450,000 sheep per annum were shorn with blades at Isis Downs.  Station owners contracted a Melbourne Engineer to design the new shearing shed.  The engineer said a semi circular design would be the simplest and cheapest to construct.  Steel came from England to be fabricated by the firm who later built the Sydney Harbour Bridge.   

Due to the curved design of the shed, each stand has an individual shearing plant, rather than a number of stands being driven by a shaft from one power source.  The original power supply for the shed was from a steam powered generator burning scant timber and was later replaced by this diesel powered generator. 

Timber was scare in the area and had to be carted for some distance to construct the extensive yards required to keep the number of sheep flowing to the shearers. 

The Outer Barcoo Interpretation Centre features Isisfordia Duncani, a 95 to 98 million year old fossilised skeleton of a crocodile one metre long.  Named after its discoverer, former Deputy Mayor of Isisford Ian Duncan, the first fossils of Isisfordia were found in the 1990s in a dry creek bed on the outskirts of town.  This was a significant discovery on a world wide scale.  Isisfordia is the oldest known ancestor of the modern crocodilians throughout the world.  
 

During the construction of the shed it is thought that shearing took place in a makeshift shelter, similar to the one that can be seen here from a window in the shearing shed. 

Isis Downs is now owned by Consolidated Pastoral Co Ltd, a company formed by the late Kerry Packer which now runs nineteen cattle stations across Queensland, Northern Territory and Western Australia covering 5.8 million hectares.    

Update: Isis Downs shearing shed is no longer open to the public

In its heyday of the wool era, Isis Downs resembled a small village with staff cottages.  There was even a school on site.

A small booklet on the history of Isis Downs and the shearing shed can be purchased from the Shire in Isisford. 

The powerhouse which housed at first the steam generator, then diesel generators.  The gantry was used as a hydraulic powered hoist for loading woolpacks for transit.