The story of the Jondaryan Woolshed began in 1840, and at the time, the station was called Gundarnian, which in the local Jarowair dialect translated to Fire Cloud or Place of the Fire Cloud. For the first 17 years, it changed hands seven times, and little development was carried out.
Henry Denis, accompanied by an aboriginal named Warrigal, reached the Darling Downs in late 1840 and laid claim to an area he named Jimbour for Sir Richard Scougal. He claimed the Myall Creek area for Charles Coxen and took up the area that became Jondaryan for himself. However, Denis didn’t register his claim and Charles Coxen became the first registered owner.
In late 1843 Governor Gipps proposed stricter licensing of ‘runs’ as twenty square miles or a carrying capacity of 5000 sheep or 500 cattle. This caused a political crisis on the Downs. The local Land commissioner and the squatters argued that the productive capacity of the land was defined by the quality of the land and the availability of surface water in the small number of creeks not arbitrary numbers. Gipps persisted and his regulations were gazetted in April 1845.
The squatters formed a Pastoral Association and lobbied the local Legislative Council which was dominated by squatters, and the government in England. The Council refused to deal with Gipps and he was given permission to return to England. Meanwhile, the Squatting Act had expired, no license fees were collected from July 1846 to January 1847, and the squatters in the unsettled districts had secured 14-year leases.
From 1843 to 1846, Australia was experiencing a rural recession, and on 25 January 1845 Coxen became insolvent and sold the property to James Andrew with Robert Campbell as absentee partner. Andrew and his family moved to the station in 1847 and it was at this time that he decided to change the name from Gundarnian to Jondaryan.
The original shearing shed built on the station in 1847 was burnt down in 1849 by striking shearers. They were angry at the intolerable working conditions, treatment and refusal for fair wages. A second small shearing shed was built in 1850. Campbell sold his interest in 1851. Andrew sold the 128,000 acre property with 70,000 sheep in 1854 to Donald Coutts and Walter Grey.
Sydney merchants and brewers, Robert & Edwin Tooth, purchased Jondaryan in 1856. James Charles White was appointed manager in 1858 and he designed the shearing shed. Construction took three years from 1859-61. Approximately 5,000 sheets of corrugated galvanised iron were used to roof the vast shed, and it was constructed out of hand-hewn Ironbark timber, with whole trees being used to support the structure. It was completed in 1861, and the first shearing was carried out that year.
The timber slab building was considered the finest in its time and cost approximately £3,000 to complete. At almost 300 feet (90 metres) in length, it boasted 52 shearing stands and could hold 3,000 sheep under cover.
William Kent and Edward Wienholt purchased Jondaryan in 1863 for £108,000. They owned the neighbouring properties Rosalie Plains and Cooyar. Kent lived at Rosalie Plains until early 1864 and he was responsible for constructing the infrastructure and developing Jondaryan. A shearer’s quarters complex was built to house and feed 100 men, followed by a station store, a butcher’s shop and a hide and tallow house. By 1873, approximately 200,000 sheep were being shorn each season, with shearing being carried out during spring and summer months.
The breakup of Jondaryan Station into small farms began in 1880. At the time sheep numbers at the station started to reduce however the numbers of sheep going through the Woolshed didn’t. In 1890, the Woolshed was converted to machine shears, but only 36 stands were converted, with 12 stands for blade shears.
In 1890 another major innovation occurred with the introduction of large-scale broad-acre farm machinery. The rich black soil of the Darling Downs was better suited to more intensive agriculture than grazing.
In 1894, the Kent and Wienholt partnership was dissolved, and Jondaryan Estates came under the control of a family Property Limited company, to take in the children of the families. The whole of the Woolshed’s infrastructure was used for the last time in the mid-1930s. The final breakup of the station into small farm holdings occurred at the end of 1945.
