Towns in Australia

Exploring Australia, town by town

Wandoan QLD

Wandoan

Postcode: 4419

Wandoan is a small town in Queensland, Australia, located on the Leichardt Highway about halfway between Taroom and Miles. Its local government is the Taroom shire Council for which it is the centre for the local cattle industries.

The current population is estimated at 432.

The beginnings of the Wandoan township can be traced back to 1853 when ‘Juandah’ Station was established at this location. A wayside hotel was built there in the 1890s, and by the end of the nineteenth century the hotel was well established and a township was formed. It was named Wandoan in 1926.

Sixty-five kilometres north along the Leichhardt Highway from Miles, the small town of Wandoan lies deep in fertile brigalow country that has long been cleared to produce huge tonnages of wheat and sorghum which explains the towering silos that pinpoint the township. The area, however, was pioneered by pastoralists and the Juandah cattle run was opened up in 1853, just nine years after explorer Ludwig Leichhardt and his party camped on the shores of the Juandah Lagoon in the upper reaches of the Dawson River Valley.