The quaint old Royal Hotel at Bouldercombe

Bouldercombe
A tiny rural retreat which is now little more than a collection of houses and a pub.
Located 662 km north of Brisbane and 21 km west of Rockhampton, Bouldercombe is a tiny rural retreat which is now little more than a loose collection of houses and a pub. It essentially functions as a commuter settlement for Rockhampton - a kind of rural equivalent of the settlements on the coast at Yeppoon and Emu Park. The only hint of its past glory as an important goldrush township is the existence of a Goldfields rural residential subdivision.

Gold was discovered at Crocodile Creek in 1865 and this was the name initially given to the nascent township. Within a year a town of 2000 miners had sprung up but its fortunes waxed and waned. By 1876 the population had been reduced to 149. However, with the establishment of the Usher Reef mine in 1897, the population increased to over 1000. It dropped back again, only to be revitalised in 1934 by the arrival of the Crocodile Creek Gold Dredging Co which, ironically, accumulated 1100 ounces from alluvial washing in 1935. It was the largest gold extraction in the history of the field. The dredging operation stopped in 1946 and there has been no further mining in the area. Today the only gold to be made is by land developers hoping to attract people to this pleasant rural retreat.

	Hotels
	Bouldercombe Royal Hotel Burnett Hwy Bouldercombe QLD 4702 Telephone: (07) 4934 0120