Daandine

Originally called "Monaghan Creek", John P. Wilkie was the first licensee in 1848 for 60,000 acres west of Macalister. The land was thought to be owned by an absentee landlord, an English nobleman.

By 1854, Monaghan Creek had become "Daandine" (a local Aboriginal word for owl), with the lease transferred to Charles Coxen, who held several other pastoral leases on the Downs. Following his election to the first Queensland Parliament in 1860, he left Daandine to settle in Brisbane.

Legislation by successive Queensland governments in the 1860s & 1870s saw subdivisions on Daandine. The homestead block (40,000 acres) saw a succession of owners, with the homestead being built in 1888. 

By the late nineteenth & early twentieth century, Daandine was owned by a Mr. Fletcher, followed by John Cooke, & after his death, by the National Mutual Life Association of Australia, to which the station was mortgaged.

In 1926, Daandine was sold to the partnership of Clarke & Tait, later known as the Daandine Pastoral Co. Pty. Ltd. It then comprised 37,000 acres, but by 1948 had been reduced by sales & further subdivision to 25,000 acres of well-improved freehold land.

At this time, the Queensland government resumed Daandine for subdivision into eighteen blocks for war service land settlement. Compensation was based on land values at a time the property market was very low. The Daandine Pastoral Co. appealed the amount offered, which was upheld by the Supreme Court, doubling the value of the compensation originally offered.

As often happened with other closer-settlement programs, many of the soldier-settlers lacked either the capital or enterprise to develop the land blocks granted in reurn for their war service. The first soldier-settler occupant of the Daandine Homestead block (1400 acres) kept pigs under the house & made a living from stripping down vehicles & farm machinery.

The homestead block was again sold in 1965 to form part of a successful mixed farming enterprise.