Tannymorel

Tannymorel, a former coal mining town near the New South Wales border, is 10 km south-east of Warwick and 125 km south-west of central Brisbane.

Once known as Farm Creek, the area was first occupied for timber harvesting. The name 'Tannymorel' was given by Darling Downs squatters, Patrick Leslie and Ernest Dalrymple. A school was opened in 1877 and coal was found there in the 1880s and mined in small quantities. In 1907 the Tannymorel Coal Mining Company was formed to work at Mt Colliery about six km east of Tannymorel, and the Glengallan Shire built a tram line between the mine and the town. It was taken over by Queensland Rail in 1909. Coal was supplied to several dairy factories, the Warwick hospital, and gas works. There were also wheat and other crops grown in the district, and both crops and coal were transported to Warwick by railway, which had been opened in 1885.

With a population of about 600 after 1910, Tannymorel had two double storey hotels, a school of arts (1908) and Anglican and Catholic churches (1915). The 1930s saw a decline in prices for crops, and the decade ended with a fire in 1940 which destroyed several shops. Closure of the railway lines in 1964 virtually coincided with dieselisation of the rolling stock, reducing the market for coal and leading to the closure of Mt Colliery in 1967. By the 1970s the last of Tannymorel's stores closed, leaving the sole remaining church (Anglican) and the school of arts, which was sold in 1993. Both hotels had closed by the early 1960s. Tannymorel has a primary school and a bowling club on the school of arts site. Its census populations have been: