TABO VILLAGE

Tabo is short for Tableland Tin (Tableland Tin Dredging N.L.), name of a company set up by James Malcolm Newman, a mining engineer who was born in Caboolture, Queensland in 1880. According to a document from the
Cairns Historical Society written by H.V. Weston in 1928, Poole and Steel of Melbourne set up their office in 1927, about 1600 metres north-west of Mount Garnet on the left bank of Return Creek. This company built the first tin-dredge in Queensland or possibly in Australia for Tableland Tin, which was launched on Saturday 25th February 1928.

It worked non-stop for several years until one night there was a breakdown and

Weston’s three-year-old daughter, not hearing the characteristic clanking noise, woke up and asked, ‘What’s stopped mummy?’.

Tabo Village was created to provide housing to mine workers and its landscape shows various relics of the tin mining era such as rusting boilers and other steel pieces of machinery, the


workshop buildings, power house, community hall, Bush Fire Brigade shed, tennis court and ‘Little Toot’, an old steam engine.

Many old houses have been restored and new ones built along Lucey St, where a peaceful and friendly neighbourhood enjoys these days the beauty of an unpolluted and relaxed life-style.