Woodleigh Station
Placeholder page. Content in preparation,
Hugh A. Borland, From Wilderness to Wealth; Featuring the Storied History of the District of Cairns, Chapter 10 Cattle and Cattlemen, Cairns Post, 21 September 1938 (Trove)
Woodleigh — a home name taken to far North Queensland - is a station property on the Upper Herbert River waters.
The homestead is situated on the west bank of the Millstream, about a mile above its junction with the Wild River.
The station was established by Garbutt and Lawrence.
In the early '80's two brothers, born near Fingal, Tasmania, sold their then home, a sheep property in the Mungindi district of New South Wales, and coming north, bought Woodleigh Station
from its founders. These brothers were James Henry Grant and Wallace Partridge Grant. Later, they were joined by Franklin Stanhope Grant, who had been bookkeeper for Scott Brothers over a period of years on the Valley of Lagoons.
About 1896 - coinciding somewhat with the ravages of the tick plague - F. S. Grant took up a portion of Woodleigh, on the Herbert River, known as Campsbourne, a stretch of country covering
nine square miles. This he renamed Mandalee. The word is an aboriginal name for a place where fig trees grow; the banks of the Herbert in that locality are covered with fig trees of two kinds.
Mandalee homestead is situated on the east bank of the Herbert River - about 10 miles from Mt. Garnet and about four from Woodleigh.
Grant Brothers sold Woodleigh to Munro, Gordon and Co. in the mid-nineties and it was about 20 years later sold to Williams Estate. It is still under the control of Mr. Jack Williams. Mandalee was retained by F. S. Grant until his death in 1926. Mrs. Grant continued to reside on the station for two or three years and then returned to Tasmania, disposing of the property to her son James, who still retains possession.
