Wallangarra
Postcode: 4383
Wallangarra is a village on the border between Queensland and New South Wales in Australia. It is the third most southerly town in Queensland, 258 km south west of Brisbane. Wallangarra is on the Queensland side of the border and Jennings is on the New South Wales side. The name, originally Wallan-Garra, these are Aboriginal words meaning “plenty of water”.
Wallangarra lies in a valley between two ranges of mountains, which each are branches of the Great Dividing Range. It is 878 m above sea level. There is a gap between the more Westerly range at Wyberba, about 5 kilometres north of Wallangarra. This gap has made Wallangarra the major inland border crossing for the New England Highway and what was the first railway line between Brisbane and Sydney.
The town was created to service a break-of-gauge between Queensland’s narrow gauge of 3 ft 6 in (1067 mm) and New South Wales’s standard gauge of 1,435 mm (4 ft 8½ in) when the two systems came together in 1888. The railway was the only rail link between Queensland and New South Wales until a standard gauge track was completed in 1932, with the completion of the bridge at Grafton.
The railway line from Stanthorpe to Wallangarra has continued to be maintained and steam trains taking tourists to Wallangarra occasionally operate.