Ian & Marg has added a photo to the pool:
Queensland Fruitgrowers Cooperative Society (QFS) received and loaded the fruit and vegetables destined for the Brisbane market from this large goods shed by the Amiens Branch Line. Arthur Baker was one of their managers. He was responsible for the operation of their agricultural supplies shop here. This platform and shed was one of his daughter's favourite places to play for she was near her dad and home was just across the line.
Seventy years on, she returned for a nostalgic visit, recalling moments and the joy of a simple family life among this orcharding area. Apples, apricots, peaches, nectarines, pears, and plums (especially Wilson Plums) were grown on diversified farms all along this branch line. This area of the Queensland Granite Belt was opened up to closer settlement by the government and allocated to soldiers returning from the First World War. The stations or sidings, like this one, were named after World War battlefields: Fleurbaix, Possiers, Passchendaele, Bapaume, Messines, and Amiens was the terminus.
Hailstorms were a fact of life in the early summer in this high altitude area with consequential destruction of fruit, so the diversified crops were essential to ensure each farmer survived, as each different variety matured at different rates.
Arthur Baker had migrated from North Yorkshire as an 18 year old, dreaming to become a "sheep farmer in Victoria". But instead he was drafted to serve as a farm labourer on a new orchard owned by Walter H Bell at Bapaume. When Arthur married an Australian girl, they bought a small farm and laboured through the wiles of the elements (hailstorms, late frosts when trees were flowering, droughts, and occasional tornadoes). Eventually, Arthur sold his farm, when he had the opportunity to become QFS manager first at Bapaume and later in the main regional town of Stanthorpe on the Southern Line.

