Woodgate History Trail

Woodgate & District Resident Association latest exciting project is developing a Woodgate history trail, alongside an independenty produced book by President, Pauline Greer.

Approval for the trail project has been granted by Bundaberg Regional Council’s Parks and Environment Department and a $4,300.00 Council grant awarded to put toward the trail (awaiting release pending approval from Council’s Cultural Department).

Information boards will be installed along the Esplanade pathway and will feature QR code activated narration to help tell the history of a past time, photographs and written content.

It is planned around 60 stations, made from an environmentally friendly composite material that will blend in with existing bollards, will be installed.

Progress has recently stalled, with a few obstacles to clear in the approval process including:

• All culturally associated material must be submitted to the Cultural Department of the Bundaberg Regional Council and then to the PCC (Indigenous Elders) to be verified and approved. Much correspondence, meetings and phone calls have taken place so far. At this point even information previously printed some decades ago must still be approved. This includes early Indigenous occupation of the Burrum River area and also any stories related to Woppi.
• Information regarding South Sea Islanders must be approved by South Sea Islander Elders. This mainly relates to the ship The City Of Melbourne that sank off Woodgate in the late 1800 as it had carried indentured labourers. Despite this, the ship has a very interesting maritime history that is worth telling.
• The remaining signs (approx 50) are ready and waiting. We cannot move forward until the cultural reviews are finalised.
• The next step is for the Council’s Design Department to review all the signs and agree with what we have and then to the Communication Department of the Council to once again review and approve.
• On a more positive note, Council’s Parks Department has offered to install the posts at no cost and, the Grant that we received, which runs out in June, will be held over, meaning that we do not have to reapply.

Unfortunately, prior to commencing the project, Council had not communicated this part of the approval process and as such our timeframe has been pushed out by 6-12 months.

In the meantime, we are continuing with compilation of the book as this is not funded by Council.

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April 2026