Agri, Mining and Industry

Kingaroy’s fascinating Heritage Museum is housed in what was the town’s powerhouse from 1925 to 1952, and is now part of the Kingaroy Information, Art and Heritage Precinct.

As Kingaroy is the Peanut Capital of Australia, the history of the local peanut industry is a focus of the collection, with exhibits of agricultural machinery showing the ingenuity and inventiveness of the local farmers and tradespeople. Machinery for farming peanuts was not available in the early 1920s, so farmers invented their own. The first being a bicycle powered thresher built in 1909, then a local farmer converted an American-made wheat thresher to thresh peanuts. In the late 1920s. Mr Harry Young designed and built his very own dinosaur – a stationary peanut thresher.

These machines are on display in the museum along with other prototypes of peanut harvesting machinery designed and built by local inventors. Some of their ideas are still in use today.

The entry to the Museum can only be accessed through the Kingaroy Visitor Information Centre.