Nevertheless, there does not seem to be any record of an artesian bore ever being attempted at Collingwood, as was done in many other places in Outback Queensland, even locally (as at Dagworth, 65 km to the northwest, in the 1890s[10]) often with great success.

The team from Monash University who reached these conclusions and presented them in 2015, namely Giovanni P. T. Spampinato, Laurent Aillères, Peter G. Betts and Robin J. Armit, believed that while the Cork Fault was to be regarded as a fundamental crustal discontinuity, it was not Rodinia's former eastern margin.

In March 2015, Geoscience Australia reported that the river's course at and near its headwaters flows along the edge of a roughly circular crustal anomaly that might well be an impact structure.

According to the Queensland Historical Atlas, it was "Permanent waterholes and periodic pulses of substantial water" in the form of, sometimes heavy, rain that "allowed Aboriginal people to live in great numbers in the Channel Country".

Part of the basis of their claim is that Indigenous people's occupation of that land, their resource use and their trade were documented by Robert Christison in 1863 and R. M. Watson in 1873 in an area that included Winton, Elderslie Station and the Conn Waterhole at the junction of Wokingham Creek and the Diamantina River (Collingwood's former site).

[32] Hodgkinson's goal was to "ascertain the extent of pastoral country lying to the west of the future Winton district and along the Diamantina River", and both those geographical criteria would include the Collingwood site.

Mr. Shives's main purpose in undertaking this journey in the Outback was to survey a possible route for a "proposed road from our northwestern country to Cleveland Bay", whose western terminus was to be at the Conn Waterhole.

After suffering a bout of malaria, he had returned to Queensland after a few months in Sydney in 1878: Passing through Townsville, I met [Robert] Fitzmaurice, who told me that carrying had fallen away between Cooktown and the Palmer, and that he had left that district.

He suggested that I should join with him in carrying to the western country, and added that he had been informed by a squatter that there was a good opening for a store at the Conn Waterhole, on the Diamantina River.

[38] Another man of Corfield's acquaintance, named Thomas Lynett, had left Townsville for the same destination with backing from Burns, Philp and Co. to set up a shop at Collingwood, if he deemed the then newly laid out town to be suitable upon his inspection.

[40] Another correspondent, identified only as "Outsider", referred to the townsite as the district's "pet grievance" for the danger posed thereto by flooding, and told the story of a would-be shopkeeper and publican who "departed disgusted for some other district" after rejecting the proposed townsite and then trying to build at a spot higher up from the Conn Waterhole at a place called Crosthwaite's Camp (likely named after Benjamin Crosthwaite[41]), but the manager of Elderslie Station objected to this.

Those three streams all flow together at what was to be Collingwood's site, and such glowing reports about the quick success of this "far-out district" may well have contributed to the decision to found the town.

He was also a bit more blissfully ignorant than he realised, for Elderslie Station, Collingwood's neighbour, well under 40 miles from the Conn Waterhole (not even one kilometre, in fact), had been established a few years earlier.

The most exciting news I have heard for some time is that a township is to be proclaimed at our celebrated Conn Waterhole (at the junction of the Western and Diamantina), and that Messrs. Clifton and Aplin, of Townsville, intend putting up a large store to supply us with the necessaries and luxuries of life.

I am almost afraid the news is too good to be true, although a sure fortune awaits any enterprising firm who would push out at once and start business on a large and liberal scale.

It was buried in a list in a government gazette and consisted of a few short lines under "RESERVES.— The following reserves are proclaimed : ...", and it read simply "...for township purposes on the Western River, Gregory North District, under the name of Collingwood, resumed from the Doveridge No.

Rather, the writer seemed to think that the two of them would complement each other: The township of Winton is growing in size with wonderful rapidity, and from all appearance I should imagine a rare business was being done both by the storekeepers and publicans.

[56] Perhaps this was further brought home by the sale of Crown lands at Collingwood announced in 1882 in a supplement to the Government Gazette, and reproduced in The Brisbane Courier, to be held on 30 November of that year.

A Mr. Roydell from nearby Brighton Downs station, 150 km southwest of the town, was trying to swim across the river at Collingwood when one of his horses was swept away by the current and sank.

[66] A happier story unfolded in 1895 when "a lad named Fleetwood", who had supposedly drowned in recent floods at nearby Elderslie, was found alive near Collingwood.

It lay down the Diamantina from the town, but it was "broken up" by March 1882, leaving "a stretch of 70 miles [113 km] – Collingwood to Cork – and no place to recruit ration bags."

[70] Later, on nearby Elderslie Station, which belonged to absentee landlord Sir Samuel Wilson at the time, the woolshed was burnt down on 8 October that year.

Thomas Toombs and his wife Sarah Jane, née Powell, also had an unnamed baby son buried at Collingwood who lived only seven hours on 10 November 1882.

[53][80] At Christmas in 1897, an article in The Capricornian, relayed from 15 December issue of the Winton Herald, mentioned a man named Mr. Louis Webber, "formerly of the Western Hotel at Collingwood".

He announced his intention on 10 December 1879 to open a public house called The St. Helen's Hotel in the new town, and to apply for the needed licence at the monthly licensing meeting to be held on 10 February 1880.

He lived at the time in Aramac, and whether he ever moved to Collingwood and undertook such a business is unknown, but he did claim in his legal notice that the house that he meant to use as his inn was under his ownership.

When a local pastoralist who was prominent in business, horseracing, history, and perhaps even legend, died in 1930, his obituary mentioned a man named Mick Cunningham, who was said to have been a hotel owner in Collingwood.

[97] This came in the wake of another newspaper's declaration that the forthcoming Collingwood races were not exciting much interest that year owing to the recent flooding and attendant problems that that posed to travellers.

One entry describes it as a "parish" and the other as an "unbounded locality", but the coordinates given for both are 22°20′00″S 142°32′00″E / 22.333333°S 142.533333°E / -22.333333; 142.533333 (alternate location of Collingwood), about 180 m west-southwest of the point defined by those at the top of this article, but still well within the old townsite.

Tourist literature for the Winton area mentions angling as a worthwhile activity at the Conn Waterhole, with one brochure even describing it as a "pretty picnic spot".