Old Rainworth Stone Store is a heritage-listed storehouse and now museum at Wealwandangie Road, Cairdbeign, 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) south of the town of Springsure, Central Highlands Region, Queensland, Australia.

[1] In 1844 Ludwig Leichhardt explored an area to the east of what is now the township of Springsure, naming the Expedition Range, Albinia Downs and Comet Creek.

[1] While the Leichhardt Pastoral District was officially opened to settlement on 10 January 1854, it was only after William Landsborough explored the Springsure area in 1858 that pastoralists began to take up runs in the vicinity.

[3] Gregory subsequently took up a number of leases in the district, paying the rent on Wallaroo, Norwood, Emu Plains, Osmondthorpe and Yarra No.2 in March 1861.

Gregory did not hold these leases for long, and in September 1862 the rents were paid by lessees Jesse Gregson and Alexander and William Busby, who called the combined runs Rainworth Station.

Failing to find work in Sydney, Gregson took up Busby's offer and soon gained employment at Collaroy, a nearby property, where he learnt stock management and was appointed head overseer by 1858.

Gregson described the run in his diaries:[1]I made my head station and called it Rainworth after the hill on the opposite side of the creek.

There was sparse timber, a stunted Downs box in patches all around, which without diminishing the open character of the country added to its beauty.

Opposite was the strikingly picturesque hill which Gregory had named Rainworth and which some seven or eight hundred feet above the level of the adjacent country.

On 17 October 1861, a few months after Gregson had taken up occupancy at Rainworth, the local Kari people attacked the nearby pastoral property of Cullin-la-ringo.

Within days the former owner of Cullin-la-ringo, PE MacDonald, accompanied by a troop of Native Mounted Police, led reprisal attacks against the Kari people.

The store was built out of stone in order to reduce threats of fire and to act as a safe haven during an Aboriginal raid.

He bound the walls with a mortar mix of sand, lime and a holding element obtained from crushing calcified basalt.

At Cairdbeign on 4 January 1865, a meeting of prominent landholders Archibald Buchanan, Robert Patton, William Thomson, Peter McIntosh and Jesse Gregson decided to form a local agricultural society to improve the quality of livestock.. Gregson was the inaugural Secretary of the Society.

[1] After the Gregson family left Rainworth in 1874, the property was offered for sale but there were no buyers and James Nesbit was appointed the manager.

[1] Government land policy at this period encouraged the resumption of large pastoral leaseholds for closer subdivision, but existing lessees could apply for pre-emptive selection as freehold, to protect improvements such as head station homesteads and shearing sheds.

[1] Alexander McLaughlin (grazier of Burnside near Springsure) acquired the Rainworth Head Station freehold in 1919, and the property has been owned by his descendants ever since.

The McLaughlin sisters, concerned about the deterioration of the old stone store and wanting to restore and conserve its heritage, established a Committee for the Preservation of Old Rainworth Fort.

[1] The main room on the western side of the building is accessed through double timber doors made of diagonal boards, and which have original fittings.

[1] The encircling verandah has stone flooring and a set of timber stairs lead from the western side down to a cellar.

The Old Rainworth Stone Store illustrates the pattern of early non-indigenous settlement in Queensland, where the development of pastoral properties preceded agriculture and the establishment of towns.

Because of the distance of Rainworth Station from a major settlement, lessee Jesse Gregson had the stone building erected in 1862 to store and protect supplies brought twice a year from Rockhampton.

Its construction illustrates the need on pastoral properties for the provision of adequate storage facilities in harsh climatic conditions remote from the source of supply.

These characteristics include the use of traditional European building techniques combined with local materials with inherent insulation qualities.

Rainworth Stone Store is an asset valued by the community as one of the earliest surviving buildings in the area and for its connections with the past.