Why the peanut silos still define Kingaroy

Photo: Kingaroy peanut silos, Haly Street (2005) by Rossrs, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Ask anyone outside the South Burnett what they know about Kingaroy and you'll usually hear one word. Peanuts. Drive into town and the reason is standing right there on Haly Street.

The white silos are the first thing you see and the last thing you lose in the rear-view mirror. They've been part of the skyline since 1938, and in 2010 they were added to the Queensland Heritage Register.

How Kingaroy became peanut country

Kingaroy itself only took off once the railway arrived in 1904. Farmers around the district were growing small patches of peanuts from about 1901, selling them to shops and confectioners in Brisbane, Maryborough, and Rockhampton. By around 1920 it had become a serious crop, helped along when maize prices dropped and growers needed something else that paid.

In 1924 local growers decided they weren't going to accept the low prices merchants were offering. After a meeting at Memerambi they pushed for a Peanut Board, and the Queensland Peanut Marketing Board was gazetted that August. Kingaroy became its headquarters, and the industry has been run from town ever since.

The silos themselves

Storage was the big problem. Nuts had to be kept dry, protected from pests, and released steadily so the market wasn't flooded one year and short the next. The first silo, built in 1928, was timber.

The concrete and brick silos you see today came later. Silo No. 2 was opened on 1 December 1938 by the Minister for Agriculture and Stock, Frank Bulcock, who opened the new Kingaroy Shire Council Chambers across the road on the same day. Silo No. 3 followed in 1948 and Silo No. 4 by 1951, as the crop kept growing after the war.

In February 1951 a fire destroyed the old timber silo and damaged two of the others. According to the heritage record, burning peanuts kept smouldering for months and Australia was short of peanuts for more than a year afterwords. The concrete silos were repaired and are still part of the working plant, which the Peanut Company of Australia runs today.

The Queensland Heritage Register lists them at 42 metres high. It also mentions the way they glow at dawn and dusk, which anyone who's driven past early in the morning will know.

What this means if you live here, or want to

I don't think a landmark adds a dollar figure to a house, and I'd be wary of anyone who says it does. What the silos do is tell buyers this is a real working town with its own history, rather than a dot on the map between Brisbane and somewhere else.

People moving to the South Burnett want to know where they'd actually be living. Being able to say a home is a short walk from the main street and the silos, or that you can see them from the back verandah, is a simple way to help someone picture it. Good descriptions are built from details like that.

For locals, it's a reminder of why the district was settled and farmed the way it was. The red soil that made peanuts work here is the same soil people still buy acreage for today.

If you're thinking about selling in Kingaroy, Nanango, Wondai, or nearby and want a straight chat about what your place is worth, I'm happy to come out and have a look. For the first 10 homeowners who list with me before Christmas, I'm covering the marketing out of my own pocket. Get in touch or start at sell.

General information only. History and dates are from the Queensland Heritage Register entry for the Kingaroy Peanut Silos (602764) and the State Library of Queensland, checked 24 October 2026.