Rawson's Hollow

Brothers Charles Collinson Rawson and Edmund Stanfield Rawson purchased the grazing property Abington in the Pioneer Valley, including a portion known as Shamrock Vale in 1867, and nicknamed it Sleepy Hollow, and hence its popular name The Hollow.

Two houses, The Hollow and The Nyth were built on the banks of the Pioneer River, the present township of Mirani occupying the home paddock of The Hollow. Here the Rawsons attempted to recreate formal English gardens, including a lawn tennis court, gravel paths with vistas created by shrubberies, exotic vines and trees, a weather station, an attractive English-style fowl-house, and to the side of a fourteen foot wide verandah, a large fernery of split palms which housed a bathroom at one end.

On the high bank of the Pioneer River, they planted an extensive fenced vegetable garden and orchard.

H.H. Finch Hatton, who visited the homestead in 1878, described it in his book Advance Australia as "the prettiest place on the whole of the Pioneer".

Due to this garden's beauty and place in local folklore, the name and inspiration has been included in the Mackay Regional Botanic Gardens, even though the garden and homestead were located some 30 minutes upriver at Mirani.