The Marshall steam engine was the main driving engine for the saws in the mill, running a flat belt from its flywheel. It, along with the other steam engines in the mill, was powered by the Stirling boiler, which was fed with timber off cuts. The Stirling boiler was a water- tube boiler, in which the water to be heated was contained within tubes, with fire passing around the outside-in contrast to fire-tube boilers, which had fire passing through tubes which were surrounded by water. The water-tube type was favoured for larger boilers for safety reasons. Stirling water tube boilers were at their most popular in the early 1900s; many of the 30 or so installed in Victoria between 1904 and 1912 were large boilers for electrical power generation or larger manufacturers. Most activity regarding Stirling boiler installation in Queensland, based on newspaper advertising, appears to be between 1900 and 1914, and the Agent for Queensland in 1903 was Norman M Bell.
