Dr Melissa Bellanta

Rough play: Brisbane larrikins and popular theatre, 1880-1890s

Along with the extraordinary development of Brisbane’s inner suburbs in the 1880s came the growth of a rough larrikin culture. This culture was keenly influenced by popular entertainment, especially bare-knuckle boxing shows, sensational melodramas and blackface minstrelsy. In this paper, I will discuss the interrelationship between Brisbane larrikinism and these popular entertainment forms, drawing on Ronald Lawson’s oral history research for his landmark work, Brisbane in the 1890s (1973). My interest in Brisbane larrikins forms part of a broader cultural history of larrikinism in eastern Australia between 1870 and the 1920s, in which I pay particular attention to larrikin audiences for popular theatre. What I want to do here is use Brisbane as a case-study through which to think through this broader cultural history of larrikinism. Conversely, I want to reflect on some of the implications of my larger project for understandings of Brisbane’s urban history.

Joanna Besley

History and community reflections on social history exhibitions presented by the Museum Of Brisbane, 2003-2009

Museum of Brisbane (MoB) is a fairly recent addition to the family of Queensland’s museums, having opened in 2003 as a transformation of the former Brisbane City Gallery into a hybrid museum that presents a changing program of social history and visual arts exhibitions exploring the city’s history and contemporary cultures. Since opening, MoB’s exhibitions program has been characterised by eclectic topics, a strong commitment to collaborating with the community and presenting multiple viewpoints, and the use of community collections. Museum of Brisbane does not have a collection of historical artefacts and instead borrows items from the community and other institutions for its exhibitions.

This paper will discuss a number of the social history exhibitions presented by MoB over the past six years, examining them in the light of this very particular approach. Such questions as the place of research and the role of historians and curators when collaborating with the community will be examined. Exhibition case studies will include Remembering Goodna: stories from a Queensland mental hospital about the history of Queensland’s oldest and longest operating public health facility and Taking to the Streets: two decades that changed Brisbane 1965-1985 about protest during the Joh era.

Dr Timothy Bottoms

Conspiracy of silence -the colouring of Australian history, Queensland’s 19th century frontier

Abstract: This is a journey through Queensland’s moving frontier in the nineteenth century. The impact of frontier violence is considered and what role the national characteristic of amnesia has played on the national psyche. From Myall Creek (1838) to Cullin-la-Ringo (1861), to the Massacre of the Mitchell River (1864) and Battle Camp (1873) in Far North Queensland, as well as the Skull Pocket-Mulgrave River-Skeleton Creek Battue of 1884 and the Speewah Massacre of 1890. These events have somehow disappeared from the Queensland’s history and replaced with the artificially peaceful ‘Pioneering Myth’.  The role of the colonial Queensland government and their operation of the Native Mounted Police in implementing the policy of violence on the expanding frontier is considered. Apparently this is part of a national sense of forgetfulness. This appears to be linked to our national amnesia regarding Australia’s convict ‘birthstain’. Perhaps we have seen a similar approach in the last decade with the implementation of Australia’s foreign policy. The brutality of the frontier and the near century of authoritarian control of Indigenous Queenslanders has left a deliberate legacy of selective memory. Is this one of the factors that has made Queensland different from the rest of Australia?

Mary Burns

Brisbane: whither art thou?

Abstract: During the 1920s and 1930s Queenslanders were active participants in the world-wide interest in town planning. Town planners and others were actively engaged in discussion and promotion of a range of town planning initiatives for the betterment of the urban environment. Prominent among these were proposals for a cultural precinct in Turbot Street, Brisbane and a government offices embankment beautification scheme for William Street and adjacent riverside. Both schemes were Queensland government initiatives designed by Raymond Nowland, architect with the Department of Public Works. The schemes excited public debate and the cultural precinct was almost realised. Site works for a proposed State Library of Queensland commenced in the late 1930s but work was halted with the outbreak of World War II. These schemes remain as a tantalising archive of a Brisbane townscape that may have been. This paper contends that these schemes stand in provocative comparison with current urban development proposals which commandeer the public space in Brisbane.

Dr Cathie Clement

Promising imagery: northern settlement ideas of the 1850s and 1860s

During the 1850s and early 1860s, a range of individuals promoted ideas for colonisation in northern Australia. Trelawney Saunders was among them. He advocated settlement on the Plains of Promise, with a free port on the Gulf of Carpentaria. His fanciful imagery was typical of the information used in settlement concepts at that time.

‘Promising imagery’ looks at the entrepreneurial activity of Saunders and others. It shows how that activity related to northern Australian exploration, to the repositioning of Queensland’s western border, and to the eventual establishment of short-lived settlements in Australia's north-west. It also shows how the settlers who went to the north-west were casualties of a longstanding tendency for explorers and entrepreneurs to exaggerate the potential of northern Australia.

Gillian Colclough

‘Behind its veil of opaque whiteness, every quart of milk hides a potential peril to the public health': milk, microbes and sanitation in early 20th century Queensland

This paper maps the Queensland government’s early approaches to food controls. As comprehension of the role of microbes in disease grew in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many disease germs were found in foods likely to be consumed by small children. Unacceptable child mortality rates and connections between ideas of racial and public health motivated governments to introduce food safety standards. Racial concerns were particularly strong in Queensland where long-term white population growth seemed a vital issue. As such, the government moved swiftly after Federation to ratify regulations enforcing food-borne disease control measures intended to protect the health of its white working and middle classes. While referring to several disease concerns, this paper gives special attention to bovine tuberculosis because of the prominence of milk (deemed a racial food) in infant and child diets. Using oral references to dairying and household milk production it demonstrates the ways in which ordinary people handled milk products before the availability of domestic refrigeration. Combining these accounts with official records, it reveals the Queensland government’s efficiency in convincing manufacturers and public to adopt modern food handling techniques in times when racial fears reinforced the need to protect Queensland’s most vulnerable citizens.

Mark Cryle

Reading Christison of Lammermoor

In 1927 the British firm Alston Rivers published an account of the life of a prominent nineteenth century Queensland pastoralist, Robert Christison,  written by his daughter Mary Bennett.  Described by one contemporary as “stupendous work”  and praised to for being “a pretty complete political history of Queensland in the sixties” , Christison of Lammermoor remains a significant source  on Queensland history. Unlike most  of his contemporaries, Christison, according to the text, befriended the local Dalleburra people, protected them from settler violence and developed a mutually-beneficial  working relationship with them.  A similar pattern is described by Constance Petrie in her account of her father’s life in the Moreton region, Tom Petrie’s Reminiscences of Early Queensland” (1904). Most typically both texts are cited in Queensland historiography as the exception to the violent pattern of   relations between white European settlers and indigenous Australians on the  frontier.  Both texts too were compiled by the daughters of the central characters many years after the events that they describe took place. Petrie’s text has been analysed in detail elsewhere. This paper will evaluate Bennett’s text as a source. How useful  is this account for historians? What insights can we gain into the particular historical episodes   that it describes. What parallels emerge with the Petrie source? What can we learn too about that little-studied  genre of settler memoirs/reminiscences that it represents?

Dr Hilary Davies  

Middle-class social mobility in colonial Queensland: The case study of the Hume family

Abstract: The Hume family biography is a case study of middle-class life and social mobility in colonial Queensland between 1863 and 1901. Walter Hume migrated to Queensland in January 1863 to train as a surveyor and within several years was joined by his mother, four siblings and by his fiancée. Each member of his family had differing experiences of social mobility in Queensland. Their successes and failures reveal the way in which external environmental factors, personal attributes and appropriate middle-class behaviour were relevant to success.

The idea that Australia is an egalitarian society has existed since the nineteenth century despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. In the Humes’ case, upward social mobility is attributable to their personal traits, middle-class cultural background and conformity to the dominant British Victorian middle-class culture while operating within the parameters of the political, economic and social conditions of the colony.

This paper will outline the factors involved in their success and the ways in which the economic, political and social conditions that were operational in Queensland at the time provided the opportunities that the Humes were able to seize, aided by their personal abilities, appropriate social background including education, resources and connections.

Dr Leanne Day

Brisbane's Johnsonian Club: a study of its colonial years

Two founding members of Brisbane’s Johnsonian Club, James Brunton Stephens and Horace Earle, were among the 400 passengers who travelled to Moreton Bay aboard the Flying Cloud in 1865. Both men were already published authors and they became acquainted during the four month unbroken voyage. Their fellow travellers represented a cross-section of the sorts of people they could expect to meet on the streets once they were in Brisbane. Of this sample, reports tell of how many of them only had one set of clothes, which resulted in a shipboard infestation of lice; and their behaviour included gratuitous cursing, swearing, fighting and the throwing of ‘different things’, making it ‘dangerous to pass up or down the steerage at any time . . .’ It also included violence by the hospital nurse and physical assaults by the cook. Given this introduction to Queensland colonial life, it is easy to understand why Stephens and Earle took refuge in an exclusive gentleman’s literary club of their own making to enjoy the company of other professional men who shared their cultural interests. This paper will discuss the Johnsonian Club in context of its Brisbane environment and why it was so spectacularly successful.

Carol Gistitin

Mount Etna: mining or recreation?

Mount Etna, a peak about forty kilometres north of Rockhampton, was the subject of a fifty-year contest between conservationists and limestone mining, the longest running campaign in Australia’s ‘green’ history. Its pyramid shape, the dry rain forest around it, and its caves which are the habitat for bats, gave it aesthetic, environmental, and recreational value. Mining for limestone by Central Queensland Cement, a subsidiary company of Queensland Cement and Lime began in the 1960s, opposed by the University of Queensland Speleological Society and the Central Queensland Speleological Society with the  support of  other conservation groups.

Mining Mount Etna fitted the Queensland ethos of exploiting the environment for economic gain, and contributed to an industry essential to the state’s growth.  Caving was not a popular sport but the recreation of a minority and moreover, it was largely invisible.  It had no obvious commercial value.  Bats, protected by law, were without appeal and their loss of habitat inspired no great sympathy.

The arguments used to support these opposing and irreconcilable land uses, and changing attitudes to conservation issues, are explored in this paper. The recently achieved resolution is outlined.

Dr Helen Klaebe

The Albion Flour Mill History Project: Anything but run of the mill.

Abstract: The Albion Flour Mill has played a significant role in Brisbane’s history. Built in 1930 at a time when Australia was feeling the effects of its worst economic depression, The Mill continued operations for more than 72 years. During its years of operation, The Mill generated significant employment opportunities that led to the development of Albion and the surrounding area.

The Albion Mill ceased operation in 2005 but the area is currently being revitalized by the FKP Property Group through their urban development renewal project. The Mill Albion community history project is a diverse public history/art program conducted for FKP by a research team lead by Dr Helen Klaebe of the Creative Industries Faculty of QUT. The project captures the social heritage of The Mill Albion.

Dr Jane Lennon

Heritage places in Queensland

This paper will explore the 150 year evolution of identifying and managing Queensland’s heritage places, geographic entities with politically sanctioned protection. It will examine Queensland events in the intercolonial, interstate, national and international context; and it will note the key players and organisations in securing this protection both through public campaigns and through legislation.

Maureen Lillie

Journeys through a shifting landscape: the tours of Queensland Governors 1859 - 1901

On 10 December 1859, Sir George Ferguson Bowen read out, from the balcony of a hired residence, the document that announced the establishment of the colony of Queensland. As Governor of a place with as yet no administrative structure he had many pressing concerns, but one of his first acts was to embark on tours of settlements by land and sea.

Between 1859 and the Federation of the Australian colonies in 1901, formal tours of regions outside the capital by Governors of Queensland were a vital part of their role. They toured to maintain loyalty to the Crown, to observe and report, to encourage and to learn. 

The landscape across which they travelled changed physically as European settlement and technology progressed, but also socially and politically. The way in which tours were conducted, what was seen, said and done, reflects these changes.

This paper utilises official and unofficial reports and the extensive press coverage attending the tours to gain insights into the views of both governor and governed during the period when Queensland was a self-governing colony.

Dr Anne Monsour

Already here: writing Lebanese into Queensland history

It is generally assumed Lebanese immigration to Australia is relatively recent. This is not the case as Lebanese have been migrating to Australia since the late 1870s. Records show that by the end of the 1880s, there were at least 31 Lebanese, including six women, in Queensland. The arrival of increasing numbers of Lebanese in the last two decades of the nineteenth century was part of a mass emigration from the Syria/Lebanon region. Unfortunately for the Lebanese immigrants, their arrival in Australia in increasing numbers coincided with a period of economic insecurity and burgeoning nationalism which resulted in the broadening of anti-Chinese legislation to include all Asiatic and coloured persons. So, while many factors influenced the interaction between Lebanese immigrants and the political, social and economic structures of Australian society, race and religion were the defining factors. The early Lebanese immigrants were settlers rather than sojourners and despite the serious obstacles they faced, they were determined to stay and to make Queensland their new home. However, their presence as a hidden minority, until recently, is testimony to the success of discriminatory legislation, both colonial/state and federal which made it quite clear non-Europeans were not welcome and their acceptance tenuous.

Sean O’Keeffe

The Great North Coast Road: The early development of the Bruce Highway and features of its cultural landscape

Abstract: Originally designated as a ‘tourist road’, essentially a gravel track extending between Rothwell and Eumundi, the first section of the Bruce Highway opened in December 1934. This paper traces the development of the Bruce Highway on the North Coast (Sunshine Coast) during the inter-war period. It explores the wider context that shaped the origins of the road, including the development of the North Coast tourist industry and the evolution of attendant transport arteries that emerged in the wake of increasing car ownership in Queensland. It will outline the central role the Great North Coast Road Committee and other local interests played in agitating for a serviceable link between the North Coast and Brisbane from the 1910s. The paper will demonstrate how the decision to construct the Bruce Highway by the State government was shaped by the road’s potential to deliver motoring tourists to the North Coast’s sea and mountain resorts.

In addition to exploring the history of the highway, the focus of this paper is to identify roadside heritage places that remain along the original route. Examples such as fruit stalls, roadside plantings, rest areas, hotels, ‘big’ things, caravan parks and service stations provide insights into early travel on the highway, while demonstrating the changing ways motor tourists have been attracted and catered for since the 1930s. Collectively they are an important component of the Sunshine Coast’s tourism heritage.

Peter Osbourne

Rivers and resorts: how rivers and sheltered waters influenced the location of the Sunshine Coast's resort towns

Two out of three of the North Coast’s (Sunshine Coast’s) oldest and largest resort towns are located on a river. Tewantin/Noosa is located on the Noosa River and Maroochydore on the Maroochy River. The third, Caloundra, is located near the sheltered waters of Pumice Stone Passage which itself provides some of the functions of a river. This paper explores why this came to be.

Rivers made a dual contribution to the development of resort towns in the late 19th and early 20th century: they provided a convenient means of access to the locale and a sheltered place to swim. Timber getters were probably the first to recognise the potential of the resorts as watering places when they accessed the timber of the interior via the river systems. The rivers later provided access to the coast from the interior. The convenience of rivers as transport coincided with the Victorian preference for bathing in the still waters of the river mouths. The development of resorts at these locations was inevitable.      

Bronwyn Roper and Mellissa Case

When QAL came to town: living through the construction years in Gladstone 1964-1967

Over the last 150 years, industry has helped shape Queensland as we know it today. While industrial history has been well documented from an organisational perspective, it is not often that the social and cultural impact on the townships is explored. When QAL Came to Town was an exciting project that captured the spirit of the township of Gladstone in central Queensland from 1964 – 1967 during a time of rapid change with the construction of the world’s largest alumina refinery.

This paper will explore the both the triumphs and tragedies of living in Gladstone during the 60s through the eyes of twenty different people as well as the process of uncovering never before published stories and personal insights to produce a legacy for future generations and treasured community keepsake.

Dr Brian Sinclair

Tracking heritage and gauging significance : assessing the heritage significance of the Etheridge Railway

Abstract: The Etheridge Railway was constructed from Almaden to Charleston (Forsayth) between 1907 and 1910 as a private railway, although it was managed, and later purchased, by the Queensland Government. The line was constructed cheaply, as a branch off the Chillagoe Railway, to supply the Chillagoe Company’s underutilised smelters with copper ore. Although the railway’s mining use was short lived, its value to communities and pastoralists in the Etheridge district persuaded the government to maintain the line.

Today the Savannahlander, a tourist railmotor, is the only commercial traffic on the Etheridge Railway. It travels westwards from Cairns to Almaden before leaving the Chillagoe Railway and heading south on the Etheridge line. In August 2008 Dr Brian Sinclair of the Cultural Heritage Branch of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) journeyed aboard the Savannahlander as part of the process of assessing the Etheridge Railway for inclusion in the QHR.

This paper will briefly discuss the history of the Etheridge Railway, the methodology and processes used by the EPA to judge the heritage significance of places nominated to the QHR, the specific issues that arose during the assessment of the Etheridge Railway and the joys of a four day journey on a 1960s era railmotor.

Janet Spillman

Brisbane's breathing space: Mt Coot-tha

Most Queenslanders are urban dwellers with an appreciation for local green space. Brisbane City Council’s first Lord Mayor William Jolly came to power in 1925 with wide powers and substantial funds. The new municipality inherited Mt Coot-tha which had been given in trust as a recreation reserve in 1880. Mayor Jolly recognized its  recreational value and visual amenity. Informed by the ideals of the City Beautiful movement, he set about acquiring the rest of Taylor’s Range. In his commitment to the provision of breathing spaces, he purchased lands that are now key areas for the preservation of biodiversity. Since 1925, the forest reserve has been used for wartime ammunition storage, gold mining during depression years, and radio and television stations. Despite ambitious plans on the part of different councils, public interest has preserved the mountain’s natural values. As part of Brisbane Forest Park, and the proposed d’Aguilar biosphere, Mt Coot-tha links with corridors that may allow the preservation of species into future uncertain times.

Barbara Taylor

Community building and empowering experiences? Women's voluntary work in Queensland and its place-based dimensions, 1859-1959

Recent international scholarship has placed new emphasis on women’s formative role in the social, economic, political and cultural lives of their respective communities. Some researchers have suggested the greatest legacy of women’s organised contribution to those communities can be found in the history of their voluntary work. Others have urged greater recognition of that contribution through landmark recognition and historic preservation programs.

To date, women’s voluntary work in Queensland has drawn only limited scholarly interest and it is not well represented on the State Heritage Register. Attempts to establish links between place-based cultural heritage and women’s history generally have been limited to national heritage agencies in North America and Australia. However, methodologies have tended to rely on existing historiography that is traditionally non-inclusive of women and gaps in the record continue to be a problem.

This paper summarises the results of a comprehensive study designed to address these shortcomings. That study adopted a gender-sensitive approach to exploring women’s voluntary work and its associated place-based dimensions, across ninety-four groups in Queensland between 1859 and 1959. It asserted women’s formative role as historical agents and community builders. It also gave emphasis to women’s volunteer experiences – their diversity over time between and across groups, their capacity for empowerment and their manifestation in the built environment. The ability of cultural heritage to effectively and comprehensively represent those experiences and map key contributions to building and shaping communities was also tested.

Bernadette Turner

Patrick Mayne: the man and his politics

By the time Patrick Mayne stood for election in the first Brisbane Municipal Council in 1859, his political opinions and personality were well known to the electorate and, as a result, he gained the second highest number of votes. He remained an alderman and a member of the council’s finance committee each year, except for 1862, until his untimely death in 1865. His capabilities prompted Robert Cribb to nominate him for mayor in 1861, but he declined the nomination, possibly because of the politically motivated attacks generated by his appointment in 1860 as the Catholic representative on the Board of National Education.

A liberal, Mayne wielded considerable influence in several Queensland electorates, which triggered attacks in the press from the conservatives. From time to time there were rumours that he would stand for Queensland parliament and in 1863 he seriously considered doing so; however, he stood aside to ensure that the liberal vote was not diluted. His satirical sense of humour was appreciated by many, but it also provided his opponents with opportunities to undermine his influence, and in more recent times has been cited as evidence of his alleged insanity. His fellow citizens did not misunderstand this and demonstrated their regard at his funeral, which was the largest then held in Brisbane.

Geoff Wharton

The sandalwood industry on Cape York Peninsula

Northern sandalwood (Santalum lanceolatum) is a shrub or small tree that grows on Cape York Peninsula and other regions of Australia. The first recorded European sighting and collection of the plant in Australia was by Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander at the Endeavour River, south-eastern Cape York Peninsula in 1770.

During the first three decades of the twentieth century, a wild sandalwood harvesting industry developed on the Peninsula, stimulated by demand from China for the timber.  Many of the Europeans involved in the industry relied heavily on the local knowledge of Aboriginal people in each area to find and harvest the timber.

Although much has been written about the dominant Western Australian sandalwood industry, information on the industry on Cape York Peninsula and other Queensland areas appears to be quite fragmentary and little has been published.  Possibly this may be explained by a loss of interest by commerce and government following the uncontrolled decimation of the resource on Cape York Peninsula by the late 1920s and the overall demise of the Queensland industry due to market decline during the Sino-Japanese War and the Second World War.

Dr Joanna Wills

Remembering the cane: conserving the sugar legacy of Far North Qld

Abstract: In 2008, Far North Queensland retains many places and sites related to the sugar cane industry. Farms are still working on the coastal plains in the hinterland around Tully, Innisfail and Babinda. Cane cutters barracks dot the landscape from Tully to Mossman and are tangible, though often adapted, evidence of the region’s migration and labour history. Tram tracks still crisscross the fields and townships, while mills punctuate the landscape with their smoke plumes and chimney stacks. These places tell the story of sugar and reflect its influence on the development and expansion of the region. But aging buildings that are vulnerable to cyclones and flood damage, the downturn of the sugar industry and many farmers ageing and selling out, this cultural landscape and its associated heritage is now vulnerable and in danger of being lost.

This paper explores the tangible and intangible sugar heritage in the Far North that is being considered for protection by the Cultural Heritage Branch of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Far North State Wide Survey Team. It outlines the approach used to locate and identify places of heritage significance and highlights the important characters associated with their history.