Fortunately the steamer Pacific had departed from the wharf servicing the Sanitary Plant when a landslip occurred somewhere around 6.30 a.m. on the morning of 7 February 1890, an event which followed a period of heavy rain that had caused a number of landslips along North Quay.

This particular landslip commenced behind what was then the Museum (today’s 159 William Street), breaking and cracking all the ground and structures that lay between Queen’s Wharf Road and the riverbank. The result was the upheaval of the recently completed Sanitary Plant and wharf, damage to the floor of the morgue, with loss of its verandah and jetty and loss of the old and damage to the new Queen’s Wharves. According to a report from the Brisbane Courier, the angle at which new Queen’s Wharf was positioned after the landslip ‘did not argue well for its safety’.

Gangs of men worked quickly to save items under threat from further slippage. Gas and water pipes were made safe. The fittings from the morgue were rescued and the contents of the stone building previously used to house the luggage of immigrants, speedily removed.

That this section of Queen’s Wharf is still capable of a slippery surprise was revealed in 2011 when a burst water main in William Street caused the collapse of the wall behind the Commissariat Store. Archaeological research conducted on the material which slipped revealed that it contained fill material, deposited when a repair to a wall above the Commissariat was made in the late 1880s.

Additional Reading

Brisbane Courier, 8 February 1890, p. 5.

On the night of 11 September 1866 a crowd of more than 400 hungry men who had found their way into the town surged from the Dunmore Arms in George Street.

Urged on by their leaders, one reportedly shouting ‘Bread or blood’, these men were victims of the collapse of the British banking system that had brought government and company work to a standstill. Armed with stones, they headed towards the Commissariat Store in William Street to express their anger.

The authorities were concerned. Artillery had been set up at the gates of Government House further down George Street. Hundreds of government officials were sworn in as special constables by Brisbane Police Magistrate Hugh Massie. The climatic end to the protest came when a police baton charge pushed the mob back into Elizabeth Street. Magistrate Massie had to read the Riot Act twice before the crowd dispersed. He was hit in the eye by a stone on the second occasion.

Sobriety seemed to have returned by morning.  The government offered passage to Rockhampton to some, returned others to the railway line construction outside Ipswich and found three men guilty of riotous assembly and disturbing the peace. Gradually the economy improved and this small crisis was forgotten.

Additional Reading

Paul Wilson, ‘The Brisbane riot of September 1866’, Queensland Heritage, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 13-20.

Welcome home from the First World War for Department of Agriculture soldiers, 1919

In 1919 some 250 officers of the Department of Agriculture and their friends attended a function on the government yacht, Lucinda, to welcome home Agriculture employees who had served their country in the First World War. Ninety-one employees had enlisted from the Department; eleven had died in the conflict.

Also on the Lucinda for the cruise down the river from Queen’s Wharf on that evening of 18 December 1919 was the departmental honour board, a timber memorial made by members of staff of the department. Carpenter J. Cree constructed the honour board to a design prepared by artist HW Mobsby, who also was responsible for painting the names. Today, that same Roll of Honour hangs in the foyer of National Trust House. For reasons yet to be established, the board contains 92 names.

According to the Brisbane Courier which reported on the cruise, several departmental employees had enlisted at the beginning of the war, in August 1914, served throughout the war and only just returned. One of these was stock inspector Gilbert Samuel Birkbeck whose name, along with the letters DSO for the award he was given in 1917, heads the Roll. On that December evening, as the Lucinda cruised the Brisbane River, Birkbeck responded to the ‘Welcome Home’ toast on behalf of all who had served.

Additional Reading

Brisbane Courier, 19 December 1919, p. 7.

Acknowledgment:

SLQ Image 51548

With so many timber buildings in Brisbane town, the threat of fire in the 1860s was a real one, as had been evidence by two significant fires in Queen Street in 1864, the latter of which destroyed fifty houses, two banks, three hotels and four drapery businesses.

In response to the threat of periodic fires, a Citizen Volunteer Fire Brigade had been formed on 30 January 1865. To celebrate their first year as a brigade, on 2 January 1866 the members of this group marched through the principal streets of the town, before holding a ball and supper in the not-yet-occupied Immigration Depot in William Street. The venue was courtesy of its contract builder, former mayor John Petrie.

For the purposes of this social function, the lowest level of the new building became a dining room. A range of food items was set out. After a number of speeches were made and toasts drunk, the group proceeded upstairs to the William Street level, to what has been designated the ball room for the evening. Flags and evergreens decorated the room, along with some of the fire-fighting apparatus used by the Brigade. According to the Brisbane Courier dancing commenced, ‘shortly after 10 o’clock , and was kept up with vigor until the early hours of the morning.’

Additional Reading

• Brisbane Courier, 3 January 1866, p. 3.
• Comyn, TW and FGR Newman, Souvenir: opening new metropolitan station, Brisbane Fire Brigade, November 11th, 1908, p. 5.

Additional Image

Brisbane had no fire engine when the first serious conflagration for the town broke out on 8 July 1855, a Sunday morning, in the building that housed William Pettigrew’s steam saw mill. With no fire engine and few people about, Pettigrew’s first attempt at the mechanisation of timber saw milling in Queensland burnt to the ground, causing him an estimated loss of nearly £3,000.

Pettigrew’s saw mill had commenced its operation just two years previously. Each working day its output was around 7,500 feet (2,300 metres) of milled timber, a resource supporting the growth in construction being experienced then in Queensland. This mechanisation, however, threatened the livelihoods of those involved in the traditional means of timber preparation. Sawyers, who worked in pairs with one man above and one below in the saw pit, were less efficient. Mechanisation made their replacement inevitable. A suspicion that the fire was lit deliberately was raised at the time of the fire, but no proof could be found.

Pettigrew was sleeping on the premises. He discovered the fire in the early hours of the morning, well after it had taken hold. With no fire engine, water from the river was carried in buckets and by this means kept the fire from spreading to other buildings and stacked timber nearby. Unfortunately, the saws at the heart of mill operations were warped and twisted in the disaster.

Pettigrew started again. His rebuilt and expanded saw mill was employing 100 workers when another fire broke out on 18 October 1874, again a Sunday, this fire more serious and damaging than before. Such was its ferocity that the exertions of thirty members of the fire brigade could, as in the first fire, only prevent a spread to surrounding buildings. The flames from the fire were so fierce that Pettigrew’s ship the Gneering, with her rigging and mast ablaze, had to be released from her moorings at the saw mill wharf and moved into the river where the blazing sections could be cut away. Such was the fear that a change in wind could cause the fire to spread that people moved the furniture from houses nearby, causing considerable damage to property in the process.

With his cast iron machinery cracked or warped and his milling buildings destroyed, Pettigrew estimated the losses at between £20,000 and £30,000. The community too would feel this fire’s impact with nearly half of the mill staff being laid off and the supply of milled timber, already in demand, being significantly reduced. A knock-on effect was predicted in the building industry.

As he had done before, Pettigrew rebuilt. His sawmill operated in William Street until 1900.

Additional Reading

• Moreton Bay Courier, 14 July 1855, p. 2.
• Queenslander, 24 October 1874, p. 2.

Additional Viewing:

William Pettigrew’s diaries, Royal Historical Society of Queensland

Acknowledgment:

QSL Image 202324

The Brisbane River rose in flood on three occasions in February 1893. An early cyclonic deluge was followed by a second cyclone event on 11 February. The third cyclone on 19 February peaked slightly lower than the first. Destruction in Brisbane and beyond was widespread.

The first peak occurred around 6 February 1893. Water rose 10 feet (3 metres) above the previous high of 1890, peaking 23 feet 9 inches (7.2 metres) above the mean spring tides. In the South Brisbane Reach of the Brisbane River, between Kurilpa Point and the Kangaroo Point cliffs, the rise flooded wharves and warehouses. Houses swept from their stumps upstream crashed into Victoria Bridge with such force that the northern end of the bridge was swept away.

Both old and new Queen’s Wharf structures were covered, with the river waters inching towards the rear of the then Museum, along what is today’s Queen’s Wharf Road. According to newspaper reports, the Commissariat buildings were under water to a depth of 2-3 feet (approximately 1 metre). The lower portions of the former Immigration Depot, having by then been converted for Department of Agriculture purposes, were flooded to the same extent. Most of Pettigrew’s sawmill buildings were inundated, with a small stone building collapsed.

The Brisbane River again peaked on Sunday 12 February at 7 feet 3 inches (2.2 metres) above the high spring tides but 6 feet 6 inches (2 metres) below the 1890 level. Queen’s Wharf again flooded. The river rose yet again on Friday 17 February following 36 hours of steady rain that the Brisbane Courier described as ‘phenomenally heavy’. It peaked on 19 February around noon, some 10 inches (0.25 metres) below the first flood of that February.

The damage across south-east Queensland was considerable, though not well recorded in outer districts. At Queen’s Wharf the best evidence of damage can be found in the ‘during’ and ‘after’ images. In what appears to be an image from early in the flood, one adventurous photographer captured the rising water as it swirled through Pettigrew’s sawmill wharf. The doomed Tadorna Radjah then seemed securely tied to a wharf slightly upstream.

People viewed the swollen river from the safety of the road to Queen’s Wharf. There they could see how the long western wall of Pettigrew’s sawmill received a broadside of water, while the current in the stream tore at the moored Tadorna Radjah. It sank on 9 February 1893.

Another photographer captured the way in which buildings collected within the sawmill yard, with yet another image showing how the material settled in stacks as the water receded. A photographer standing on the new Queen’s Wharf captured the extent of the sawmill damage by looking uphill towards the buildings on William Street. He was watched by a man in a bowler hat, not surprisingly carrying an umbrella. The remains of the stone building, possible the store constructed by Orr and Honeyman in the 1860s, is at right. A roof and a tumbled pile of timber planks have been left higher on the bank. An image taken by Greenfield& Barraclough provides a close-up of the damage once the river had resumed its usual run.

While the flood peaks of February 1893 adversely affected many Brisbane residents, it proved yet another setback for Pettigrew’s sawmill enterprise at Queen’s Wharf. Operations concluded there in 1900.

Additional Reading

Brisbane Courier, 6 February 1893, p. 3.

Acknowledgment:

• Fryer Library, UQ, uqfl28_b02_a03_o0032.jpg from the Philp Family Collection
• SLQ Image APE-067-0001-0011
• SLQ Image API-033-01-0007
• SLQ Image API-082-0001-0003

Queen’s Wharf was packed with people on 6 August 1901 when the Lucinda arrived carrying the men of the Fourth Contingent who had just returned from the Boer War in South Africa. The steamer Lucinda had been dispatched earlier to collect them from the Brittanic, at anchor in Moreton Bay.

The Boer War commenced in 1899 as a dispute between the British of the Cape Colony and the Dutch-Afrikaner of the Transvaal and Orange Free State. As it was prior to Federation, volunteers from the Australian colonies travelled in Contingents to support the British. Overall some 16,000 Australians fought in the Boer War. The Queensland Imperial Bushmen, consisting of some 387 men in three mounted rifle squadrons, were the Fourth Contingent to travel from Queensland. They departed with 550 horses in May 1900 and saw service for a year from June 1900 in Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Eight men were killed and five died of disease.

Brisbane was keen to welcome home the men of the Contingent who had chosen to return, including nine officers and 164 non-commissioned officers and men. Their commander, Major Deacon, reported that they had been in some tight corners at times and spent considerable days travelling, being accommodated in tents for only three months of the year they had spent away. The Boer War was fought using guerrilla tactics, where raiders would attack their target and withdraw. Reports provided by the men to journalists on their return clearly indicated that these soldiers had pursued the enemy vigorously.

Although the return of the Queensland Imperial Bushmen was a matter for celebration, public support for the war already was being eroded by reports of civilian casualties and the trial and execution of soldiers Harry ‘Breaker’ Morant from South Australia and Peter Handcock, both lieutenants, in 1902. The war ended with the signing of the Treaty of Vereeniging in May 1902

Additional Reading

• Brisbane Courier, 7 August 1901, pp. 5-6.
• http://australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/boer-war
• http://www.bwm.org.au/site/Contingents.asp

Acknowledgment:

SLQ Image 33621

During the flood of February 1893, the first permanent Victoria Bridge collapsed partially, leaving the residents of North and South Brisbane with no direct vehicular connection until repairs could be made. Although a new bridge designed by engineer Alfred Brady was under construction, as a precaution the bridge was closed to traffic and three small river steamers employed to ferry people from Queen’s Wharf to Musgrave Wharf, South Brisbane when floodwaters again began to buffet the temporary section of the bridge in February 1896.

The steamer Pearl had departed from Queen’s Wharf with a load of passengers just after 5.00 p.m. on the evening of 13 February 1896 when, passing between the steamer Normanby and the steamer Lucinda, moored on the south side of mid-stream, the tiny steamer was carried onto the anchor chain of the Lucinda, broke into two and capsized. Eddy currents from the fast running river were blamed for the rapid sinking of the vessel. Captain Chard survived, providing full details to the newspaper reporters.

Estimates of the number of passengers on board the Pearl at the time range from 90 to 100 people. Some 60 were accounted for by the next day with 29 reported likely lost. The speed at which the event occurred, people’s inability to swim and the river’s flood current contributed to their deaths. Some people were able to cling to the anchor chain of the Lucinda or cling to floating objects. In April 1896, Captain Chard’s certificates and licences to be in charge of steamers within the limits of any ports were cancelled.

Additional Reading

• http:/​/​ndpbeta.nla.gov.au/​ndp/​del/​article/​3619209
• http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/72568249

Acknowledgment:

SLQ Image 9320.

John Whereat and his family stepped ashore from the small river steamer Settler at Queen’s Wharf on 3 September 1873, before making their way to the Immigration Depot for their first night’s sleep on dry land after a thirteen week sea voyage.

Having earlier seen an advertisement in the English Guardian newspaper regarding employment on a plantation in Queensland, labourer John Whereat from Frome in Somerset contacted the Reverend RB Hill, whose brother it was owned the plantation. With arrangements made, Whereat and his family boarded the sailing ship Great Queensland on 27 May 1873 for the journey direct to Moreton Bay.

Just before sunset on 1 September, people on the deck of the Great Queensland spotted the lighthouse at Cape Moreton. Two days later, the passengers and their luggage and goods were offloaded to the steamers Settler and Kate for the final stage of their journey up the Brisbane River.

John Whereat kept a diary in pencil in a black bound book. The record of the journey is reproduced in full through the kindness of his great-granddaughter in Voyages of the Great Queensland to Queensland by Kay Gasson, Maryborough Family History Institute.

Whereat wrote initially that the Immigration Depot was a ‘commodious brick building’. He described how the Depot was divided into three wards, single men on the lowest level, married people and children on the second level and single women on the William Street level. The noted that the proprietaries were observed at bed time when married men had to depart the second level, leaving it to the women and children. The married men bunked down with the single men. Whereat was unimpressed with the latter part of the arrangement, writing in his diary, ‘Some came in late intoxicated and kept up shouting, swearing and throwing about tins for a long time’. The men slept on bunks with a single, coarse blanket provided to each for the night. On the first night, sleep eluded Whereat until the early hours.

John Whereat spent the next day writing letters and exploring the town. That night, again, he did not sleep comfortably. It was colder and ‘they keep the windows open for ventilation’. Each day, as the new arrivals found positions and departed, the Immigration Depot emptied; each evening he received more blankets.

The plantation where Whereat and his family were to be employed was in north Queensland and no ships were in port with that destination. The family had to stay in Brisbane until travel could be arranged but the Depot was becoming uncomfortable. A new shipload of German immigrants was expected within days. Whereat looked for a house to rent, a scarce commodity at the time. He believed he had found a place in South Brisbane and hurried back to the Depot only to find that the German immigrants had arrived. He recorded, ‘We then determined to leave. So taking up a few things we had there we came out by the front door as the staircase and room was fast filling with German women. So we left the Depot.’

John Whereat was forty-one years of age. His various attempts to contact the plantation owner resulted in his being informed that strong workers, not families, were needed. The journey north would not be made. The diary concludes at this point.

Additional Reading

Gasson, Kay F; Maryborough Family Heritage Institute Inc. Voyages of the Great Queensland to Queensland, 1873, 1874, 1875. Maryborough, Qld.: Maryborough Family Heritage Institute, 2011.