View from Merivale street, South Brisbane
Image © Brisbane John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.
Sitting in my temporary workspace at the State Library of Queensland with a fabulous view of the city across the river got me wondering about the changing face of Brisbane, and so I was really excited when I discovered this photograph in the John Oxley Collection. Titled View from Merivale Street, South Brisbane it was taken in 1868 and is a breath-taking illustration of just how much has changed in the intervening 150 years. Looking out across the river it was also wonderful to be able to pick out the historical Brisbane landmarks that are still there today.
There’s so much to discover in this photograph that I can’t possibly write about it all, but a few buildings leap out at me. The immediate foreground is the area known today as South Bank, with the large cultural precinct dominating the southern shore of the river. Standing in roughly the same place on Merivale street today you’d be looking straight at the Brisbane Exhibition Centre, with no chance of a glimpse at Victoria Bridge, the CBD, or the inner suburbs on the hills behind.
On the shoreline directly opposite is the old Queen’s Wharf, the main point of entry for anyone arriving in North Brisbane by sea. The buildings closest to the water’s edge are now gone, the block hidden behind land reclaimed for motorways. The new casino is now rising from the ground where they once stood. Happily though two of the buildings just up and to the left of these survive. One is the original William Street Immigration Depot, built in 1866, and next door is the original Commissariat, now a museum of Queensland colonial and convict history. Further to the left at the top of Queens Wharf road are the old military barracks, by this stage dilapidated and soon to be demolished, and now the site of the Treasury Hotel. A few blocks behind the commissariat is the distinctive spire and peaked windows of the original Presbyterian Church, built in 1863 and located at the base of Wickham Terrace.
The Victoria Bridge of 1868 is a terrifying sight, and I’m not sure I’d be happy about crossing it. Opened in June 1865 this timber structure was only intended to be temporary as plans were made for a more permanent and elegant bridge of latticed iron, but a year after it’s opening the Bank of Queensland collapsed, leaving the project unfunded. The wooden bridge took two more years to slowly crumble into the river, and by the time this photograph was taken in 1868 the disintegration of the bridge is apparent. Behind it the private dwellings and single storey buildings in the city are long gone beneath the modern city of Brisbane. North Quay street is now filled with high-rise buildings obscuring the view to the higher ground behind.
Image © Brisbane John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.
One landmark that stands out in the image above the bridge is the tower perched high on Wickham Terrace. Built in the 1820s as a windmill it was the location of frequent cruelty towards both convict labourers and Brisbane’s First Nation Peoples before becoming a signal station and observatory. It is one of the oldest surviving colonial structures in Brisbane, and a more detailed history can be read here. Towards the far left of the tower is Athol Place, built in the early 1860s and now freshly restored by it’s current owners. Athol place was built by Alexander McNab as a row of three elegant townhouses, which he then rented out to tenants including the renowned Dr Joseph Bancroft while the McNab family inhabited the no longer extant Athol Cottage adjacent to the row. Wickham Terrace remained a ‘who’s who’ of Brisbane’s elite until the introduction of the motor car, which enabled the wealthy to establish stately homes further away from the city centre.
From our perspective this image is ‘old’, but it’s important to remember that at the time it was taken these buildings were largely new, and the photograph in it’s own time was an image of the progress of a youthful colony. The land is sparse, hinting at the recent deforestation of the entire area. The few trees are young, recently planted, and on private land in back yards. In a few short years the entire landscape has been utterly transformed. When looking at the difference between this landscape in 2021 and 1868 it’s easy to marvel at the difference.
It’s also important to remember that the 1868 landscape is equally as changed and unrecognisable from an earlier form. What we’re looking at is a complete transformation within a generation. The whole foreground was a traditional meeting, trading and hunting place for the Jagera Nation. The South Bank and Woolloongabba area was full of creeks and waterholes for fishing and swimming, and north of the river the Brisbane CBD was Meanjin, the home of the Turrbal People. Wickham terrace was the site of a large camping ground and place of resistance until subdivision began in the late 1850s, shortly before Athol Place was built. So while for a viewer in 2021 this photograph may invoke a feeling of nostalgia for a romanticised past, at the time it was taken it encapsulated the shock of the new in a landscape radically transformed over a few short years.
This week’s post is chock full of links as there’s so much more to learn here. It’s just an incredible amount of history contained in one photograph. Follow this link to the original high resolution image provided by the State Library of Queensland. You could write a book about everything captured in this one shot, and I haven’t even delved into the mystery the two young women in the bottom left-hand corner, their faces completely obscured by handkerchiefs. Flies? Sun protection? The smell from a nasty job that needed doing? Perhaps one day I’ll figure out what they were up to and I’ll let you know.
