Our Brisbane History

Pic: Flyer advertising a special meeting of the Brisbane Women's Peace Army c. 1916 with special guest speaker Adela Pankhurst, a leading anti-war campaigner during World War I. Meetings were often controversial as the Women's Peace Army projected a militant and radical image along with a socialist ideology.

A Nation Divided

The Conscription Issue

In 1916 the Great War had been under way for two years and Australian troops had been directly involved since 1915. Allied troops had sustained massive casualties at both the Somme and Ypres. When Prime Minister Billy Hughes visited London in 1916, he became convinced that, unless conscription was introduced, Australia would not be able to raise the number of troops required to support the Imperial war effort.

In Australia the debate on conscription raged acrimoniously. It polarized the community along class, religious and political lines. Hughes was convinced that conscription legislation would be defeated in the Senate. He therefore submitted the question to a referendum. This occurred in October 1916 and was narrowly defeated, with three states including Queensland voting against it. Despite this rejection, Hughes held a second referendum on the conscription issue in December 1917. It was again defeated, with four states this time voting 'No'.

In Brisbane there were a number of violent street clashes between pro- and anti-conscriptionists. On 8 October 1916 a group of between 50 and 100 uninformed men entered the Domain to disrupt an anti-conscription rally attended by 2,000 people. During the melee one of the military pickets, Lieutenant Mackay, was shot by an unknown assailant. Both sides blamed the other for the assault. The anti-conscription forces then established their own vigilance body called the Labour Volunteer Army, to prevent the disruption of further gatherings. These street conflicts were the most obvious example of the great polarization which conscription had created in the community.

The Queensland Premier, T.J. Ryan, was totally opposed to conscription and this brought him into conflict with Prime Minister Hughes. In 1917 Ryan gave a strongly worded anti-conscription speech. At the direction of the Prime Minister, the Commonwealth Censor prevented the Brisbane Courier from reporting the speech. To counter this, Ryan repeated his speech in Parliament with the purpose of having it printed in Hansard. The censor attempted to thwart Ryan's plan by descending on the Hansard. Undaunted, Ryan had a special copy of the Government Gazette printed detailing the correspondence which had led to the raid. Fifty thousand copies of the Gazette were distributed.

Pic: Grading butter at the railway cold stores, Roma Street, Brisbane, ca. 1917

State Enterprises

A Ryan Reform

The election of the Labor Government led by Mr T.J. Ryan in 1915 changed the face of politics in Queensland forever. For the first time socialist principles and philosophies were able to be translated into legislation. One of the most interesting examples of this war Ryan's creation of a wide range of State Enterprises.

On his election, Ryan proposed government ownership of coalmines, steelworks, granaries, sugar mills, abattoirs, produce agencies and markets. In later years, hotels, railway refreshment rooms, cattle stations, butcher shops, plant nurseries and a lottery were added to this list. Ryan's notion of State Enterprises differed from the classic notion of nationalization. Rather than the government talking over an entire industry, Ryan's idea was that the Government would become one of the participants in an industry as a way of keeping prices down and ensuring competition. In the early part of this century, governments around the world enacted anti-trust and monopolies legislation in an attempt to stop price of this type of thinking. Once area in which Ryan advocated an outright state monopoly was workers compensation insurance. He made this compulsory and developed a system which was paid for by industry and which provided automatic payments for injuries sustained at work.

Conservative forces in the Parliament saw Ryan's move as rampant socialism. Socialists in the Labor Party, however, saw it as State Capitalism. Ryan simply saw it as government becoming active in business to assist workers as both consumers and producers. The scale and profitability of the State Enterprises varied enormously. The State Insurance Office operated very effectively and was able to offer premiums to workers at one third lower costs than its competitors. It also generated revenue for the government.

State Butcher Shops, of which there were ninety, were not so viable. Although they effectively held the prices down, they traded at a loss. Most of the State Enterprises were closed by the Moore National Country Party Government when it was elected in 1929.

Your Country Calls

Recruitment

World War I was an international war of unprecedented scale. Australia's imperial obligations committed it to a role in the fighting in Europe. As a consequence, from August 1914 there was a requirement to bring together an Australian Imperial Force.

During the course of the war, Australian troop levels reached 416,809. Of this number, 57705 came from Queensland. At the declaration of war many enthusiastically enlisted. However, during the next four years this enthusiasm waxed and waned and it was often difficult for State Governments and Local Recruiting Committees to reach the agreed quotas. During the war monthly enlistment figures in Queensland varied from 163 to 3,886.

Sophisticated advertising techniques using powerful graphic design were enlisted in a series of recruitment campaigns to encourage young men to enlist. These generally appealed to an over-simplified sense of imperial obligation.

Maritime Heart

City Wharves

With the Port of Brisbane out of sight at Fisherman's Island near the mouth of the river, it is difficult to imagine that the city reaches of the river once bustled with maritime activity and that both the northern and southern banks of the river were lined with wharves.

In the very early days of the colony, ships moored downstream as far as Cleveland. Goods were unloaded into lighters to be brought upstream. However, by 1880 the river had been dredged sufficiently to allow ships of up to 1200 tons with a draught of 21 feet to sail upstream to the town wharves.

By 1913, wharves extended on the southern side of the river from the Kangaroo Point cliffs to the Victoria Bridge. On the northern side they extended from Victoria Bridge to Petrie Bight with the exclusion of Gardens Point. Photographs of the period show how integrated the commercial and maritime activities of the city were.

From 1913 on, the increasing level of shipping traffic could no longer be handled by the city wharves and companies such as Dalgety built wharves in the Bulimba and Hamilton reaches. From this time on, maritime activity gradually disappeared from the central city area.

Badges, Badger

& Bayonets

The General Strike

In 1912 Brisbane was the site of what was believed to be the first simultaneous strike in the world. The strike lasted for seven weeks and involved 43 unions. Triggered by the lock-out of workers employed by the Brisbane Tramways Company, the strike brought Brisbane practically to a standstill. Public transport was stopped and shops, factories and hotels were closed.

In 1904 and 1908 employees of the privately owned Brisbane Tramways Company had negotiated unsuccessfully for improvements in conditions and the acceptance of a unionized workforce. The matter arose again in early 1912 but the intractable manager, Mr. J.S. Badger, refused all claims and further instructed that any workers who openly displayed union badges would be sacked. On 18 January, the tramway men precipitated action by deliberately wearing their badges. They were subsequently locked out. Attempts at negotiation failed and on 28 January there was a meeting involving 43 trade unions to try to resolve the matter. This was unsuccessful and within two days 20,000 unionists were on strike and the city was paralysed.

A strike committee was established to issue special permits to allow shops to trade and businesses to operate. Government departments also had to apply for permits. To ensure that the permit system was adhered to, and to keep order, the strikers organised a squad of 500 vigilance officers to patrol the streets. To maintain solidarity among the strikers and to distribute information an Official Strike Bulletin was issued regularly for the duration of the strike.

On the first tow days of the strike, processions were allowed. Then the State Government asserted its authority and banned all public demonstrations. Police wit loaded rifles and fixed bayonets guarded the streets and on 31 January the Police Commissioner was authorized to swear in 3000 special constables. On Black Friday, 2 February, thousands of strikers attempted to march from Trades Hall in Turbot Street to Parliament House but were opposed and dispersed by mounted police. The Premier appealed to Prime Minister Fisher for the use of Commonwealth Forces to control the strikers. This was refused. Prime Minister Fisher is said to have personally contributed to the strike fund.

The strikers had underestimated the level of solidarity on the part of the unemployed and non-union labour. It was clear by early February that without support from these two areas, the strike was unlikely to succeed. By 5 February, a skeleton tram service was running again and people in other occupations began drifting back to work. The strike was called off officially on 5 March after the Employers Federation gave an assurance that there would be no victimization of the strikers. Technically the strikers had won as they were successful in securing an order restraining the company from dismissing employees for wearing union badges. This had been the initial point of the dispute. However, it was generally believed that the strike had failed.

This is a photo of the Perry Bros Circus truck, a solid tyre AEC, taken at Fortitude Valley Brisbane Queensland in 1920. From left to right: Joe Marconi, the founder of Goanna Oil in Qld and a good friend of the Perrys, Ted Perry,  Alby Perry holding the big elephant by the ear. The man under the elephant's trunk is Henry Perry and the man in uniform is Jack Stephens, who was killed by Tommy, the baby elephant in this photo, 17 years after this photo was taken in Parkes NSW.

Goanna Salves Humanity

Goanna Salves

Joseph Conrelius Marconi was the son of Irish immigrants and started life with the more prosaic name of Joe Mahoney. At the time of his death in 1922 his Goanna Oil and Salve, billed as the Australian Bush Remedy, was know nationally for its remarkable properties.

In the mid 1890s Joe joined the world of traveling sideshows. He ran a marionette show in which he used his baby daughter as a doll. He eventually became the manager of a sideshow act featuring the entertainer Lyn Vane who worked with venomous snakes and reptiles. Vane entertained crowds by allowing himself to be bitten by deadly snakes and when the public was convinced that death was imminent he rubbed a secret antidote onto the bite. His healing balm which was made from native plants was naturally for sale to his appreciative audience. In assisting Vane to collect plans for his potion Marconi reputedly came into contact with Aboriginal people and learned of their use of liquefied goanna fat as a healing remedy.

Over a period of years Marconi developed a medicinal product which combined the penetrating qualities of goanna oil with medicinal herbs and plant extracts including eucalyptus. Having produced his salve, Joe used his shameless showmanship to develop it into a national product highly regarded in boat the city and the bush. The great advertising myth was that the product's remarkable penetrating qualities were so great that they could not be contained in a glass bottle.

In 1910, Marconi began the manufacture of his Goanna Oil and Salve in Brisbane at Kennedy Terrace, Paddington, and then in 1915 he moved to Duke Street, Bulimba. Prior to this time Joe purchased goannas from country suppliers. However, at Duke Street, he was proud to establish his own 'goannery'

The success of the Goanna Products relied in part on Marconi's flair for flamboyant promotions. He enlisted the aid of Archibald Meston, who billed himself as 'journalist, explorer and ethnologist', as a high profile advocate for the product. Meston toured the country with a corroboree show which he called 'Wild Australia'. Joe also used Ashton Murphy, a well-know black and white artist of the period, to develop graphic advertisements which made extravagant claims for the product. Goanna Salve is still produced in Brisbane today by Herron Pharmaceuticals.