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.

In the garden of the Doctor's residence at Stradbroke Island, ca. 1885

Brisbane's

Poor House

Dunwich Benevolent Asylum

The description 'poor-house' summons up images of Dickensian England and high-minded but often vicious charity. The Dunwich Benevolent Asylum, which was essentially a poor-house, operated on Stradbroke Island from 1866 to 1946. It was designed as a holding place for people who, owing to age or infirmity, were unable to maintain themselves and for those whose family could not, or would not, support them.

The introduction of the Old Age Pension in 1908 provided an alternative for some of Brisbane's aged community. It also lessened the charge on the State when the cost per Asylum inmate was considerable greater than the pension of 5/- a week. Though the nature of the institution at Dunwich changed during the course of its existence, in 1908 it was the place of confinement for many of Brisbane's aged, infirm, inebriates, consumptives, the blind, and people suffering from incurable diseases. Lepers had also been held there until 1892 when a separate institution was set up on Peel Island. This lazaret oepraed until 1959.

Queensland was one of the last of the States to introduce an aged pension to cater for its increasing aged population. However, this pension was not automatically available to those 65 and over. An application had to be made to the courts. The criteria for receiving the pension were extremely strict and, once awarded, a pension could be withdrawn if people engaged in undesirable activities such as drunkenness.

Although some people moved to Dunwich on a voluntary basis, once they were there they lost most of their civil rights and it was almost impossible to leave. Inmates had to surrender all their money as a way of subsidizing their care. Descriptions of the treatment of new arrivals indicate that people were disinfected and dressed in rough institutional clothing referred to as slops. The men's shirts had Dunwich Benevolent Society stamped on the back. Those in need of medical attention were sent to the Hospital Ward, the Chinese to the Asiatic wad, bedridden cases to the Tucker Ward, inmates whose afflictions made them unpleasant to be near to the Foul Ward. No provision was made for married couples to remain together and they were set to segregated wards. When the pension was introduced, 276 of the 1450 inmates at Dunwich in 1908 applied to leave the institution but only 24 were allowed to do so.

Voters outside polling place Brisbane - 1907

Suffragists Succeed

Votes for Women in Queensland

Woman in Queensland were granted the right to vote in State elections in 1905 and first exercised this right in 1907. The first country in the world to grant the vote to women was New Zealand in 1893. The first Australian State was South Australia in 1894.

The flight for female suffrage [votes for women] began in Queensland in the 1870s when the Premier, Sir Charles Lilley, tried to initiate electoral reform. The flight from that time trough to 1905 was complex and difficult. This was in part because women of the time were so economically, socially and politically disenfranchised that they had very little experience of how to organise a campaign of this magnitude. Women had to learn to organise politically and to take their demands to a hostile or disinterested power structure dominated by men.

The issue of vote for women was part of a broader argument about electoral reform which included the debate about whether plural voting should be discontinued. Under the system of plural voting which applied in Queensland at the time, only male property owners could vote and they could vote in every electorate in which they owned property. Among women agitating for the vote not all supported the abolition of plural voting. This, at some stage of the campaign for women's suffrage, led to a lack of cohesion between women's groups.

From 1889 a number of women's groups including the Queensland Women's Suffrage League, the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the Women's Equal Franchise Association and the Women's Electoral League all fought for the vote for women. These groups were led by women such as Emma Miller, Margaret Ogg, Leotine Cooper and Eleanor Trundall. Although the right to vote was granted in 1905, women were not allowed to present themeselve as candidates for Parliament until 1915. Irene Longman was the first woman to become a member of the Queensland Parliament and represented the electorate of Bulimba in 1929.

It is said by many honourable and true men outside this Chamber that the exercise of the franchise by women will tend to brush away that delicate, innate feature in her disposition – her modest, from which she receives her great power and influence for good in society.

Hon B. Fahey, Legislative Council, Electoral Franchise Bill, 25 October 1904

My name has been mentioned…as one who had an electoral right in a great many constituencies. I think at one time my name was on 21 electoral roles. Whenever I became a trustee fro a married woman or children who were not entitled to exercise the franchise in the district where their property was situated, I felt it to be my duty to get my name on the roll in their interests, and I still think so.

Hone A. J. Thynne, Legislative Council, Electoral Franchise Bill, October 1904

Determined To be White

Pacific Repatriation

In the years following Federation there were often tensions between the needs and aspirations of the new national Government and the continuing and often opposing demands of the individual States. This became a significant issue for Queensland with the passage of the Commonwealth Immigration Restriction Act in 1901, which was the effective beginning of the White Australia Policy. The immediate impact for Queensland was that this would terminate the repressive system of indentured Kanaka labour on which the Queensland sugar industry was built.

At this time, the sugar industry was one of the State's greatest income earners and any threat to its viability was a major concern.

All major political parties supported a White Australia Policy. Prime Minister Deakin declare, Unity of Rae is an absolute essential to the Unity of Australia. Part of the Labor Party platform insisted on the desirability of the cultivation of an Australian Sentiment based on the notion of racial purity. In the years prior to Federation, some States legislated for penalties for certain offences to be higher for Chinese and no-Europeans. Some States also prevented Chinese and non-Europeans from engaging in certain occupations in competition with white labour.

The Naturalisation Act (Cwlth) of 1903 prevented Asian and non-European people from applying for citizenship. In the broader community there were a number of organizations with clearly racist objectives. The Anti-Chinese and Asiatic League formed at the beginning of the century had 20,000 members.

The Pacific Island Labourers Act (Cwlth) required that all Kanaka labour in Qld be repatriated by 1906. Between 1892 and 1900, 11,000 Pacific Islanders were brought into Queensland. By 1906 4,000 remained who were to be repatriated, although and additional 691 were granted exemptions. One of these, a Mt Cotton resident named Robtelines, with the support of local farmers successfully challenged a Brisbane magistrate's deportation order in the High Court in October 1906. However, on 22 October, the SS Malaita was despatched from Pinkenba with the first group of deportees from Brisbane.

The Kanaka issue was a complex one for Queensland. The tension between the widespread racism of the day and the perceived economic necessity of the Pacific Island labour force was not easily resolved.

The Daily Mail

Concerns about media monopolies have been the subject of public debate for much of this century. It is strange to imagine that in 1903 Brisbane had four metropolitan daily newspapers and thirteen weekly papers. Of the dailies, the Observer and Telegraph were afternoon papers and the Brisbane Courier and the newly established Daily Mail were published in the morning.

The Brisbane Courier was the most influential of the papers prior to the arrival of the Daily Mail. It had fought off competition from the Guardian, Queensland Express and the Colonist. However, it was subjected to renewed competition when a former Courier editor, Charles Hardie Buzzacott, launched the Daily Mail on 3 October 1903.

Buzzacott gave the Daily Mail a different style from the Brisbane Courier in an attempt to win readers. As was common at the time, both papers ran advertisements and not news on their front pages. However, the Daily Mail utilized photographs more lavishly than the Courier and carried a more interesting range advertisements. Both papers placed great emphasis on reporting British and of graphic commonwealth news.

The Boer War 1899 -1902

Although it is popularly assumed that World Was I was the first engagement in which troops from Australia fought overseas, this is not so. Before 1914 troops from the Australian colonies had fought in the Maori War, Sudan War, Boer War and Boxer Rebellion.

The Boer War began in October 1899. It was a conflict between British Imperial Forces and the settlers of Dutch origin from the Transvaal and the Orange Free State in South Africa. The conflict was precipitated by British determination to gain access for their citizens to the new-found mineral wealth in these republics. The Boers had already been driven out of Cape Province and Natal. They were determined to resist this new threat to their autonomy.

The Boers had no standing army and conducted a guerilla-type war. Citizen soldiers engaged the Imperial Forces in a series of skirmishes rather than conventional battles.

In response, the Imperial Forces carried out a brutal scorched earth campaign In which farms were burned systematically, communities were destroyed and  the inhabitants dispatched to concentration camps. Of the 120,000 Boers sent to camps 32,000 died. These were mostly women and children. Thirty thousand Boer fighters were killed.

Five hundred and eighteen Australian troops died during the war. Of these 251 were killed and 267 died of illness. Sixty-two Queenslanders died in the war, in which the toll from disease was even higher than that of battle.

Prior to Federation, each of the colonies had maintained its own armed forces. The Queensland Premier, James Dickson, acting with indecent haste, offered troops for the conflict three months before the formal declaration of hostilities. Queensland sent nine contingents to the Boer War made up of 165 officers, 2,385 other ranks with 3,000 horses. By the time the war ended in 1902, Federation had occurred and troops initially dispatched by Queensland were then under Commonwealth control.

The Plague

In 1901 an insidious threat hung over Brisbane in the form of a threatened outbreak of bubonic plague. The disease which was thought to have died out in Europe in the Middle Ages had re-emerged in Asia and swept south towards Australia.

Brisbane was ill-prepared for such an epidemic. Public health infrastructure was practically non-existent. There was no State Health Department, hospital facilities were inadequare and knowledge about the plague ad how it was spread was very sketchy. In 1900 a plague hospital was constructed at Colmslie and in 1901 Dr Bernard Ham was appointed as Commissioner of Public Health specifically to deal with the epidemic.

Brisbane's first plague victim was Mr James Dreveson of Woolloongabba. Mr Dreveson and 22 people with whom he had been in contact were removed to Colmslie in a special horse-drawn bus. A galvanized iron stockade was erected around his house and it was subsequently demolished. Between 1900 and 1907, 464 cases of plague were reported in Brisbane, 195 of them being fatal.

Bubonic plague is spread by fleas carried on rats, although his was not clearly understood at the time. It was accepted that rats were involved in the transmission and that the deplorable sanitary standards which were common were also a factor. A Vigilance Committee was established to control ships coming into the Brisbane River and to implement measures to stop rats from the ships bringing the infection into the city. It was difficult to prevent them entering the sewers and it is possible to track the spread of the disease out from the river along the main sewer lines.

A serum to treat the plague was available. However, it was declined by many people as its side effects were so horrific. Cocaine and strychnine were used to deal with various symptoms. Visitors to plague areas had to submit to a triple carbolic bath. Special arrangements were required for the disposal of the bodies of people who had died. Bodies were wrapped I a sheet soaked in carbolic acid and then placed in a coffin containing slaked lime and buried on Gibson Island at the mouth of the Brisbane River. Later burials took place in established cemeteries, but special precautions were still required

In 1900, the Board of Health offered a bounty on dead rats of 2/- per dozen. Rat catching became a profitable practice for school children. The bounty, like many other precautions, had little impact on the spread of the disease. It reoccurred each year until 1909 and again in 1921 and 1922