From gaol to ‘the smarter end of Queen Street’: the changing face of Brisbane

 

In 1825 the Moreton Bay convict settlement moved from Humpybong, Redcliffe to Brisbane and more permanent growth. Building centred around North Quay, George, and Queen Streets but it was not until the arrival of Commandant Patrick Logan in 1826 that substantial building began. The widest and highest, and most significant building in Brisbane, the convict barracks, was designed by Andrew Petrie and built 1827-1830 in stone. It was in what is now Queen Street, between Albert and George Streets.

The barracks dominated life with its overwhelming, large presence and the grim sights and sounds of the activities of the hundreds of convicts who occupied it. One idea of what it was like can be gained from the list of contents the Superintendent of Convicts, Peter Spicer, provided when the barracks closed in 1839.

 

Items ranged from the ordinary: bedding, tubs, cooking and sewing equipment through to the more sinister: distinctive convict clothing, triangles, chains, and guns. However, while the gaol’s original purpose might be ending, the building was not.

The Moreton Bay convict barracks 1842

As the largest building in the Moreton Bay settlement the barracks took on changing and varied roles after most convicts returned to Sydney in 1839. In 1840 convict transportation along the east coast of Australia ceased and in 1842 Moreton Bay opened to free settlement. Initially the former barracks housed small shops, constructed by their owners.

‘Among the first to settle in the north side — though they did not build their own houses — were William Pickering, George Edmonstone, Thomas Gray, James Powers, David Bow, George McAdam, John Richardson, Robert Little, P. Phelan, W. Holman Berry, and a few others. The majority of them obtained leases of the lower floor of the old convict barracks in Queen-street, which they themselves converted into shops. It is true there were more tradesmen than customers, but somehow things began to look up, and the rush on the stocks of rum and other spirits caused George McAdam to apply for permission to open a “pub.”’ In the early days J J Knight Brisbane Courier 29 February 1892 p7.

In December 1848 it was an immigration depot for the first immigrants arriving directly into Moreton Bay on the Artemisia. Benjamin Glennie’s Diary 1848-1860 recorded in his 19th December entry, ‘Hiring of immigrants at the Prisoners Barracks’. When the god-fearing Lang immigrants arrived in 1849, they used the barracks as a place of worship until they could build a church. In May 1850, the former barracks housed the first circuit court at which Mr. Therry presided in a lofty manner, at odds with the style associated with its earliest function.

Convict barracks: Queensland’s Houses of Parliament 1860-1865

In December 1859 Moreton Bay separated from NSW and so needed a parliamentary building.

‘The Chambers are both plainly but neatly fitted up, commodious, and in every respect suited to the wants of the country.
The House of Assembly meets on the first floor up the broad stair of the Old Barracks, the Upper House strangely enough, meets on the ground floor, as if they meant to enact the comedy of High Life below stairs. The hour of meeting for the former is three p.m. and for the latter, half-past four. They both commence with prayer.’
John Dunmore Lang, Moreton Bay Courier 2 August 1860 p4

The austere Rev. Dr. Lang, a great Moreton Bay supporter, was clearly impressed at the lean expenditure in this reuse of the barracks. The young government had no financial option. It was 1868 before the new parliamentary building in George Street was completed. The irony of a place of extreme punishment becoming the home of law makers was not lost on many people.

Brisbane and the convict barracks in 1863

From 1860 the new government prioritised immigration which by 1863 affected Brisbane’s buildings. Brisbane grew around the barracks, still prominent, but less overpowering, as shown in Ham’s map of the city of Brisbane, Queensland compiled from official and private sources, 1863. Various government offices continued to use it.

Replacement of the barracks 1880

In 1880 a contractor demolished this government-owned, convict relic to make way for private businesses. It had housed convicts for only a fifth of its 50-year existence, but gloom overwhelmed its image. The Queenslander 4 December 1880 p720 contemptuously wrote of it as ‘the bald hideous structure that occupied so much valuable space’. It continued, ‘While the old barracks stood in the central thoroughfare of the city, Brisbane could not be said to have severed itself from the associations of its origin.’  Further denigration followed with the frequent remark over the years: no foundation stone nor any documents, customarily encased in it, were found. While there was relief to see the barracks gone it was considered important to remember where it stood between Allan & Stark (later Brisbane’s first Myer Store) and Chapman’s drapery with regular references to: ‘A handsome row of shops erected in its place.’

From 1940 until the 1960s Allan & Stark promoted itself as ‘the smarter end of Queen Street’. Other shops in the strip adopted the slogan while in the social pages the term spread to describe where socially prominent women shopped.

Brisbane had replaced the degraded, horrific era of the convict days with the tone of a free, prosperous town celebrated in its centenary year.  Queensland had ‘remarkably outlived the blot on its birth and combatted the handicap’ Telegraph 25 October 1924 p8. For many this triumph was publicly noticeable in the shops at what had become ‘the smarter end of Queen Street’.