1. To Get Rid Of The Road
‘To get rid of the road’:
An historical transport controversy in Brisbane’s western districts
By Jonathan Richards, Brookfield History, 2007
Haven Road , Brookfield showing the steep ‘Butcher’s Track’, 1950s (Courtesy Mumford family)
History tells us how to avoid making the same mistakes twice, if we learn in time. We tend to take roads, bridges and other parts of our transport system for granted, except, of course, when there’s an accident, a breakdown or a gridlocked citywide traffic jam. Current investigations of transport routes in Brisbane’s west stir emotions and fears. Perhaps we should spare a thought for those who went before us, because doing so reminds us that complaints about bad and inadequate roads aren’t new. This is the story of one such case, now part of the outer western suburbs of Brisbane.
Few if any records of the Moggill Creek ( Brookfield) district before 1840 appear to have survived. There is not much evidence from the early 1840s as well. One 1842 map shows the lower reaches of (un-named) Moggill Creek, but no more detail. Baker’s 1846 ‘Map of Moreton Bay’ shows Moggill Creek and two ‘squatting stations’ on the Brisbane River at Wivenhoe, both owned by ‘Ferriter and Uhr’. The families took up the sixty-square mile run (known then as ‘River Station’) at the end of 1844 and stocked it with 14,000 sheep. A track from Ipswich to the Brisbane River squatters was their only means of communication with the outside world.
In July 1846, Edmund Uhr and John Ferriter, along with other squatters, offered a ₤20 reward for anyone who could find a new route to Brisbane:
[A] good practicable line of road, for wool-teams, from Ferriter and Uhr’s cattle station on the Brisbane River over D’Aguilar’s Range into North Brisbane’.
By August the track, which ended ‘on Breakfast Creek’ five miles north of Brisbane, had apparently been marked. The twenty-nine mile journey from Ferriter and Uhr’s station to Enoggera Creek was described as rough, but the road could be made ‘good’ with minimal work. The Moreton Bay District Association was so impressed with the track that members voted at their September meeting to allocate ₤10 towards ‘paying the expenses of opening the new line of road’. However, in February 1847, Edmund Uhr wrote to the Moreton Bay Courier, saying:
In the absence of any other road to Brisbane, it might be made available for drays, but it is of so bad a description that no bullock driver or proprietor would take it from choice; consequently it is my belief that traffic to any extent by that route will never be adopted.
He would use the ‘bridle road’, as he called it, ‘in cases of emergency, such as the river being flooded or other available roads being stopped, from some unforeseen cause’. Without further work, he said, the track cleared by the road party would be reclaimed by the bush in the near future.
Two years later, a government surveyor examined a new route from North Brisbane to Ipswich, via Moggill. This road, he said, could cross the river by a ferry near the junction of the Bremer and the Brisbane, or at a place four miles (six kilometres) upstream, because this ‘was already used as a crossing by cattle drovers and was easily fordable by loaded drays’.
By 1850, drays loaded with wool and timber were regularly travelling between Brisbane and Moggill. In 1859, when a new road from Moggill to Wivenhoe (the forerunner of today’s Mt Crosby Road) opened, squatters in the Brisbane Valley began bypassing Ipswich altogether. Brisbane River grazier David McConnel and others wrote to the paper, saying ‘the road from Brisbane to Moggill Creek is by far the worst part’ of the ‘ New North Road’ from Brisbane to Wivenhoe. This route, known as Baker’s line, began where the Brisbane road ended:
[A]bout half a mile on the Brisbane side of McGrath’s station, running the ridge down to the flat, through which runs Moggill Creek, and crossing it at a spot where there is scarcely any rise on either side.
John McGrath ‘took up’ one of the first selections on Moggill Creek. McConnel and his associates believed members of the public should reward the road-maker (identified only as ‘W. Baker’) for his ‘great trouble and expense’.
In June 1861, ‘A Moggill Man’ wrote to the Brisbane Courier, complaining ‘nothing has been done’ despite ₤500 being voted for ‘repairs of the road at Moggill’. Eventually, in 1872, a punt across the Brisbane River commenced operations ‘below the Junction’. This forerunner of the Moggill ferry, connecting the district with Ipswich, resulted from calls made by people on the river’s north-side.
Selectors began purchasing land at Brookfield from the 1860s. Bible services led to a church-building committee in 1870; a post office and school were expected to follow. ‘The agricultural district of Moggill Creek is likely to become one of some importance. The people seem to be quite alive to their own interests’ said one writer. According to official statistics, in 1871 Brookfield had a population of six men and two women living on two farms. By contrast, the Indooroopilly sub-district contained 83 farms and a population of 493; Moggill had 470 persons living on 84 farms.
In late 1872, William Woolcock and forty other residents of Brookfield petitioned the government to ‘improve the communication between us and the old Moggill Road’, saying:
As our district is rising in importance and being but a few miles from the City of Brisbane, tho at times, in consequence of the bad state of the said road, very difficult and dangerous to travel.
They asked for ₤150 to be spent on culverts, cuttings and clearing, but EH Alder, the Works Department overseer, believing ₤80 would suffice, rejected their claims. He said: ‘I do not consider the road of sufficient importance to justify the expenditure of the larger sum’. ₤80 for the ‘Moggill and Brookfield branch roads’ was approved. One month later, Joseph Clarkson and other residents wrote, asking for work to be done on the culverts, bridges and drains on the Moggill Road. Overseer Alder reported, ‘the portion of the Moggill Road referred to is very undulating and in places badly rutted’, so ₤120 for work on ‘Indooroopilly, Moggill, etc roads’ was approved.
In May 1873, the Brookfield correspondent of The Queenslander reported cotton was flourishing but other crops were ‘not doing so well’. The timber-getters were ‘very busy’, but (in a now familiar tone), the paper said ‘their roads require looking at’. Roads and gold mining on Enoggera Creek were connected:
The road to Enoggera is being put into passable order, to the satisfaction of the Moggiltonians [sic], many of whom are interested in the reefs.
Several months later, ‘Around the Brookfield Ranges’ by ‘Fair Play’ was published. According to “Fair Play”, a scenic walk along a ‘rugged road’ from ‘our church at Brookfield’ to an Enoggera mine, via ‘ Cabbage-tree Mountain, Poison Ridge and Goat Mountain’, could be completed in one day. Was the writer a local resident?
The Brookfield correspondent of The Queenslander reported on local matters in August 1875 and the condition of local roads was at the top of the agenda:
The great difficulty with which we have to contend in this district is the fearful state of the roads by which we have to take our produce to the metropolis; and from the present appearance of the road estimates we are likely to remain in that predicament for some time to come – the total amount placed thereon for the various roads from Brisbane to Moggill, Brookfield and Wivenhoe, being some ₤250.
The writer continued:
Some time ago a meeting of the inhabitants of the left hand branch of the creek was convened and a deputation appointed to wait on the Minister for Works, the result being that Captain Whish was sent out to report thereon, and I believe a promise given that some ₤200 would be placed on the estimates for the repair of that portion: not before it was needed, for that branch of the road is utterly impassable…
If ₤200 were spent on the left-hand branch road, what about ‘the right-hand branch of the creek’, which had ‘an equal claim, and is in a worse state than the former “if that were possible!”
In June 1876, Brookfield selector Whitmore Logan wrote to the Minister, calling his attention to the ‘dangerous state of the public branch road’ to his farm (Portion 240), claiming ‘no public money’ had ever been spent on improvements. Overseer Alder was asked to report on the request, as well as the culverts ‘said to be wanted on Gap Creek and Back Creek’. Alder reported traffic on the road near Logan’s place was mainly two bullock-teams hauling logs for Mr Taylor, a neighbouring selector, and ‘probably an occasional dray of Mr Logan’s’. Therefore, he said, ‘this road is of minimal public importance’ and the main road through the district should be improved first. His comments on Gap and Back Creeks are interesting:
These creeks are crossed by the main road from Brisbane to the Upper Moggill Creek district’. Gap Creek is a real obstruction to traffic, both at flood times and in consequence of the steepness of one of the approaches’
A suitable bridge, he said, would cost ₤200. ₤300 from ‘Other roads’ was approved.
One visitor commented on the Brookfield and Moggill districts in April 1876, saying ‘Moggill Creek has a fine clear stream of water at all times, and many people, when they see it, are very much inclined to stop and have a bathe’. The school, it was noted, ‘has an attendance which would surprise a casual visitor – who can see, from this path, very few houses’.
Archival records on the districts’ roadways are interesting. The road ‘up the left hand branch of Moggill Creek’ [today’s Upper Brookfield Road] was, in 1878, reported to be ‘in a very rough and unsatisfactory condition’, needing ‘₤50 for improvements’. Furthermore, ‘the main trunk of these two branches’ [the Moggill Creek branch roads] ‘(at a point known as “Slippery Gap”) requires improving by reducing a hill and filling’. These ‘urgent improvements’, on Carver’s Hill, near the old Franciscan Friary on Brookfield Road, to the order of ₤170 were authorised. Records from the time referred to roads up ‘North and South Moggill Creeks’.
The old bridle track, marked in the 1840s, remained on official maps and records. In August 1876, Whitmore Logan’s brother George, who owned Selection 201 at Moggill Creek, wrote to Captain Whish at the Roads Branch of the Works Department, complaining about the track’s route:
I have been out on the roads that I was talking to you about and I saw some trees marked. I feel that it is my duty to inform you that any person would have great difficulty to walk on the road so you may guess that it would be useless for any sort of traffic. So I am willing to wager for the amount of five hundred pounds with any one in the neighbourhood and will defy any person to bring an empty dray on the one lately marked on the range unless thousands were spent on it.
Logan was referring to the track’s steep climb up the D’Aguillar Range, west of Mount Elphinstone, as shown in the photograph at the beginning of this paper.
The approximate route of the ‘Butcher’s track’, 1876.
Whish reported on Logan’s letter to District Road Inspector David Longland.
Mr George Logan of Moggill has made application that the road passing through his Selection shall be taken out of his selection in order that he may have his selection entire and without any road through it whatever.
I have carefully examined all the roads in question and am convinced that the present move on Logan’s part is merely and solely to get rid of the road out of his selection and put them through anyone else’s.
The neighbouring settlers avoided these selections simply because of the roads which were in them when Logan took them up and had been there for years.
The Butcher’s track is meant for bringing cattle to market in flood time and must always be left open. I propose making two or three trifling deviations to ease some steep pinches, but the worst pinch on the road exists even if Logan’s proposed road be adopted so nothing is gained. On the contrary, the road crossing a gully which is impassable in flood and therefore the chief advantage of the road is lost by altering it from its present location.
If fresh applications as these were to be granted, no settler would be safe and property would become seriously deteriorated in value. I would therefore recommend that Mr Logan be informed that in reply to his letter the Government have decided to leave the roads through Portion 201 Moggill as they are with such deviations as may be deemed necessary; and it being a high level road and available in seasons of flood, it can not be closed either now or at any future time and it being quite sufficient for all the traffic over it.
A map of the creeks, roads and selections was attached to the report. On paper, from the comfort of a government office, the road looks quite practicable.
Map accompanying Captain Whish’s report, 1876.
Logan was notified of the department’s decision and the track remained where it was. Nothing more could be done. However, the decision to maintain the existing route was eventually vindicated, even if the road was hardly (if ever) used: after the disastrous 1893 floods in Brisbane, newspapers reported ‘very little damage’ at Moggill Creek. ‘ Brookfield was not flooded’.
On 25 September 1876, George, his brother Robert and neighbour James Brimblecombe wrote to the Minister for Works, asking for a new road to opened ‘from the main road in Brookfield to the main road at Pullen Vale School’. Whish advised ‘Not recommended’. A second petition in support of the same road, lodged in November 1876, was rejected in December. Longland reported to the Works Department in May 1877.
I have carefully examined the proposed roads and for the following reasons I would recommend that the present surveyed roads remain as they are with the exception of the small deviations as suggested by Captain Whish.
1. Opening the proposed roads would involve a large expenditure for fencing as it would cut through several selections and cause considerable damage to the owners.
2. Although the present surveyed roads pass over severely undulating country, it would appear quite sufficient, the deviation suggested and some small improvements to be equal to the present requirements of that part of the district viz removing cattle from one selection to another.
3. At the time No 245 was selected Mr Logan well knew the isolated position and the means of access to it. Therefore I consider that the selector is responsible for which he represents as being inaccessible.
Logan ’s suggestion that the Butcher’s Track should avoid an excessively steep slope by following an easy spur from Mount Elphinstone was rejected. The steep climb at the Brookfield end of Haven Road remained where Captain Whish thought it should be, just as it does to this day. Today, a bridge on the Bruce Highway over the Caboolture River honours Captain Claudius Buchanan Whish, Inspector of Road Surveys at the Works Department.
Several short sections of the ‘Butcher’s Track’ – the rough bridle trail that once ran from the Brisbane River, west of Mount Coot-tha to the Newmarket saleyards – survive. One is the steep hill at Haven Road, Upper Brookfield. Another section near Cabbage Tree Creek ( Lake Manchester) was marked on survey maps in 1879. Others may be found in due course.
Brisbane ’s rainfall was substantially higher during the nineteenth century than the twentieth, with twenty-three river floods between 1840 and 1900. One flood, in 1844, was almost as high as the 1893 deluge but the 1841 flood was four feet (1.2 metres) higher. This flood, which peaked on 14 January 1841, is described by the Meteorology Bureau as ‘the highest flood in Brisbane’s recorded history (to 2000)’. Most government buildings survived the 1893 flood because the city was surveyed with knowledge of the 1841 flood heights. The ‘Butcher’s Track’, evidently marked using the same information, would have remained above flood height in 1841. In 1974, floodwaters backed up to the Brookfield Showground, east of the route.
We can learn from history, if we make time, because lessons for the future can often be found in the archives of the past. Problems in Brisbane with infrastructure issues, such as poor roads, the lack of bridges and an inadequate water supply, are not new. Unfortunately, the current debates over possible transport routes in the western suburbs of Brisbane don’t usually mention any historical precedents. The arguments over routes that arouse so much suspicion only serve to encourage passionate displays of ‘nimbyism’. The discussion is not, it seems, located in a historical context.
The story of this road tells a little of Brookfield’s early settler history. The past may help us to deal with the future: perhaps, one day, a high-level flood-free route will be needed again. Most importantly, the history of the ‘Butcher’s track’ shows us that controversy over roads in Brisbane’s western districts is nothing new.
References
2. Gooseberries
Libby Wager in Different Tracks quotes from an undated article entitled
Depression Gold published in The Sunday Mail written by J Fearnley, which tells
the story of picking cape gooseberries in 1928.
In the Cabbage Tree Creek scrub, regrowth had occurred after spring bushfires. An abundance of cape gooseberries was discovered. By winter, the gooseberries had ripened and were ready to be picked. A 16km horseback ride and sixteen creek crossings had to be negotiated between homes and crop, the track crossing a ragged ride of the D'Aguilars with a steep descent on the other side. Picking commenced at 7am, but this meant leaving home at 3.30am. Individuals were limited by the ability of two horses to carry rider and fruit back home. J Fearnley continues:
"I can remember as an 11-year old, waiting in the dusk by the roadside to see them ride past. First the distant clatter of hooves, the rattle of bits as he horses lowered their heads to drink from the creek, then the evening air redolent with the musty smell of cape gooseberries, of hot sweating horses and the pungent tobacco smoke from old Wolter's pipe. Always a friendly 'G'day Jim' from these tired men riding past, the day's harvest in two small bags slung across the pommel of their saddle, and two large chaff bags on the pack horse following behind.
Disappearing into the night, they rode homewards, first to feed their horses, then themselves; a bath before the kitchen fire and into bed to rest for another pre-daylights picking.
Now the night shift came on duty. The wives who had milked the cows and performed other farm duties during the day, and children tired from a day at school took over the berries. Now began the long and tedious session of shelling the fruit in readiness for delivery to the jam factory at Milton.
By the mellow light of flickering kerosene lamps, the sacks of berries were tipped onto kitchen tables. The task continued through the night. 'I spy with my little eye' and other simple games were played in an effort to keep awake, as one by one young heads slumped across the tables, while an ever-growing quantity of golden 'nuggets' filled the 18-litre kerosene tins. A weary 'Good morning' as exhausted wives greeted weary husbands at three o'clock in the morning started the daily routine once more."
3. A Brookfield Funeral
Following is an extract from The Telegraph of February 1927 which tells
the tale of the hardships residents of Upper Brookfield had to endure to transport
a corpse to the Toowong Cemetery. The name of the deceased was William Treable
Congram.
A BROOKFIELD FUNERAL
Brotherhood of the Bush
Rough Journey to Cemetery
A human study of the brotherhood of the bush was behind a simple statement which was made to the Mayor of Brisbane today by members of a deputation from Upper Brookfield. The local residents were asking for a road by which they could take out their produce and take in their food supplies and they mentioned that recently they had had to carry a coffin five miles through the bush.
From members of the deputation a representative of “The Telegraph” obtained the details of the bush funeral, and as simply the story was told it revealed an epic of the bush, and of the great feeling of brotherhood which grows amongst those who battle side by side in the effort to conquer the soil. One hardly expected to hear such a tale of hardship from residents of the Greater Brisbane area. But as the tale was told, it showed that there are brave pioneers of the bush within a few miles of the GPO.
It was during the floods of last week that death visited the district of Upper Brookfield, and took the father of a family, the mother having died two months ago. When the mother died – the bush roads were passable, but when the father followed her the floodwaters had rendered the tracks impassable. The bereaved sons feared that it would be impossible even to get a coffin out from the undertakers, the track to Upper Brookfield being over hilly country, and many flooded creeks having to be crossed. So with the courage bred of the bush they set to work to fashion a coffin to hold the remains of the departed. The sons had almost finished a rough bush coffin – but one made with loving toil – when a coffin arrived over the hills from the city undertakers.
It was a hard enough task to get the empty coffin over the mountain tracks, broken as they were by flooded creeks. To get it out again with a corpse inside it was almost an impossibility. But the deceased had expressed a wish to be buried in the Toowong cemetery beside his wife, and the boys’ call for help to the local residents was answered as all such calls are answered by the great bush brotherhood. The men of the district rallied to the task and over five miles of rough mountainous tracks, across no fewer than eleven flooded creeks, the hallowed burden was carried with loving care. The ordinary track was impassable on account of the floods, and the creeks being too deep to cross, so a track had to be blazed through the scrub. While six willing volunteers carried the coffin on a stretcher, others fell to with axe and cut a track ahead. When the roaring waters of the creeks were met, a tree was felled across them and the coffin was got across in this way. For over seven hours the volunteers stuck to their task, and eventually they got the coffin to Brookfield road, where they were met by the driver of a motor truck who carried the body to the undertakers.
And so the father was granted his last wish, and was laid to rest beside his beloved wife in the Toowong Cemetery. At the graveside the residents of isolated Upper Brookfield gathered to pay their last tribute to their deceased comrade of the Greater Brisbane bush. But those who know the district and can form an idea of what the journey meant will agree that the tribute was paid when the sturdy sons of the Upper Brookfield area shouldered the stretcher on which rested the remains of their comrade and carried it with loving care over mountain and torrent. It is due to the splendid devotion of these farmers of Upper Brookfield that over the grave of a couple in the Toowong Cemetery may be inscribed the age old words:
‘In death they were not divided.’”
4. Wattle Day
During the first few decades of the 20th century, Queensland schools
celebrated Wattle Day. The day was set aside to recall this special Australian
blossom. Australia followed the British example of choosing a flower to represent
the land. Wattle was chosen as a national symbol of Australia for several reasons,
these being that the flowers adorned many parts of the land and the blossom
symbolised a bright hope for the future.
A Wattle Blossom League was formed in 1889 and the Queensland branch of the League was inaugurated on 12 October 1912. Mrs Papi, wife of Mr FC Papi (teacher, scholar and later inspector) founded the Queensland League. Mrs Papi remained secretary of the League for many years. "In 1912, the League drew up a constitution and declared its objects, amongst which were the official recognition of the Golden Wattle as the emblem of Australia; the cultivation of a love for the plant amongst Australian children; the selection of a day which might be universally regarded as Australia's Day; the planting of wattles wherever possible, and the care of trees planted; the display of wattle blooms everywhere through the continent."
In 1917, the Queensland Branch nominated a special date to celebrate wattle day. All Queenslanders wer encouraged to wear a sprig of wattle as a symbol of patriotism. Wattle also acted as a symbol of the land, its potential wealth and the golden opportunities open to all. In addition, by virtue of its golden hue, wattle stood as an emblem of Australia;s gold mines, "the golden grain of our fields, the golden fleece and golden butter of our pastures". The wattle blossom was also considered unusual because it flowered in winter. Wattle Day was celebrated in Queensland schools by wearing wattle, singing wattle songs, holding wattle competitions and wearing badges. It was generally held in July or August when the wattle was flowering.
"A Wattle Day essay competition was held among pupils under the age of 14 years, attending the metropolitan State Schools." Wattle Day was also publicly celebrated on occasion in Brisbane. Wattle blossoms, "postcards and wattle plants were sold in the streets".
In time, wattle came to symbolise hope, opportunities and the natural wealth of Australia. Wattle Day celebrations in schools were aimed at stimulating Australian national sentiment and a love for the national emblem. Today, the wattle tree and its colours of green and gold remain symbols of Australia.
1930 Wattle Day Upper Brookfield State School
5. Gold Creek School
The Gold Creek School opened on 10 November 1919. There was a Royal
visit to the School in 1924 and floods in February 1928. The School was closed
in 1930 due to "poor attendance". The children of one family left
in 1936, which meant there were only eight pupils left. The teacher noted that
children were kept home in October 1936 to "help beat out bushfires as
they were raging in this district". The school apparently closed on 1 January
1937. (From QSA, EDU/AB 1666)