Murarrie

History of Brisbane's Murarrie

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Murarrie's history has been compiled as a part of the BRISbites community history project.

Aboriginal history

Bulimba Creek was a popular camping place for Aborigines. Steele depicts a bora ring in this area and a bora ring was reported on Gibson Island in 1964.

In 1846 an Aboriginal raid on produce at Doboy Creek (Bulimba Creek) was reported and Malrobin, who was called the head of the South Brisbane clan, was brought to jail and charged with complicity in the murder of a squatter

In the 1860s Bertha Pears encountered a group of Aboriginal men who were dressing and decorating themselves for a fight. They would use notches and vines to climb trees to gather honey. She was taken one day to see them chopping a possum out of a log with a stone axe, even then uncommon.

Neighbouring clans would gather near the mouth of Bulimba Creek for corroborees in the 1890s.

Urban development

Murarrie began as part of Tingalpa. Originally the station planned for Creek Road was to have been Tingalpa, but during construction the name was changed to Mooraree. The name was changed to its current spelling in 1907. The name has been interpreted as meaning 'plenty of water' or, more likely, 'sticky' or 'sticky mud or soil'. For most of its history, Murarrie has developed along with Hemmant, across Bulimba Creek. Murarrie now includes the localities of Doboy.

Land at Murarrie was first surveyed and sold in 1852. Joseph Thompson bought much of the land. The first white settler was Christopher Porter, who took up land for farming at the mouth of Bulimba Creek. In the 1850s British, German, and Dutch settlers came to the Hemmant and Murarrie districts and began to farm vegetable crops, which were transported by boat to Brisbane. Cotton was also grown to supply English cotton mills.

An early Brisbane settler, John Williams, had an orchard of forty-nine acres (19.8 hectares) and a boat-building business in the area bounded by Lytton, Queensport, and Creek roads. In 1864, William Gibson got sugar cuttings from Louis Hope at Ormiston and began planting cane at Hemmant. Five years later he built the first mill there. Further mills developed in Murarrie, including one built by Christopher Porter. Other settlers along Bulimba Creek grew sugar cane, and stone was quarried at Queensport. The Bulimba Creek mouth was a popular recreation area, with travel by steamer to the Hemmant Aquarium a popular day trip from Brisbane.

In 1881 the first meat was frozen by the Queensland Freezing and Food Export Company. The meat industry became well established in Murarrie and the surrounding suburbs, and many residents worked in the industry. Several subdivisions were sold, such as Wimbledon Estate in the 1890s, but it remained very much a rural and light industrial area. People left Murarrie during the 1930s depression, but after the Second World War development increased again.

Until the 1950s, most of Murarrie was bushland. Denser settlement only began after 1968. Earlier industrial development and the presence of a dump had hindered settlement, but by 1973 there were an estimated 700 houses in Murarrie. These days Murarrie forms part of a rural–industrial fringe along the Brisbane River. New developments on the site of the Saleyards and nearby land show the increase in light industry and housing in the area.

Notable residents

John Williams began life as a subcontractor in an English coalmine. After working as a sailor he followed his fiancée to Sydney when she was transported. He worked as a plumber before they opened a hotel in Sydney. Later he built ships and in 1839 Williams arrived in Brisbane and set up a shanty called the 'Captain Piper' in South Brisbane, becoming the first free man in Brisbane.

In 1848 he tried to find coal in the Bulimba area but was not successful, as the seam was only a few inches thick. He also had orchard on his forty-nine acres (19.8 hectares) of land in Murarrie. This land was later the resting paddock for the Thomas Borthwick and Sons Meatworks. Williams' land fronting the river was used for boat building - the Gneerin was built there. Williams died in 1872.

Thomas Weedon and his five children migrated to Moreton Bay in 1863 and settled near Doboy Creek (Bulimba Creek). Bertha Weedon (later Pears) was at this time nine years old. The family originally camped in a thick felt tent between Bulimba Creek and the large swamp, but moved to higher ground where they built a slab humpy. Cooking was done in old ant nests and Bertha learned to ride, shoot, and fish, but had little book learning. She had various encounters with the local Aborigines before she was sent to boarding school. She later went to live with her uncle and aunts at Cannon Hill. She was married to Philip Pears in Christ Church, Tingalpa. Bertha wrote her diary in a commonplace book of her father's, preserving much detail of early life in Murarrie and Tingalpa.

Landmarks

Bulimba A electricity substation was built in 1926 at the former entrance to Doboy Creek. Bulimba B substation was built on adjoining land on Gibson Island in 1956. The island was joined to the mainland by reclaiming with ashes, mostly from furnaces. During construction, steel cylinders were driven down into the rock and filled with concrete.

Gibson Island was named after Mr Gibson, an engineer, who was in charge of dredging the river. It was originally called Brophe Island after a hermit farmer named Brophe who lived there. During the outbreak of bubonic plague in 1899–1900, the Brisbane plague hospital was at Colmslie, and the bodies of plague victims, many of them Kanakas, were buried on Gibson Island. In 1919 when the Friend family opened a kiosk, the island was all bush. Between the wars the Gibson Island Resort attracted many Brisbane people and every weekend the beach was crowded.

On 15 August 1863, the Don Juan sailed into Moreton Bay from Sydney and the New Hebrides. On board were sixty-seven indentured servants from the New Hebrides and Loyalty Islands. In 1864 Louis Hope imported fifty-seven Kanakas to work in his sugar fields. Theoretically the South Sea Islanders were employed willingly for a three-year contract. In reality a great number of them were kidnapped, many by the notorious Ross Lewin. In Australia there was growing agitation for the 'blackbirding' to be stopped. However, despite the Polynesian Labourers Act of 1868, the practice continued. In 1891 there were 9,362 Kanakas in Queensland and over the next ten years another 11,000 were imported. Without the Kanaka's labour the sugar industry would not have survived. By 1904 all trading had ceased and in 1906 repatriation began for those who did not want to remain and had no family or property.

Aquarium Passage was named for the Aquarium, which opened in 1889. Pleasure launches bought people from Customs House to the Aquarium - a popular day trip from Brisbane. As well as the Aquarium, there was a zoo, dance hall, switch-back railway (roller coaster), flying machine, and cycle track. The Aquarium was washed away in the1893 floods, but all of the animals from the zoo were saved, except the bears. The wood that washed down to Gibson Island was used to build a house in Hemmant.

Murarrie State School opened on 2 July 1928 with fifty pupils and two teachers. Previously children had travelled by train or walked to Cannon Hill or Hemmant schools. During the 1930s depression, many families left the area and school attendance fell. However, many new families arrived after the war.

The Brisbane River rises in the Brisbane Ranges and travels 355 kilometres to the sea. It began to develop its course about ten million years ago when the climate was wetter than today's. Within the last million years the river eroded deeply into its sandstone bed when the sea level dropped. The river mouth was then at Tangalooma. When the sea rose again, Moreton and Stradbroke islands were formed and the present watercourse developed. Since then the river and creeks have formed flood plain deposits, rich with mangroves and some wallum. A shallow river, it needed considerable dredging before it could be used as a shipping passage.

Early visitors reported the river's beauty. In 1823 John Oxley said 'the Scenery was peculiarly beautiful; the country on the banks alternately hilly and level, but not flooded; the Soil of the finest description of Brushwood land, on which grew Timber of great magnitude, and of various Species'. Murray wrote in 1830 of 'a beautiful river, full of graceful windings and lined on each side with trees of luxuriant foliage to the very water's edge'.

Originally closer to Brisbane, what is now Wynnum Road was called Bulimba Road, and further out it was called Wynnum Road or Lytton Road. When the bridge was built over the mouth of Norman Creek in 1856, Wynnum Road became a faster route to Cleveland and so became known as the Cleveland Road. In 1863, a Parliamentary report declared the road was impassable and people had to travel by private land. Wynnum Road was known as Cleveland Road until the 1950s.

In 1959 commemorative palms were planted along New Cleveland Road at Cannon Hill. Each had a plaque with the name of a soldier from the district. Children swinging from them destroyed the palms on the south of the road. Those on the north were removed in the 1960s when the road was widened.

Reference: BRISbites, 2000

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