JOURNAL

of the

ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY

OF QUEENSLAND

Volume XIII, No. 9 February 1989

Brisbane's Timber Houses in Queensland Context:

The Human Dimension

by Rod Fisher

Presented to a meeting of the Society 23 June, 1988

For over a decade, much effort has gone into rescuing "the Queensland house" from oblivion. Laudable though these attempts may be, they miss the mark as far as the human element is concerned; for the origin, attribution and evolution of housing can hardly be divorced from people—those consumers who expect the product to meet at least their basic needs in a particular social, cultural, climatic and topographical environment.'

Consequently this paper concerns the relationship between people, their habitation and the environment, concentrating on Brisbane in Queensland context since free settlement in 1842. Three questions are addressed in particular: What main types of houses did people inhabit in this sub-tropical region? What were the opinions of newcomers and other observers? What were the experiences of

Dr Rod Fisher lectures at the History Department, University of Queensland, and his research and publications on Brisbane's early history, especially Petrie Terrace, are well-known.

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occupants? Finally, the discrepancy between people's observations and experiences is explained in historical terms.

HABITATION Census figures leave no doubt about the predominance of timber

housing in Queensland from the 1840s to the 1960s. Over three quarters of the populace lived in all timber houses until the later nineteenth century and in timber and tin (corrugated iron) dwellings thereafter. For Brisbane, the peak was reached in 1921 when 95 per cent of houses had timber walls.

Within this Queensland genre there was quite a range of housing types, from rude "umpies" in the bush to stylistic mansions and even terrace houses. Though bark and slab huts decreased in proportion, they continued well into the twentieth century, more so in the country than the town.^

From the 1870s, however, this rural-urban differential was whittled down by the evolution and diffusion throughout Queensland of two basic housing types, both of which were of sawn timber—the earlier, simpler, two-roomed cottage and the more substantial four-roomed house. In essence both were hght-framed, exposed stud-walled timber and tin dwellings, highset on stumps, with balustrated verandahs and either gable, hip or pyramid roofs. Both types were capable of considerable extension, especially towards the rear or underneath, for kitchens, washhouses and additional rooms. They were also capable of embellishment, particularly in verandah detail, fencing and paintwork.

Nevertheless the most significant sub-type was the four-roomed house with pyramid or short-ridge roof of the later nineteenth century. In southeastern Queensland this developed further into the projecting gable house of the early twentieth century and then the multi-gable variety between the wars. Spreading throughout the newer suburbs and propagated further a field by architectural, timber and housing firms, this local tradition of timber building affected the more substantial and stylistic structures of the social ehte, as well as providing cheap, durable and compact homes fof middling to working class families.^

From first settlement, therefore, until second world war, the vast majority of dwellings in Brisbane and Queensland belonged to this tradition of timber building. But since there was so much development and diversity within the idiom, people's experiences might have been quite different.

OBSERVATION From pioneering to modern times, timber housing has taken a

beating on all sides. During the early 1860s to 70s newly arrived immigrants and sojourners in Brisbane were startled to find

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substantial buildings interspersed with one-storied timber cottages, bark huts and even tents.'' As observed in 1875 by James Inglis, an experienced New Zealand and Indian colonist, "In the streets, some wooden shanty, with a few old weather-boards roughly nailed together for a 'lean-to', roofed with rusty iron, old packing-tin, and tattered tarpaulin, lifts its unkempt head beside the stately erecfion of hewn stone and painted brick with sculptured cornices innumerable, vaulted halls, and floors of slate or marble".^ Apart from this irregularity in town, the makeshift character of suburbs was noted by visitors such as Richard Watt, who resided at Spring Hill in 1864:

The Wiltshire Cottage is like many or most of the houses of Brisbane, built entirely of wood, and to all appearance erected from the material found on the ground, as the stumps are left afterwards in the ground . . . ^

The most scathing criticism at that time came from local journalists. In particular the Brisbane Courier attacked the want of decent housing, the primitive style of architecture and the neglect of comforts of life in those "paltry humpies" of the frailest building materials, which were mushrooming on "churchyard lots" throughout the inner suburbs. '

Fifteen years later the same irregular and makeshift nature of Brisbane was apparent to William Senior, the local Hansard reporter, who gave some explanation in The Gentlemen's Magazine:

The ease with which building allotments can be obtained in the outskirts of Brisbane has had the effect of imparting to it a very straggling character. A working man can buy a small square of ground for twenty pounds, and less; it is too small for sanitary fairplay, but it will be his own. So, he becomes a landowner, and puts up a slab shanty or a tent at first, and lives there until he can replace it with a wooden cottage. The styles of the architecture are amusing sometimes, and as widely differing as the poles. The warm climate enables people to live out of doors the major part of the year, and the buildings are therefore of the flimsiest. 1 have seen a suburban residence constructed of beaten-out kerosine tins; another like a sentry's box. Upon hills great and small, on the slopes of gullies or in the bush, more resembling a temporary encampment than a permanent suburb, these humble freeholds attract the attention of the passer-by, and, as the reader will perceive, do not improve the general appearance of the place. Brisbane in consequence of this peculiarity, extends over a wide area, and seldom obtains the credit it deserves.*

No wonder Marianne North, the visiting flora artist, saw Brisbane in 1880 as "a most unattractive place—a sort of overgrown village, with wide empty streets full of driving dust and sand, surrounded by wretched suburbs of wooden huts scattered over steep bare hills".'^

Despite the proliferation of better housing during the 1880s, new

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arrivals continued to register their surprise on arrival. Writing to her English cousin in 1887, Mary Baldwin exclaimed that "This place looks foreign as there are so many wooden houses built on high piles".'" William Morris, another immigrant at the time, thought that colonial houses "put one in mind of a wild beast show at home, made of wood and put up on short props about two feet above the ground and pieces of zinc on top of the props to stop the white ants getting into the wood"." With tongue in cheek Hume Nisbet, a self-styled "colonial t ramp" conveyed their ephemeral quality to overseas readers in 1890:

Brisbane at this time was a gay place, consisting mostly of wood houses which their owners raised up with the help of some neighbours on a moonlight night, painted and papered next day, and held their first party in the night after. You might pass a bare paddock some evening, when a cart of wood and some piles were being unloaded, and repass the same paddock next morning to find a house erected, verandah and fence complete, and the proprietor gravely mixing his white lead to being the next stage, decoration.'^ Or, if the first position did not please the owner, it was no uncommon sight to see him and family take up their house and walk to the next block, or half-dozen streets off, as the new locality might have been decided on. That is one advantage of a wooden house.

Brisbane on a sunny day—and that was every day for at any rate nine months in the year—was a cheery place to live in, despite its excessive heat, its snakes ashore, and sharks afloat . . . '̂

Nisbet was hardly alone in complaining about the heat. In his travelogue on Queensland, Charles Allen castigated the Enghsh colonists for failing "to build houses that would more effectually exclude the heat than the thin weather-board constructions which are hastily put together and which, with their very slight low roofs and ridiculously small rooms, become heated like ovens under the fiery glare of a tropical sun".'-'' However, the supreme critic in 1892 was Nehemiah Bartley, the longtime businessman of Brisbane, who objected to the detrimental effect of extreme temperatures upon child health:

The tin roofs, even with ceilings, which they don't always have, mean 105° Fahrenheit, indoors, at midsummer, and 35° of the same, at midnight, at midwinter. "Awfully Jolly", as you must perceive, for typhoid fever in January, or pneumonia in July (as the case may be), and tends to rapid recovery, of course. But oh! for the children! the little Georges and the small Claras, born, and yet to be born, who too, will have to inhabit, and to die in those same tin roof houses. Poor little pets!'"

Disparaging remarks continued to be made about housing in Brisbane until present day. As recalled by Les Cottman, one of the American troops who "invaded" Brisbane in 1942:

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We came into Moreton Bay and we're all having a look at this strange country. Most of the roofs were red; most of the houses were up high on stumps—on stilts—and it was a strange sight. We thought it might have been an institution of some kind."

In 1950 an English immigrant reported the shock at finding so many timber and tin houses, whole suburbs in need of paint, and some areas without basic amenities. At the same time he observed both the elevation of houses on stumps and the means of construction whereby they might be readily repaired, or wholly transported even with the furniture intact.'*' When Peter Charlton, the Courier-Mail journalist, drove up from the south in the late 1960s, his first sight of suburban Brisbane was "not particularly encouraging"—hot, dry, dusty, tree less, neglected and disfigured: "Houses on stumps—or stilts as the locals would say—seemed to defy both gravity and the white ants; outdoor lavatories and streets with gravel edges merely added to the impression of impermanence". ' ' Charlton became acclimatised, but for Manfred Jurgensen, the German litterateur, modern Brisbane remained an alien environment from the beginning:

View from Stanley Street South Brisbane across the river c. 1880 with timber dwellings contrasting with the opulent Supreme Court—John Oxley Library.

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Margret gasped when she first saw what she termed hen-houses from the airport to the city. They were wooden boxes, badly dilapidated, with staircases resembling hen-roosts. Their stilts seemed to signal a detachment from the real nature of the land . . . There was something shabby about these houses, we felt, without knowing that they were considered to be the epitome of local Queensland architecture. Living in Brisbane became an experience neither of us would ever forget; it was then, and has since remained, a city demonstrating categorical negation as a way of life. I»

If Brisbane was treated as something of an eyesore by observers, the backblocks of Queensland fared even worse. On visiting a squatter's station on the Darhng Downs in 1859, William Stamer was hardly impressed by the homestead: "The walls were constructed of split timber slabs, put together in the roughest manner, and but for the honour of the thing, there might just as well have been no doors and windows, so warped and ill-fitting were they" ." Even in the settlements a decade later, houses seemed unattractive and uncomfortable to Charles Allen:

In the Queensland towns these are mostly wooden or iron construction, raised on piles, and consisting of a single floor, with a small verandah in front. The size depends upon the requirements or the purse of the settler, and as no two are alike, it gives the newly-formed town an irregular appearance, not very pleasing to the eye.2"

For the centenary in 1888 the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia summarily dismissed local settlements as consisting of "a few pubhc-houses, stores, a hospital, a court-house, and a lock-up besides a score or so of primitive cottages of sawn or split timber, with roofs of bark, wooden shingles or galvanised sheet-iron".^' In reporting a sociological investigation of tropical Townsville, Atherton and Cloncurry in 1924, Dr Raphael Cilento described the majority of houses as four roomed, verandah cottages plus kitchen, most of which were built to primitive plans, sited badly, lacking in domestic facilities and unsuited to tropical conditions.^^

The admission which David Malouf made in his novel Johnno regarding Brisbane in the late 1940s could have been repeated a thousand times over for settlements throughout Queensland:

And 1 had to admit then that it was difficult to see how anything could be made of Brisbane. It was so shabby and makeshift, with its wooden houses perched high on tar-black stilts, its corrugated-iron fences unpainted and rusting, its outdoor lavatories, chicken houses, blocks of uncleared land where the weeds in summer might be six feet tall, a tangle of lantana and morning glory and scraggy sun-flowers. Even in the city itself there were still buildings with first-storey verandahs, and occasionally one of the new facades (all pastel-coloured metal slats) would reveal, if you caught it at the right angle, the weatherboard fabric behind. Nothing seemed

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permanent here. Brisbane was a huge shanty-town, set down in the middle of nowhere.2'

If these observers presented a somewhat jaundiced view of habitation north of the Tweed, others were far more accepting. In 1861 the Rev. Dr John Dunmore Lang recommended the humble slab and bark hut, with or without floors and windows, as comfortable and ornamental enough for even a respectable family.2-* One of those which he had visited in the mid 1840s was well furnished in the sitting room with "Mahogany tables, chairs, sideboards, &c." and in the bedroom with the usual town furniture including "a Colonial cedar post-bed", thereby showing "how very comfortable a respectable family could be settled in the bush, with comparatively moderate means and exertion"." Several decades later when Walter Tyrwhitt M.A. (Oxon.) arrived to work back of the Downs at his "rough and ready" slab and iron hut, he was pleasantly surprised by its interior;

The rooms look very cosy. There is a wide and deep fireplace, the ceiling is canvass, and the walls lined with the same and pasted over with pictures from illustrated papers. Behind is a really good kitchen . . . A capital supper, with a smoke and a yarn afterwards, make us feel quite at home, and we soon after turn into beds of the most luxurious quality . . . 6̂

Even though Queensland houses were often rough, Anthony Trollope, the visiting English writer in 1871, believed that "they are never so squalid as are many of our cottages at home"; the working man was much better off in Queensland.^^

While such observers reacted favourably towards rural housing, some new arrivals expressed personal satisfaction with their colonial lot in town.28 In 1863 George Dennis, wheelwright, wrote glowingly of dwellings in Brisbane:

The houses are principally of wood, but nicely done, and as comfortable as in England. 1 find, a few miles out in the country, 1 can buy land for £1 per acre, in any quantity, but 1 think 1 can do best to my trade; and when 1 get a house and shop, and garden, 1 shall work to, not journeyman.^^

On this basis his brother, John, a carpenter of Devon, migrated with his family, built a large gabled verandah house with Juliet balcony off Petrie-Terrace and became a principal Brisbane builder.^0 Likewise Charlotte Traves informed friends in England that she and her husband had obtained "a nice, 5-roomed house with wash-house and large yard" in 1883.3' Looking at the frantically subdivided estates which sprawled westward from the city during the 1880s, headmaster John B. Fewings wrote fulsomely about "clean, well-painted, comfortable, heahhy cottages" with "a piano, sofa, soft chairs" and other paraphernaha in the drawing room—"the habitations of the artisan and labourer".32

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By this time Fewings and his contempories were more interested in depicting superior Brisbane dwellings which lined the river and dotted the ridges. In particular Harold Finch-Hatton mentioned their delightful situation and lovely gardens in 1885 while Cassell's Picturesque Australasia of 1888 described these pretty wooden dwellings with their cool verandahs catching the sea breeze." As early as 1866 Kate Fowler, who arrived to marry Walter Hume, recorded rather romantically, "I am very pleased with Brisbane, it is so picturesque from the river". '̂̂

More recently, visitors have continued to comment favourably on the distinctive character of local housing, such as the British writer Jilly Cooper, whose first hazy impressions of Brisbane included "houses perched on stilts, with steps up to the front door, and balconies fretted at the top and bottom like lace Victorian Christmas cards".35 For the lead-up to Brisbane's Expo '88, North Carolinians were treated less effervescently:

The city is surrounded by wooden houses reminiscent of the British colonial days in India. Called timber stilt houses, sometimes described as the only original contribution Australia has ever made to world architecture, the homes dot the hills above the river sitting atop foundation posts. With their intricately carved louvered verandas, the houses are said to be ideal for the region because the air circulates freely around the homes . . . 36

At the same time so-called trendies and speculators are investing in rejuvenating timber buildings, while some architects are reverting to the traditional idiom. A similar process is taking place elsewhere in Queensland, though slowly because of the urban-rural differential in cultural development.

Altogether these observations by contemporaries reveal two basic attitudes towards timber housing—either positive or negative. As visitors, immigrants and even residents might have evaluated these dwellings in accordance with their own preconceptions, the next step is to consider the experiences of occupants who were forced to come to grips with timber on its own terms.

OCCUPATION Until the 1880s around Brisbane and much later in the

countryside, the circumstances of colonial life were such that residents of all ranks commonly inhabited rude dwellings. Well-born squatters with their hired servants sheltered under drays and tents, and seemed quite content to erect huts of bark or slab until some degree of security warranted a house of sawn timber. At Durundur station near Kilcoy the Archer brothers were as happy as pigs in muck with their hut "over which is built a bark roof projecting several feet in front, so as to form a sort of verandah, which is our sitting room, the hut being the bedroom"; only knives were used for eating purposes, as forks were deemed an unnecessary refinement."

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As a discerning immigrant with a Scottish background in farming and surveying, William Pettigrew had difficulty in comprehending how the first generation of squatters could live that way."

Nevertheless mere males could make a rude timber house quite habitable. From the 1860s until at least the 1910s various treatises instructed aspiring settlers how to construct and furnish a comfortable hut from materials at hand, and some recorded their success. In particular Alexander Boyd, who built his own palatial slab house of four rooms at Corinda in the early 1860s, argued in 1882 "that there is more comfort in the primitive Australian hut than there was in the ill-drained, badly-ventilated, high-rented cottage" of brick in the home country. Moreover Boyd questioned "whether the owner feels any happier in his weather-tight building than he did in the old slab and bark 'humpy' ".-̂ "̂

In August 1862 Rachel Henning certainly found her brother's dwelling at Marlborough to be more than satisfactory:

We took up our quarters at Biddulph's old house, a very comfortable sort of abode, and they say the house at Exmoor is better, so we shall do very well. There is no glass in the window, and certainly there are interstices between the logs, but they are not ver\ wide, and then the climate is wonderful: the mornings are cold enough to make a fire pleasant, but in the middle of the day it is hotter than most English summer days.

Exmoor near Port Denison was something of an improvement. But the dwelling was soon shifted to a better site nearby, quite expeditiously as "It is not much to move a slab house; all the woodwork takes down and puts up again". At the same time the sitting room was enlarged, cloth-lined and papered, and floors were laid there, in her bedroom and on the verandah. With a new lampshade and proper furniture in place, the house looked "so pretty and comfortable", even if its inhabitants still preferred to do without window glass.'"'

As Pettigrew himself recognised, what often turned rough timber walls into a comfortable home was a woman's influence. Unlike bark huts, which were fine for bachelors, slab houses were quite acceptable accommodation for women and children.'" As early as 1849, David McConnel transported his new Scottish wife up the Brisbane River Valley to Cressbrook station where she found "a pretty cottage" comprising a suite of sitting, dressing and sleeping rooms built originally for the superintendent and his wife. Troubled by the shabbiness of the sitting room, Mary McConnel used her ingenuity to create "quite a pretty room to sit in, looking over a garden, with its stately bunya and beautiful hills beyond".''^ This slab and shingle cottage on sleepers is still inhabited by descendants today. Other pioneer wives like Jane Ellis, who "took one end of the cross-cut saw" (c.1891), helped build as well as decorate their first home.''-^

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The increasing availability of better building materials and home furnishings gave greater scope for adornment. With regard to a selector's sawn-wood house in the Logan district, Rosa Campbell Praed (nee Murray Prior) recalled being led as a child into the parlour hung with coloured lithographs and royal portraits; "there was a piano, covered with a big crochet antimacassar, against the wall, and a round table in the centre, on which were set a bouquet of dried grasses, albums, and things on mats".'''* Those walls were of golden brown pine, but cedar was more of a challenge to designing women; on taking rooms for a confinement in Brisbane during 1881, her stepmother Norah Murray Prior wrote chattily:

Lizzie will have told you all about our new rooms & how pretty she has made them. Aunt Lizzie is coming some day to take me out shopping & we are going on the rampage to look for pretty things. Cedar walls take a great deal of lighting up.^^

If the little woman was also the model wife and mother of Hume Nisbet's fantasy she ensured that her master came home to nothing distasteful:

A dry floor met his eyes; a comfortable-looking wife in fresh print, easy-fitting as became the office of a mother-nurse, greeted him with a placid air, as if the machinery of her daily routine went smoothly, like well-oiled wheels. A table was set and ready for him, and a savoury smell from the cooking-shed behind stole through his nostrils to his heart; the youngsters were outside rolling about in their undress uniform; at the shed door he knew he would find a bucket filled with water, and soap and towels, and on the mantel there was no danger of the pipe-shank being broken. These were imperative duties, and she had the sense to know it.'**

Altogether this means that many inhabitants of town and country appreciated their timber dwellings, whether slab huts or stylistic houses. At Mt McDonnell run in the Bowen district, Charles Eden and his wife were provided in 1863 with "an imposing-looking edifice", a four-roomed slab and shingle verandahed house with tables, sofas, and chairs, not to mention a sawn floor, as weU as access to their employers' excellent library "which contributed largely to our comfort".'*'' At the same time the Francis family of Corinda lived near Brisbane in a slab hut with an earthen floor. A decade later they moved into a new, highset, five-roomed, weatherboard house with twelve foot verandah and detached kitchen, but a bark roof all the same. In the words of one of the sons, "This was not a pretentious building, but was roomy and comfortable".''^ Even status-conscious people could find pleasure in inferior digs. While awaiting their new stone residence at Bulimba in 1849, the McConnels lived in a typical five-roomed cottage on nearby Kangaroo Point. The walls were unlined and the roof leaked. As their beautiful Collard piano blocked one of the verandah doors, visitors entered the sitting room

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through the kitchen, to be received by the hostess coming around from her own room via the back door, and utensils had to be laid out to prevent the rain from spoiling her "pretty things". "And yet", Mary exclaimed, "how happy we were in that rough little place"."'^

While the likes of the McConnels could soon occupy their own superior homes, newcomers with little capital who wanted a living around the town had to remain longer in lesser accommodation. Even when housing was scarce during the early 1860s and 1880s, they were often glad of any roof, a job and a better future. Charlotte and William Traves were content to live in their "nice 5-roomed house" without sufficient chairs for the whole family to be seated at one time; they were "taking care of money" She said, buying only by degrees what was necessary for comfort.^o Nor might families be confined to cramped quarters for lengthy periods. Such was the climate and the economy that most male employment was outdoors, children roamed the river and countryside, and women commonly performed domestic work in the backyard. As explained by another woman immigrant in 1883:

We have at last succeeded in getting a small house a little distance from the town, and the rent is not more than apartments in the town. Omnibuses pass every 10 minutes. There are four rooms and a verandah. The houses are built some distance from the ground, and there are no stoves, as the cooking and washing are mostly out of doors. We have to burn wood, and 1 cannot get less than a load— which is 5s.—but that will last a long time, as in the middle of the day you cannot endure a fire, it is so warm.5'

Outside of the very centre of Brisbane on the north bank, Brisbane South and the "suburbs" were really semi-rural settlements fringed by farm and bush. One old timer recalled that when he arrived as a boy in 1877, "Brisbane was like a spread out bush town, with plenty of vacant allotments in between shingled, wooden-roofed, weather­board cottages".52

Not until the 1880s and 90s did the town become more of an urban settlement.53 In housing this was reflected by the proliferation of the basic four roomed, timber and tin verandahed dwelling—a development which spread from Brisbane and regional centres such as Maryborough throughout the State. That this housing package in some form or other met the needs of many is indicated by various accounts, including Fewings' doxology on western suburban homes in 1892.5'' With some additional space perhaps, family life could be quite comfortable in the newer type of house.

The Rees family, which occupied a series of timber dwellings, lived in "Mobolon" by the riverside of rural Ironside from 1901 to 1907. This was a roomy, two-storied, square house with verandahs all round. On moving into suburban Paddington thereafter, young Lloyd Rees contrasted the warmth of this old matchbox with the

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newer, more stylish residence which sported a rare Marseilles tile roof:

It was an interesting house, designed by an architect, a rare thing in domestic building in those days. A particular feature of it was a gap of about a foot between the roof and the top of the walls all round the \ erandah, giving free movement of air across the ceilings and down into the rooms, through fretted ventilators. It was a boon in summer with its sea breezes, but a curse with the onslaught of the winter westerlies. . . The house was so brand new and so sparse in furniture that it never had the warmth of 'Mobolon' and we missed the wide w ild life of Ironside and St Lucia."

Forty years later in 1947 when the Malouf family made a similar shift from their highset, single-storied timber and tin house in South Brisbane to a three-storied residence in classy Hamilton, their son reacted similarly. Whereas the old house was comfortable, complex and conscious-raising, the new abode was condemned for being "stuffily and pretentiously over furnished and depressingly modern":

My loyalties remain where my feeling are, at the old house, with the corrugated-iron fence at the bottom of the yard leaning uneasily into the next street, and Musgrave Park with its insect-swarming darkness under the Moreton Bay figs still crowded with metho drinkers—disreputable, certainly, but warmer, more mvsterious than Arran Avenue Hamilton, where everthing is glossy and modern: electric stove, washing machine, built-in cupboards instead of the old pantry, a tiled niche for the refrigerator.-''''

Altogether warmth, comfort and hospitality pervade these living experiences. So does an exceptional sense of personal growth and awareness, since these writers were remarkable people who recorded their childhood experiences in old timber dwellings for posterity. If that makes one wary of treating such reminiscences as fact, so too does the question of social significance, since the lifestyle of their families was hardly dinkum working class.

On the other hand there is plenty of evidence from the 1840s onwards that inhabitants of varying status reacted badly in less conducive surroundings. When the McConnel's arrived in 1849 they first occupied his brother's rented town house, which Mary found to be decidedly unpleasant—not just cramped, smelly and poorly furnished, but swarming with "flying cockroaches"." At the same time Charles Trundle lamented his family's lot at Fortitude Valley:

I built a house if such it could be called it cost about £10 it had no Windows and compared to the Comforts we had just left it was a great Trial and needed far more Patience submission & Religion than I ever thought I should require to Bow to my circumstances and although 1 always strove (and did so generally) to have a Cheerful Countenance yet my heart was sorrowing hourly to see my Dear Wife and Children despoiled of Civilization & Comforts nor could I forbear Lord help me or 1 perish so difficult did my Trials appear.^^

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Similar conditions were experienced by immigrants during the peak periods of the 1860s and 80s, such as George Lansbury and his family who soon moved from the rat-infested immigration depot to Fortitude Valley in 1883:

It was worthy of its name, and I think we also lived up to it. The place we took was a kind of "humpy" for which we were plundered to the tune of ten shillings a week. It literally swarmed with cockroaches and black-beetles. We had escaped from the rats, but 1 am not sure which were the worst—cockroaches, mosquitoes, flies, or rats.

On finding work after an eight weeks' search, the family moved eighty miles inland to Harrisville to another humpy—one which leaked profusely but lacked any regular water supply, and was surrounded by snakes in the grass. Even the subsequent move back to a cottage in suburban Toowong was little better:

The lack of convenience to which we had become accustomed was as marked here as in the Bush. We cooked our food in a camp oven practically all the time we were in Australia. . . . The house stood in its own grounds and contained two bedrooms and a living room. We had no bedsteads and very little bed covering. The mosquitoes were pitiless in their ravaging.

Little wonder the Lansburys took the first opportunity to return to England in two years. Others were not as fortunate financially.5'

Though the quality of life might have improved during the later nineteenth century for some inhabitants, many were obviously experiencing hardship. Some of their damp, dirty and decrepit hovels stand condemned in the reports of Dr Joseph Bancroft, the municipal health officer, in 1887 to 1891.*° Even where the housing fabric was improved, the amenities might have been little better. Judging by a sociological investigation at Townsville in 1924, living conditions left much to be desired. Most of the 300 buildings inspected were wooden cottages with a skillion kitchen, a verandah across the front and a half verandah at the back. The majority of kitchens were unceiled, one third lacked any water supply, and most used kerosene lamps and wood stoves rather than gas or electricity. The washing was generally done on benches outside the kitchen or down the back steps, without any suitable boiler or set-in tubs. One quarter had either no bathroom or only some downstairs facility. Many were without ice-chests, meat-safes or utensils in good condition, and few labour-saving devices were evident anywhere. Nearly half of the yards were scattered with rubbish, aggravated by fowls and goats running free in yards and beneath the houses.*'

The statistics might be better for Brisbane by this time, but the broad picture was much the same in many suburban households for several decades more. In 1950 Peter Bradford not only informed Manchester readers that so many houses were of wood and iron, but

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also that many, even close to town, were without mains water, electricity, gas and sanitation.^^ Today's old timers have every right to query this generation's efforts to restore the past, mindful of their own depression to postwar experiences in the same old dirty, dilapidated, inconvenient, insanitary, cockroach-infested and termite-ridden timber homes.

EXPLANATION While the comments made by the occupants might be more

favourable on the whole than those by observers, there are still two sides to the same coin. Does this simply mean that individuals in differing circumstances responded variously, or is there some further explanation?

Much criticism of timber houses may be attributed merely to differing taste, status and standards. While many middhng to working class families were glad to gain any accommodation which satisfied basic needs, in the expectation of a better future, their superiors evaluated these dwellings in the light of their own cultural criteria. Hence the critical remarks by Trundle (1849), McConnel (1849), Watt (1864), Allen (1870), North (1882), Bartley (1892) and literary men since the 1860s. This also applies to medical men, including Bancroft (1887-91) and Cilento (1924), who also wished to impose their more enlightened standards upon the populace.

Such disfavour might also be attributed to practical problems associated with timber housing. From an early date, contemporaries were well aware of the effects of shrinkage, expansion, warping, leakage, damp, dry rot, flood, fire, heat and pests.^^ As a result the lifecycle of nineteenth century timber houses could be quite short. By the 1860s many of the early huts were falling apart, likewise cottages rushed up in the early 1860s by the 1880s, and 1880s houses after the second world war.*'' To anyone like Lansbury (1883), with comfort in mind and pride in place, such a habitat was quite unpalatable.

Another related reason for devaluing timber was the common hankering after masonry—something more solid, substantial, stylish and lasting. Those immigrants and sojourners who were accustomed to brick and stone architecture, whether stylistic or vernacular, could hardly appreciate such an alien tradition of timber building. Even colonials had much difficulty. As a boy Lloyd Rees was struck by the contrast with Bardon house, "a dreamlike vision" in stone straight out of Tudor England, "standing like a great shaped rock", where "the tracing of its windows was simple to the point of Romanesque but satisfying and so lovely".*^ Since fimber failed on all counts, and was particularly flimsy, it could only be treated as a temporary expedient until the second coming of masonry. Perhaps that millenium will be ushered in by a current builder from cold, craggy

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Tasmania who is reproducing two-storied brick and plaster terrace type houses in Brisbane contrary to the timber tradition.

Though there was never any contest in reality, the supremacy of timber over masonry was riot officially acknowledged until the 1880s nor fully justified until later in the decade.** Even then individuals suffering from masonry mentality and colonial cringe continued to devalue timber and many, like Malouf's father in 1947, reverted to solid brick when the opportunity arose.*^ And weatherboard houses could be readily disfigured and demolished. Thus postwar Queensland turned against the only real tradition of timber building in Australia, to build anew and rebuild the old in alien materials, especially brick and fibro-cement.

Now in the 1980s, a new generation has begun to appreciate "the Queensland house", seeking to immortalize its being in restoration, reproduction and illustration. Opinion regarding the merits of traditional houses might be just as divided as ever and sceptics might accuse disciples of sheer nostalgia. Nevertheless there can be little doubt that timber housing has long had its proponents, even of primitive huts in pioneering days. For if it is true that knowledge of oneself and the world is shaped by environment, then place and space are determinants of human psyche. If it is likewise true that timber housing has its own character, this will affect its occupants one way or another from childhood through later life.

That traditional housing has some claim to distinction is well documented by personal reminiscences since at least the 1880s. There are no real surprises here regarding its form or feature: the preponderance of timber and tin, with a little cast iron thrown in; the ubiquity of verandahs and their multifarious role; the specific importance of the kitchen in family life and female sphere; the elevation of houses on stumps and the significance of the sub-floor; the location of service rooms at one remove from the core, either to the rear, outside, or underneath; the consequent emphasis on the two main axes of in and out, up and down. Likewise the particular qualities discerned: the transient nature of timber housing and lightness of form; the outward openness yet inner barriers for occupants, visitors and the elements; the heightened sounds made by these agents and by timber itselfi the variegated colour of wood in its raw or decorated state; the interrelationship between these characteristics and the prevaihng climate, landscape and vegetation. Also the warmth, comfort and hospitality accompanying family life. Some of these attributes no doubt relate to masonry homes as well, but as a whole they constitute a distinctive way of life for many inhabitants of timber houses in Queensland.

Externally these attributes of dwelling in a timber home were perceived by some contemporaries from then until now. Internally these stimulated that sensual apprehension of the total living

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environment, by sight, touch, sound, smell and emotion, which shaped their lives thereafter. What needs to be conveyed by the study and conservation of timber housing, therefore, is not simply a static representation of bygone days, nor a nostalgic nod at the past, but a dynamic relationship between people, their habitat and the environment over time.

All of this and more is expressed, as only a poet can, in the words of David Malouf:

A landscape and its houses. Also a way of life! But more deeply; a way of seeing things ...''**

FOOTNOTES 1. E.g. Peter Bell, Timber and Iron: Houses in North Queensland

Mining Settlements, 1861-1929 (St Lucia: Queensland University Press, 1984); Brisbane History Group, Brisbane: Housing, Health, the River and the Arts (BHG Papers No. 3, 1985); Balwant Saini & Ray Joyce, The Australian House: Homes of the Tropical North (Sydney: Lansdowne Press, 1982); Ray Sumner, More Historic Homes of Brisbane (Brisbane: National Trust of Queensland, 1982); Ray Sumner, "The Queensland Style", The History & Design of the Australian House, comp. Robert Irving (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1985), ch. 14; Donald Watson, The Queensland House: A Report into the Nature and Evolution . . . (Brisbane: Australian Heritage Commission report, I98I).

2. See my "Brisbane's Timber Houses in Queensland Context: Towards a Dynamic Analysis" (forthcoming 1989).

3. See my "In Search of the Brisbane House", BHG papers no. 3, 1985, ch. 5.

4. E.g. George Wight, 1858; John Harrop, 1862; Charles Eden, 1863; Moses Ward, 1863; Richar^ Watt, 1864, Reuben Nicklin, 1865; Kate Hume, 1866; Charles Allen, 1870: James Inglis, 1875; Walter Coote, c. 1878. Sources available from the author.

5. James Inglis, Our Australian Cousins (London: Macillan, 1880), p. 38.

6. Richard Watt, "Second Class Passage", Sea Breezes, 22 (1956), p.90.

7. Brisbane Courier. 11 May 1864, cf. The Colony of Queensland as a Field for Emigration (Brisbane; Government Printer, 1866), p.72.

8. "Redspinner" (William Senior), "Some Australian Capitals", The Gentleman's Magazine, 245 (1879), p.57.

9. Marianne North, A Vision of Eden {Exeter: Webb & Bower, 1980), p.158.

10. John Oxley Library MS OM 81-1. 11. "Diary of William Morris' Voyage to Australia 1887", Queensland

Family Historian 7, no. 2 (Feb. 1986), p. 11. 12. Hume Nisbet, A Colonial Tramp: Travels and Adventures in

Australia and New Guinea (London: Ward & Downey, 1891), vol. 2, p.17.

13. Charles H. Allen, A Visit to Queensland and her Goldfields (London: Chapman & Hall, 1879), p. 160.

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14. Nemehia Bartley, Opals and Agates (Brisbane: Gordon & Gotch, 1892), p.296.

15. CAST, "The Brisbane Line", Channel 7 TV documentary, 17 June 1988.

16. Manchester Evening News, n.d. [1950], JOL S.W. Jack cutting book, vol.44.

17. Courier-Mad, I January 1988. 18. Manfred Jurgensen, A Difficuh Love (Brisbane: Phoenix

Publications, 1987), p.47. 19. William Stamer, Recollections of a Life of Adventure (London:

Tinsley, 1866), p.41. 20. Allen, p. 162. 21. Picturesque Atlas of Australasia, ed. Andrew Garran (1886-88),

repr. Australia, the First Hundred Years (Sydney; Paul Hamlyn, 1974), p.409.

22. Raphael Cilento, The White Man in the Tropics (Commonwealth of Australia Department of Health Tropical Division, Service Publication no. 7, 1925), pp. 75-92. I owe this reference to Dr John Thearle.

23. David Malouf, Johnno (1975, repr. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), p. 83.

24. John D. Lang, Queensland, Australia (London: Stanford, 1861), p. 278.

25. John D. Lang, Cooksland in North-Eastern Australia (London; Longman, 1847), pp. 120-22, also in Select Documents in Australian History, ed. C.M.H. Clark (London: Angus & Robertson, 1950), pp.276-77; cf. David Forbes, "Reminiscences of the early days", Queensland Geographical journal, 16 (1900-1), pp. 55-56.

26> Walter S. Tyrwhitt, The New Chum in the Queensland Bush (Oxford; Vincent, 1888?), p. 24.

27. Anthony Trollope, Australia [1873], ed. R D . Edwards & R.B. Joyce (St Lucia; University of Queensland Press, 1967), pp.203-4.

28. E.g. Letters from Emigrants to Queensland, 1863-85 (Brisbane; Q F H S , 1984).

29. Ibid., pp. 12-13. 30. Rod Fisher & Steve Woolcock, Petrie-Terrace, 1858-1988: Its Ups

and Downs (Brisbane: Boolarong Press, 1988), pp. 18-19. 31. Letters from Emigrants, 2nd series, p. 11. 32. John B. Fewings, Memoirs of Toowong c. 1892, JOL MS OM 67-

14, cf. John Potts, One Year of Anti-Chinese Work in Queensland (Brisbane; Davison & Metcalf, 1888), appendix contrasting Europeans' housing.

33. Harold Finch-Hatton, Advance Australia (London; W.H. Allen, 1885), p.318; Cassell's Picturesque Australasia, ed. E.E. Morris (1887-89), repr. Brisbane by 1888 (BHG Sources no. 1, 1988), pp. 119-20.

34. Walter & Kate Hume, A Victorian Engagement, ed. Bertram Hume (St Lucia; University of Queensland Press, 1975), pp. 172-73.

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35. Courier-Mail, 13 December 1985. 36. News and Observer [Raleigh, N.C.] 6 March 1988. 37. John Archer, letter 2 January 842, Fryer Library MS 1665 & JOL

MS OM 80-10, cf. Christopher P. Hodgson, Reminiscences of Australia (London; Wright, 1846), pp. 26-29, 37-41.

38. William Pettigrew, letter 26 November 1850, RHSQ MS, 39. Alexander J. Boyd, Queensland (London: Queensland Emigration

Office, 1882), pp. 75-76. Cf. George Wight, Queensland, the field for British Labour and Enterprise (London; G. Street, 1861, pp. 164-65; Charles Barlee, Queensland, Austraha (Holborn Hill: Gordon & Gotch, c. 1868); Charles Eden, My Wife and I in Queensland (London: Longman, 1872), pp. 65-66; Jane Ellis, / Seek Adventure (Sydney; Alternative Publishing Cooperative, 1981); Giles Fletcher ed. Queensland (Brisbane; Government Printer, 1886, pp. 12-29); Alexander J. Boyd, "Hints to New Settlers" [1899], Queensland Agricultural Journal (1913), repr. Queensland Heritage 3, no. 2 (1975), pp. 13-20; Bernard O'Reilly, Green Mountains (iix'isbane: Watson, Ferguson, 1940?) pp. 139-40.

40. Rachel Henning, The Letters of Rachel Henning, ed. David Adams (Sydney; Angus & Robertson, 1952), pp. 94, 134-37, 142.

41. Boyd, "Hints to new Settlers", p. 14. 42. Mary McConnel, Memories of Days Long Gone By (n.p., 1905?),

p. 2L 43. Ellis, pp. 54-55. 44. Rosa Campbell Praed, Mv Australian Girlhood (London; T.

Fisher, 1904), p. 219. 45. Norah Murray Prior, Letter 15 August 1881, JOL MS 81-71.

46. Nisbet (1891), p. 35. 47. Eden, p. 65. 48. Alexander Francis, Then and Now: The Story of a Queenslander

(London; Chapman & Hall, 1935), pp. 5-9, 32-33. 49. McConnel, p. 14. See my "David Cannon McConnel's Second

'Bump of Hope'; Bulimba House and Farm, 1849-53", Brisbane: People. Places and Pageantry (BHG papers no. 6, 1987), ch. 4.

50. Charlotte Traves, letter 16 July 1883, Letters from Emigrants, 2nd series, p. 11.

51. A.S., letter 15 July 1883, ibid., p. 30. 52. C E O . Lentz, "Memoirs and Some History" (JOL TS, 1961), p. 3. 53. See D.P. Crook, "Occupations of the People of Brisbane; An

Aspect of Urban Society in the 1880s", Historical Studies. 10 (1961), pp. 50-64; Ronald L. Lawson Brisbane in the 1890s: A Study of an Australian Urban Society (St Lucia; University of Queensland Press, 1973).

54. Fewings, c. 1892. Cf. Eleanor Bourne, 1880s; Lucy North, 1880s; Lloyd Rees, 1898-1917; Zornig family, 1906-8; Lindsay family, 1910s; Browne family, 1914-36; Macarthurfamily, 1920s; C F Isbel, 1920s; David Malouf, 1920s; Thomas Shapcott, 1960s. Sources available from the author.

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55. Lloyd Rees, Peaks and Valleys: An Autobiography, ed. Elizabeth Butel (Sydney; Collins, 1985), pp. 9, 48-49.

56. David Malouf, 12 Edmonstone Sreet (London; Chatto & Windus, 1985), p. 4 cf. Johnno. p. 4.

57. McConnel, pp. 11-12. 58. Charles Trundle, Diary, JOL MS OM 79-2/28. 59. George Lansbury, My Life (London: Constable, 1928), pp. 50-59. 60. JOL MS OM 72-152.' 61. Cilento, pp. 77-78. 62. Manchester Evening News, n.d. [1950], JOL S.W. Jack cutting

book, vol. 44. 63. E.g. McConnel, 1849; Pettigrew, 1850; Coote, 1862; Eden, 1864;

Herbert, 1864; Francis, 1873; Bourne, 1880s; Rees, 1898-1917; Lindsays, 1910s; Malouf, 1920s-. Sources available from the author. See Fisher, "Dynamic Analysis". Rees, p. 50. See Fisher, "Dynamic Analysis". Malouf, 12 Edmondstone Street, p. 10. Melbourne Age. 20 October 1984.

64 65 66 67 68

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Volume XIII will, like Volume Xll, cover three years, and should contain 12 issues, the last in November 1989.

For reasons of length, it was necessary to publish an edited version of the papers by Cameron Hazlehurst and Peter Biskup in the November 1988 issue.