Victoria Park

General

Classification

State Heritage

Register status

Entered

Date entered

3 December 2007

Types

Archaeological: Archaeological potential

Parks/gardens/trees: Public park/reserve

Themes

1.2 Peopling places: Migration from outside and within

1.3 Peopling places: Encounters between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples

2.2 Exploiting, utilising and transforming the land: Exploiting natural resources

2.9 Exploiting, utilising and transforming the land: Valuing and appreciating the environment and landscapes

3.5 Developing secondary and tertiary industries: Struggling with remoteness, hardship and failure

6.3 Building settlements, towns, cities and dwellings: Developing urban services and amenities

7.6 Maintaining order: Defending the country

8.5 Creating social and cultural institutions: Sport and recreation

8.6 Creating social and cultural institutions: Commemorating significant events

Construction periods

1875, Victoria Park (gazetted)

1925–1935, Sporting Fields (1925; re-laid 1935)

1928, BCC Electricity Substation No. 4 (former, 1928)

1930–1936, Gilchrist Avenue (1930-32, and 1936)

1936, Riding Row Entrance Piers and Former Alignment (1936)

1936, ‘Play the Game’ Wall (c1936)

1943, US Army HQ Flagpole, near 1975 golf clubhouse (1943)

1943, US Army Officers' Camp Flag Pole, Gregory Tce (1943)

1958–1962, Dressing Shed & Kiosk (c1958-62)

1959, Gundoo Memorial Grove (1959)

2001, Ornamental Lake (York’s Hollow) (replaced a c1933 lake which had been modifed in 1988)

unknown–1943, Stone retaining wall, Herston Road (pre-1943)

unknown, Mature plantings and lawns

unknown, Archaeological potential

Historical period

1870s–1890s Late 19th century

1900–1914 Early 20th century

1914–1919 World War I

1919–1930s Interwar period

1939–1945 World War II

1940s–1960s Post-WWII

Location

Address

454 Gregory Terrace, Spring Hill

LGA

Brisbane City Council

Coordinates

-27.4549182, 153.02477505

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Significance

Criterion AThe place is important in demonstrating the evolution or pattern of Queensland’s history.

Victoria Park, a place that has been formed by a range of uses over time, is important in demonstrating the establishment and evolution of Queensland’s early public recreation reserves.

Established at a site of cultural importance for Aboriginal people across the region, Victoria Park was granted to the Brisbane Municipal Council for use as a public park in 1864 and was formally gazetted as a recreation reserve in 1875, during the early period of the establishment of such reserves in Queensland. It has remained a large public park, used for sport and recreation, on the fringe of the state capital’s CBD. Its green spaces, mature trees, and sports facilities have been maintained and improved over time. The park has been enhanced by ornamental and memorial features, including plantings, Gilchrist Avenue, stone walls, planter beds, and a lake.

The park contains examples of the work of professional horticulturalists Henry Moore (Brisbane Parks Superintendent 1912-40) and Harry Oakman (Brisbane Parks Superintendent 1946-63), including mature tree plantings, planter beds, and the Gundoo Memorial Grove plantings of native trees in 1959 to celebrate the centenary of Queensland, and remnants of the adjacent subtropical plantings in the early 1960s.

Victoria Park is also regionally important and distinctive for its long history of non-park uses, including: its role as social, cultural, and sustenance grounds for Aboriginal people; resource extraction, such as timber felling and industrial brick-making (until the 1860s); stock agistment (from 1860s); temporary housing and camps for displaced people, including early immigrants (1840s), the unemployed during the Great Depression (1930s), war brides (1945-7), and families awaiting Housing Commission residences (1947-60); the provision of municipal services, such as official rubbish dumping (1870s to 1901), and an electricity substation (1928); and defence uses, including a rifle range (1860s-80s), and military camps, air raid shelters, and an anti-aircraft battery during World War II (WWII) (1942-5).

The park retains physical evidence of its varied and evolving uses – some have left visible legacies, in built and landscape form, while others have contributed to the archaeological potential of the site.

Criterion CThe place has potential to yield information that will contribute to an understanding of Queensland’s history.

Victoria Park has the potential to contribute knowledge that will lead to a greater understanding of Queensland’s early and evolved urban material culture, consumption and disposal habits, utilities infrastructure, and occupation activities on the urban fringe.

Archaeological investigations of the extensive late-19th and early-20th century municipal refuse deposits have the potential to reveal artefacts that may provide further information on the lifestyles, diet, and health of urban colonial occupants, and facilitate studies of market access, consumer choice, refuse disposal patterns, and social and economic life. The progressive disposal of refuse across the park also provides an opportunity to explore changes in material culture over time.

Archaeological investigations of areas subject to late-19th and early-20th century reclamation and drainage improvements, and in the vicinity of the interwar Brisbane City Council (BCC) Electricity Substation No. 4, have the potential to reveal surface and sub-surface features that could contribute to a greater understanding of the planning, design, and construction of drainage and electrical distribution infrastructure.

Historical use of the park for a variety of purposes has resulted in the potential for rare subsurface archaeological evidence that could inform about the nature and extent of early- to mid-19th century meeting, camping, rifle range, and brick-making activities in the historically low-lying ‘York’s Hollow’ area, and occupation of the place during the Great Depression and WWII.

Criterion DThe place is important in demonstrating the principal characteristics of a particular class of cultural places.

BCC Electricity Substation No. 4 (1928), located in the northeast corner of Victoria Park, is an excellent example of an electricity substation constructed during the interwar period in Brisbane. Highly intact in its form, fabric, and materials, it is important in demonstrating the principal characteristics of its type, which include its:

• inner urban location;
• domestic scale and form with modest Classical influences;
• masonry construction with red-brown face brick walls and render details;
• parapet to the main entrance;
• use of robust materials with simple detailing;
• large operable windows for abundant interior ventilation and roller doors to permit large machinery; and
• open, robust interior with concrete floor, designed to accommodate electrical equipment.

Criterion EThe place is important because of its aesthetic significance.

Victoria Park is significant for its aesthetic attributes, as an extensive, well-kept green space juxtaposed within a metropolitan context. Its undulating terrain has expanses of lawn, sports fields, and mature tree plantings, and affords picturesque views from the park out into its urban surrounds. This is particularly impressive from two high points, affording broad views centred on the Brisbane CBD’s high rise towers.

Highly intact, BCC Electricity Substation No. 4 has aesthetic importance for its beautiful attributes and streetscape contribution through its form, scale, materials, skilful use of modest Classically-influenced Interwar architectural style, and prominent location fronting Gregory Terrace and Bowen Bridge Road. The building is an attractive, well-considered design with symmetrical composition, central parapet and projecting end gables, and complementary material palette of red-brown face brick, terracotta roof tiles, and render details.

Criterion GThe place has a strong or special association with a particular community or cultural group for social, cultural or spiritual reasons.

Victoria Park has a long and special association with the people of Brisbane as an inner-city park for organised and informal sport and recreation, officially since its formal gazettal as a recreation reserve in 1875.

History

Victoria Park is a large and early recreation reserve which covers an area of undulating land bordered by Bowen Bridge Road, Gregory Terrace, the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Kelvin Grove campus, and Herston Road, in the suburbs of Spring Hill and Herston. The park, now divided into two sections by a road and rail corridor, was granted to the Brisbane Municipal Council for use as a public park in 1864 and gazetted as a reserve for recreation in 1875. Over the course of its history, prior to and after gazettal, Victoria Park’s uses have included social, cultural, and sustenance grounds for Aboriginal people across the region; resource extraction, such as brick-making and timber-felling; stock agistment; municipal services, including rubbish dumping and an electrical substation; campsites for displaced people and the unemployed; temporary housing; military camps and other defence uses; and sports and recreation grounds, including an 18-hole golf course located west of Gilchrist Avenue from 1931 to 2021. Despite incursions into its land for educational and other purposes, and the construction of railway lines and roads through its centre, Victoria Park remains the largest park in inner Brisbane.[1]

Aboriginal custodianship
Victoria Park and Meanjin, the latter area now encompassing the Brisbane CBD, are traditionally part of Turrbal and Jagera/Yuggera country.[2] Walan or Woolan (meaning ‘bream’) and Barrambin (meaning ‘windy place’) comprised the areas now known as Herston and Bowen Hills. Walan and Barrambin were meeting and gathering places for groups travelling to and from the Blackall Ranges, as well as corroboree sites and hunting and fishing lands. The land was undulating, with hills punctuated by a chain of waterholes and gullies. It was an extensive camp, contact, and cultural site.[3]

Free settlement in Brisbane and the associated competition for resources within and beyond the settlement increased violent conflict and dispossession and disruption of traditional lifestyle and cultural practices of Aboriginal people – yet traditional use of Barrambin and Walan continued for decades after the arrival of Europeans, with from 700-1000 Aboriginal people residing in York’s Hollow at times during the 1840s and 1850s.[4]

Penal colony, free settlement and early industrial use (1820s-1860s)
European occupation in what is now Queensland began in the 1820s, with the establishment of the Moreton Bay Penal settlement at Redcliffe in late 1824, soon followed by a move to Meanjin in early 1825. The Europeans used Walan and Barrambin for resource extraction and industrial activities needed to support the settlement, such as brick-making[5] and timber-getting. They named the area ‘York’s Hollow’, after the leader of the local clan, whom the Europeans referred to as ‘the Duke of York’, thought to be an Anglicised version of the name Daki Yakka. A small number of interactions took place between Europeans and Aboriginal people prior to, and following, the establishment of the Moreton Bay Penal Settlement, likely the Duke of York’s clan. The Duke of York, estimated to be in his 40s in 1836, visited the European settlement at the invitation of two Quakers, and a reciprocal visit was made by the commandant of the settlement, Foster Fyans. The clan largely avoided the penal settlement, with only a limited number of interactions reported by European sources.[6]

The Moreton Bay Penal settlement was opened for free settlement in 1842, and York’s Hollow, just beyond the town boundary, proved convenient for accommodating unexpected arrivals in the colony. A Chinese camp was established there in 1848 following a failed attempt to employ Chinese shepherds on pastoral stations. In 1849, 253 immigrants from the ships Fortitude, Chaseley, and Lima formed a temporary village on the York’s Hollow slopes, after arrangements for land grants fell through. Other recent immigrants to Queensland in the mid-1800s stayed in these temporary fringe camps. As Herston and the surrounding area became increasingly urbanised, these camps were deemed unhealthy. Its residents were 'moved along', and new immigration facilities were constructed elsewhere.[7]

The brick-making industry continued within the gully, and York’s Hollow bricks were reportedly used in the construction of Queensland’s Parliament House in 1866. The waterway along the hollow provided a water supply for the fledgling residential settlement, supplementing the tank stream within the town.[8]

The Duke of York clan retained its presence in York’s Hollow. Gatherings continued, with clashes between Aboriginal people from Brisbane and Moreton Bay occurring in June 1847 and June 1850, with up to 800 people present. Interactions between the clan and the Europeans were mixed: some members of the clan were employed in Brisbane town by Europeans, while Europeans allegedly visited the camp to collect native vegetation for their gardens. There were also European assaults on the camp. In December 1846, following the deaths of three European settlers on the Pine River, European soldiers raided the camp at 11pm, firing on the estimated 300 – 400 people sleeping there. Kitty, daughter of the Duke of York, died in the affray. In November 1849, Turrbal people at the Barrambin camp were shot by military officers after a false report was circulated that they had killed a bullock. Three men were wounded, and two police were sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for the offence. Local newspapers stopped reporting on the camp after 1860, but the clan likely remained within Barrambin and Walan beyond that date.[9] Other Aboriginal people also continued to camp in the park. Archibald Meston, later a major proponent of Queensland’s Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897, reported meeting 60 Aboriginal people, from Brisbane, Ipswich, Moreton Bay and north of Caboolture, in Victoria Park in 1870.[10]

Establishment of Public Reserve for Recreation (1860s-1880s)
When Queensland became a separate colony in 1859, the Queensland Government made a concerted effort to provide recreational lands for the people of Brisbane. It was believed that the fledgling society would benefit from having open spaces included in the infrastructure. At a time when industry was choking many of the large cities in Britain and Europe, the Queensland Government did not want the same fate to befall Brisbane. Terms such as 'lungs of the city' and 'breathing space' were used to describe parks established in Brisbane.[11]

Public reserves for recreation in Australia were a result of a 19th century movement to improve living conditions and health of urban residents, and by the 1830s the provision of parkland was seen as an integral part of Australian town planning. Parks were often established in difficult terrain, which was unfit for subdivision and sale, and planning frequently formalised existing tracks across a reserve. Parks varied widely in style and content – depending on size, community wealth, the designer’s taste, climate, and use – although, initially, the main emphasis was on ornamentation for leisure activities other than sport. All such parks had fences to exclude wandering stock or to contain agisted animals. Some had carriage drives, and more elaborate examples included statuary, bandstands, pavilions, fountains and ponds, or even zoological gardens. Heightened interest in botany and horticulture during the 19th century ensured most recreation grounds contained plants from around the world, while rising nationalism after Federation led to the planting of more Australian plant species. Over time, social, physical and technological changes have influenced the perception, design and use of parks – resulting in modifications to existing reserves, such as the removal of fences, the addition of sports grounds, playgrounds and more areas of manicured lawns. Parks also benefitted from schemes to provide work during the Great Depression.[12]

Victoria Park was an early reserve for recreation in Queensland and was the largest of Brisbane’s early public parks. There were also early botanic gardens in Queensland, but these were usually large (more than 20 acres (8ha)) and had a botanic collection as their focus. Public parks were generally established by municipal authorities for recreation. Other early public parks in what later became Queensland included Leslie Park in Warwick (surveyed 1849, gazetted 1855, QHR 600946); and Friend Park, at Barney Point, Gladstone (Port Curtis) (government domain, mid-1850s, QHR 601341). Post-Separation Queensland public parks (all much smaller than Victoria Park) included Bowen Park, Bowen Hills, Brisbane (1863, QHR 601523); Musgrave Park, South Brisbane (1865); and Hardgrave Park, Petrie Terrace, Brisbane (1875).[13]

York’s Hollow had been proposed for a recreation reserve under the New South Wales Government, and the new Queensland Government indicated its intention to create the reserve. In 1864 the government announced that it was ‘pleased to grant a reserve of about three hundred acres (121.4ha), in York’s Hollow, for the purpose of a public park and recreation ground for the citizens of Brisbane’.[14] The Brisbane Municipal Council was to be granted the deed, but the Queensland Government retained control over the site. The name ‘Victoria Park’ emerged in the mid-1860s, either in tribute to the then-monarch, or the London park of the same name. In June 1865, notice was given to all persons residing or employed on ‘that part of York’s Hollow known [as] the Victoria Park’, that they must remove all buildings from the land by 31 December, after which date no one could live there, cut timber, make bricks or remove earth. In 1866-7 the park was fenced, and the Public Lands Office leased grazing rights over the land for additional revenue. Lessees attempted to evict the brick-makers and squatters who had erected tents and temporary houses within the park.[15]

Victoria Park was formally gazetted as a reserve for recreation in 1875. A Board of Trustees was created to manage the 321 acres and 2 roods (approx. 130ha) of parkland; they 'expeditiously drew up a code of by-laws which provided, not only for the protection and good government of the park, but also laid down the rules for raising revenue for the improvement of the park'. The trustees, however, had limited success in fundraising for and improving the site.[16]

The area referred to as York’s Hollow had included an extensive area now covered by the Brisbane Showgrounds, Bowen Hills and parts of Herston, to what is now the Normanby Fiveways. From the 1860s, this area was reduced as land was required for other uses, including a hospital on Bowen Bridge Road, the Acclimatisation Society Gardens (Bowen Park, most of which later became the Brisbane Exhibition Grounds), and Grammar School reserves. The land set aside for Victoria Park was also reduced, as demands for services and facilities were met by encroachments on the undeveloped park. Land was resumed from the park for a night soil/manure depot (1866), a military rifle range (operating within the park from the 1860s to the 1880s),[17] sports facilities for nearby schools, the Brisbane-Sandgate railway (1882), a government domain (1883),[18] and a children’s hospital on Herston Road (1883). Most of the resumptions were located on the park’s boundaries, but the railway crossed through the centre of the park, dividing it in two. By 1883, Victoria Park had been reduced to 217 acres (88ha), though it remained the largest open reserve within the immediate city area.[19]

At the same time, the importance of the park for recreational use was emphasised. The residential areas surrounding the park (particularly Spring Hill and Fortitude Valley) experienced dramatic residential growth in the second half of the 19th century, becoming amongst the most densely populated areas in Brisbane by 1890. These inner urban areas were also home to a cross section of Brisbane society, from the poorest living in small cottages in the lower slopes of the hill, to the prestigious and wealthy homes overlooking Victoria Park on Gregory Terrace. The park provided an open space for residents, particularly those who lived in crowded and poor conditions at the bottom of Spring Hill.[20]

Municipal rubbish dump (1870s-1901)
From 1872, amendments to the laws and regulations relating to public health placed additional restrictions on the disposal of refuse and led to the establishment of municipal dumping at Victoria Park.[21] In 1873, the Local Board of Health, with consent from the Surveyor-General, declared that rubbish could be deposited in the park, initially ‘in the clay-holes on the side of the ridges’, low-lying areas, creeks, and waterholes, and later buried in trenches.[22] When filled, rubbish was covered with earth and flattened, assisting reclamation of areas, and the remediation and beautification of the park. By 1886, a reported 1,053 loads of rubbish had been trenched and the following year it was noted by council’s health officer Dr Joseph Bancroft that the ‘available ground on the Gregory Terrace side of the railway of sufficient depth of earth is nearly worked out’.[23] However, it continued in new areas of the park, despite local residents’ protests.[24] In 1899 the park trustees granted the Brisbane Municipal Council permission to deposit and bury rubbish in trenches in one of the Victoria Park gullies, near the watercourse on the western side of the railway.[25] This practice continued until 1901, while unofficial dumping continued into the 1930s.[26]

Park improvements (1890-1930)
In 1889, a large scheme of improvements was drafted for Victoria Park by William Soutter, a member of the Queensland Acclimatisation Society. Some proposals were rejected, such as selling residential subdivisions within the park, but Soutter implemented other improvements between 1890 and 1892. Much of the park was cleared and the rubbish burned. A 60ft (18m) drive with 12ft (3.6m) walkway was cut and kerbed through the park, atop the park’s excavated clay pits. The railway corridor was fenced, and trees grown in the Acclimatisation Society Gardens (including camphor laurels (Cinnamomum camphora) and umbrella trees (Schefflera actinophylla)) were planted along both sides of the railway, including a 1km long avenue of camphor laurels along the Gregory Terrace side of the railway. Drainage was improved, and the waterway running through the park was diverted. Extensive planting schemes were to follow but were not carried out due to lack of funds.[27] By 1897, despite Soutter’s work, Victoria Park was considered ‘a magnificent tract of country many acres in extent, but it is literally in a state of nature. Little has been done to it’.[28]

The park remained popular for recreational and non-recreational uses. In the absence of formally designed facilities, informal recreation included swimming in the ponds formed in the former brick pits, and football and cricket games on the flat ground at the centre of the park. Military drills and musters were held regularly, with the Queensland Defence Force marching to the park from the Adelaide Street drill shed. Squatters, ‘larrikins’, gamblers, drinkers and others committing undesirable activities in the park were reported. Between August and October 1890, mass meetings drew thousands to the Gregory Terrace section of the park opposite the Exhibition Building each Sunday. The ‘Park Hospital’, a tent hospital for quarantine cases, was operated in the Herston Road section from late 1890. The park also drew the attention of a University Commission as a possible site for a tertiary educational facility.[29]

In 1903, Victoria Park was brought within the boundary of the City of Brisbane, and in 1908, the trusteeship of 210 acres, 2 roods and 11 perches (85.2ha) of the park was transferred to Brisbane City Council (BCC). The Council had been seeking control of the parks within its area, in place of the trustees who administered the parks. Between 1887 and 1913 it gained full control of Wickham, Observatory, Hardgrave, Babbage, Albert, Alexandra, and Victoria Parks. The International Town Planning movement that existed at the time also helped to put city planning and beautification programmes on the Council's agenda. Between 1913 and 1925, Bowen, New Farm, Raymond, Newstead, Perry, Centenary, and Teneriffe Parks were created.[30]

Victoria Park was the largest of BCC’s new parks but was ‘a rather difficult one to handle’,[31] due to its uneven topography, waterways and poor soil. Interest in the park for its non-recreational potential had continued, and in 1914, BCC agreed to reserve around 100 acres (40ha) of the park for the future use of the university, following extensive lobbying by the University Permanent Site League. While the park was to remain publicly accessible, it would not be developed for park purposes. Park funding was funnelled towards the newly acquired parks, while small improvements were made at Victoria Park. This included tree planting and the construction of tennis courts (1913, not extant), and the creation of rockeries along Gregory Terrace, bordering the park (not extant). In 1913, the park also became part of a worldwide experiment, as a small temporary tent was erected in the park near the hospital, to carry out measurements for the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s Terrestrial Magnetism study. However, the park predominantly continued to be used for non-recreational purposes, including cattle agistment (between Gregory Terrace and the railway) and wool and grain storage (in a former quarry near Gregory Terrace and Bowen Bridge Road).[32]

In 1922, 108 acres (44ha) of Victoria Park was formally reserved for university purposes under the University Site Act, which was additional to the 60 acres, 2 roods and 26 perches (24.6ha) that had been given to the university in 1917 (for a total of 68.6ha, located west of the railway). The site was reserved conditionally; if the site was not to be used for the university, it would revert to the park. Four years later, funding was provided by a private donor for a larger site at St Lucia, and the reserve was set to be returned to the trustees.[33] This took some time, however, and as the land remained unused, complaints about its condition had continued. ‘[N]ot a flower has been planted in it,’ wrote a correspondent to The Brisbane Courier in 1921, ‘no improvements, except the planting of some trees, and an incompleted, unused, and miserable carriage way or road.’[34] The park was described in 1924 by the Daily Mail as both ‘a magnificent reserve’[35] and ‘a couple of hundred acres of barren land … intersected by more or less smellful drainage channels.’[36]

One of these drainage channels ran through the flat section of the park used for sports fixtures, making the land swampy and frequently mosquito-infested. Between 1923 and 1925, a 15-20 acre (6-8ha) area at the western end of the park (now between Gilchrist Avenue and the railway reserve) was sewered, levelled and graded for use as sports grounds; a ‘shrub-rockery’ entrance was laid out from Bowen Bridge Road; and five sports fields were laid out. These improvements were funded by the £750 transfer of Bowen Park to the National Agricultural and Industrial Association. An amateur athletics competition was held there in 1928. Football, cricket, and hockey teams acquired formal leases of the grounds, and the park hosted up to 200 players each Saturday.[37]

BCC Electricity Substation No. 4 (1928)
After BCC became a public authority for the provision of electrical services across Brisbane in 1925, BCC Electricity Substation No.4 was constructed at the Gregory Terrace/Bowen Bridge Road section of Victoria Park in 1928.[38]

Until 1925, electricity in Brisbane had been provided by public and private authorities in a complex overlapping system. Most of the local councils in Greater Brisbane arranged supply through bulk supply contracts with the City Electric Light Company. The Brisbane Tramway Company also supplied 600-volt DC power to properties along its electrified tram system, until its responsibilities were transferred to BCC in 1925. Faced with the tramway’s obsolete electricity network, and BCC decided to upgrade its own generation capacity and infrastructure. This led to rapid expansion in the late 1920s, as a coordinated, uniform distribution system was developed. BCC encouraged the public to connect to existing supply lines and constructed a large powerhouse at New Farm in 1928. Substations were quickly constructed in the suburbs, supplied with bulk energy from BCC power stations and converted for use by consumers.[39]

In 1927, BCC’s Electrical Department had established stores in the unused woolstores off Bowen Bridge Road in Victoria Park (outside the heritage boundary). The substation was constructed the following year, and served as a central station as the suburban electricity supply was gradually brought onto the New Farm powerhouse grid. It was one of four substations constructed in 1928 for the Electricity Supply Department, the first main control substations erected by BCC. The substation received 11,000 volts AC from New Farm Power Station via high tension underground feeder cables.[40]

BCC’s electricity substations from the interwar period were typically of masonry construction, with red-brown face brick walls and simple, render details. Most featured a parapet above the main entrance, modest Classical details, and a robust material palette. The interiors housed electrical equipment, were well-ventilated, and had roller door access. Located in urban areas, the substations were generally of a domestic scale and form, in line with the council’s policy of building substations that blended neatly into a streetscape of houses.[41]

The electricity substation at Victoria Park was designed by BCC's City Architect, A H (Alfred Herbert) Foster. It was built on the corner of Bowen Bridge Road and Gregory Terrace, and had a tiled, hip roof with gables, narrowly projecting from each elevation. It had a symmetrical composition, and light cement render details contrasting its red-brown face brick walls. By c1944 a low Brisbane tuff retaining boundary wall and stair had been built on the substation’s road-facing (southeast and east) sides.[42]

Great Depression, park improvements and itinerant workers’ camps (1930s)
The first set of large-scale improvements at Victoria Park began with the Great Depression. As funding was made available for public works under the Intermittent Relief Scheme to boost employment, Victoria Park was targeted for enhancement.[43] The largest works were two projects that had been proposed since the mid-1920s: the construction of a road through the park, Gilchrist Avenue; and a golf course.

Gilchrist Avenue was cut through the generally low area formerly occupied by waterholes in the gully of the park and included Brisbane tuff retaining walls to the cuttings. It was constructed under the scheme in 1930, connecting Bowen Bridge Road in the northeast to Ithaca Street, near Kelvin Grove Road at Normanby, in the southwest. This provided a long-sought vehicular path directly through the park, as well as access to the golf course and sportsgrounds. The avenue was named for the City Engineer EF (Eneas Fraser) Gilchrist. As part of the long-awaited beautification of the park, the avenue was lined with silky oak (Grevillea robusta), crepe myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica), flame (Brachychiton acerifolius) and jacaranda (Jacaranda mimosifolia) trees. A later beautification project created a large, ornamental lake in 1933, in a natural basin off Gilchrist Avenue at the southern end of the sports fields. The lake was stocked with fish, its banks planted, and two islands for birds created in its centre.[44]

The second project carried out under the Intermittent Relief Scheme was the construction of a municipal golf course.[45] Golf was introduced to Queensland in the 1880s by two Scots, the Ivory brothers, who laid out a six-hole course on Eidsvold cattle station, near Gayndah; and in 1893, golf courses were developed at Townsville and Ravenshoe. The Brisbane Golf Club, a private club formed in 1890, was the first organised golf club in Queensland, but it did not open a course until 1896, in Chelmer. In November 1898 the first golf club to play on Victoria Park, the Victoria Park Golf Club, opened a nine-hole course that began at the corner of Gregory Terrace opposite the Exhibition Building, but little else is known of this early private club. During the 19th century, the game was the preserve of the affluent; but during the 1920s the popularity of the sport spread, with a series of private clubs formed in Brisbane between 1920 and 1929.[46] 

The Queensland Golf Association proposed a municipal (public) golf course in Victoria Park in 1922, as similar municipal golf courses were being opened throughout Australia. With the return of 108 acres (43.7ha) from the university forthcoming, the proposal was accepted in 1926. As the return of the land was delayed, however, work on the golf course did not begin until June 1930. The Victoria Park Golf Club was formed in March 1931. The golf course remained under BCC ownership, as part of Victoria Park, and the BCC provided the course, clubhouse, the salaries of a Club Secretary and Club Professional, and assumed responsibility for the upkeep of the course, while the Club members were responsible for the operations of the Club. Any casual player was entitled to play the course without joining the Club, on payment of the appropriate green fees. The 18-hole golf course, designed by Stan Francis and located in Victoria Park west of Gilchrist Avenue, was opened in November 1931, with a Spanish-style clubhouse (Victoria Park Golf Clubhouse (former), QHR 602034), designed by AH Foster, located at the Bowen Bridge Road end of the course. The clubhouse was built in in two stages, in 1931 and 1939. William Jolly, the first Lord Mayor of Greater Brisbane, became the inaugural president of the Victoria Park Golf Club and remained so until 1934. The Victoria Park Golf Course remained the only municipal golf course in Brisbane until the opening of the St Lucia Golf Course in 1985.[47]

Francis’ plan for the golf course, which included nine holes out, and nine holes back to the clubhouse, generally conformed to the hilly nature of the site, with ‘many elevated tees, plunging and rising fairways, elevated greens and fairways clinging to ridges’.[48] Although the site already had some mature trees, a considerable amount of additional tree planting was undertaken between the fairways, which was overseen by Greater Brisbane Council’s Department of Parks Superintendent and professional horticulturist, Henry Moore, between 1931 and 1940.[49] The course layout was altered nine times between 1931 and 2001, including during World War II (WWII), and due to the building of a new golf clubhouse further west on the golf course in 1975. Over time, greens and tees were reformed and relocated, fairways renumbered, lengthened or shortened, and bunkers added and removed, with contouring and mounding introduced around greens, until the closure of the course in 2021.[50]

Improvements were also made to the sports grounds, as lessees had complained about the rough, flood-prone surfaces of the Victoria Park fields. A new amalgamated hockey organisation, the Brisbane Hockey Association, had formed in 1931, using Victoria Park as its headquarters. The Association contributed finance towards the improvements, and four new fields were formally laid out in the section fronting the newly-created Gilchrist Avenue, between 1933 and 1935. As well as hockey, these were used for cricket in summer and hosted some football games in winter. Drainage was also improved to control flooding, and a stone wall with ‘Play The Game’ spelled out in stones was likely constructed at this time, between the new sports fields and Gilchrist Avenue.[51]

Also completed at this time was a 20ft (6.1m) wide, 1.5 mile (2.4km) long, horse-riding circuit, called ‘Riding Row’, which ran the circumference of the Gregory Terrace section of the park. Palms were planted along its route, and it was officially opened in 1932, with a military parade and a crowd of around 1,000 people. The circuit was soon disrupted by the building of an officers’ camp in this part of the park during WWII, and many of the circuit’s plantings had been lost by 1980. Two Brisbane tuff piers were added at the track’s entrance from Bowen Bridge Road and Gregory Terrace in 1936, also under the Intermittent Relief Works Scheme.[52]

Other landscaping and reclamation work was undertaken during this time, notably as part of the beautification of the park.[53]

The Great Depression also impacted on the use of Victoria Park, as camps for the unemployed were erected in the park reserve in the 1930s. An increasing number of unemployed, itinerant men travelled either on foot, or by rail, across the state seeking employment. Between 1929 and 1933 Queensland Government policy stipulated unemployed single men, not working on relief projects, would not be able to draw state government funded emergency rations from the same centre in successive weeks. This forced them to move onto the next town, often many miles away, to demonstrate they were seeking work. The term ‘swagmen’, used to describe itinerant men walking around the country, or ‘waltzing Matilda’, seeking work in 19th and early 20th century Australia, was applied to these men who were compelled to travel long distances.[54]

A small camp of ‘shanties, shacks, huts and humpies’[55] arose in the Gregory Terrace section of Victoria Park in the early 1930s. It remained until 1932, when the camp, located under the trees by the railway line, was ‘visited by a large policeman, and the occupants agreed that the beauties of the new riding track would be enhanced by the removal of their dwellings’.[56] The occupants were moved to ‘the other side of the municipal golf links’.[57] The new camp was located in the trees just northwest of the golf course, near Herston Road, leading to complaints from local residents about tree clearing.[58]

World War II, military occupation of the park (1942-6)
Further improvements were promised for the park, including the construction of a dressing shed for the sportsgrounds,[59] but work was put on hold following the outbreak of WWII. When the war reached the Pacific in late 1941, Brisbane was transformed into a locale of intense military activity, with thousands of United States (US) troops stationed in the city before being shipped off to fight Japanese forces in the South West Pacific theatre.[60]

In 1942, BCC offered Victoria Park to United States Forces in Australia (USFIA), as a large administrative and accommodation camp, which became known as ‘Camp Victoria Park’. The park was also affected by the war in other ways: an air raid shelter was constructed behind the electricity substation; zig-zag trench shelters, using large concrete pipes, were constructed between Gilchrist Avenue and the railway line opposite the 1930s golf clubhouse (trenches not within heritage boundary), and there were also zig-zag trench shelters along the edge of Victoria Park next to Gregory Terrace, from south of Rogers Street to the Brisbane Girls’ Grammar School. In addition, an Australian Army Heavy Anti-Aircraft (HAA) battery was emplaced on high ground at the south end of the golf course, within and adjacent to a triangular grove of young hoop pines (Araucaria cunninghamii) and bunya pines (Araucaria bidwilli) located between the original 3rd (later 12th) and 8th (later 17th) fairways.[61]

Camp Victoria Park, located within the park on both sides of the railway line, provided extensive accommodation for US and Australian forces and was built by Allied Works Council (AWC) contractors during 1943. An officers’ camp for the US Army Service of Supply (USASOS) and its parent command, US Base Section 3 (Brisbane), was built on the southeast side of Victoria Park, between Gregory Terrace and the railway, while another sprawling section of Camp Victoria Park was located south of the east end of L’Estrange Terrace and south of Herston Road, including on the original 17th and 18th fairways of the golf course. This part of Camp Victoria Park included separate areas for (from west to east): an enlisted men’s camp; civilians (employees) camp; a motor pool; and the headquarters (HQ) area for USASOS and Base Section 3. A Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) camp and Command HQ was constructed to the south of the civilian camp, with most of its buildings situated to the west of the golf course on what is now the QUT campus. Numerous prefabricated timber-framed huts, of fibrolite on timber stumps, were constructed for Camp Victoria Park, and some of these buildings were reused for various purposes after the war.[62]

A stone retaining wall, which in 2025 is located along the south side of Herston Road between two former entrances to Camp Victoria Park (just east of Hetherington Street to west of Aberleigh Road), also existed by c1943-44, on the north side of the Motor Pool area of the camp.[63]

The Victoria Park HAA battery, operational from 1942, consisted of four in-ground, octagonal concrete emplacements, each with a 3.7-inch (94mm) gun, arranged around a central semi-underground concrete command post, which included open pits for a range finder and a predictor. The command post’s predictor (a mechanical analog computer) was used to calculate where the aircraft would be when the shells arrived. It was manually programmed to follow a target, based on its course and speed, as well as the shells’ direction and velocity. The target’s height was deduced by the rangefinder, and targeting information was relayed automatically, via underground cables, to the gun layers in each emplacement. Brisbane’s HAA batteries usually also had two to four underground reserve magazines constructed nearby. The Victoria Park battery, initially designated Gun Station (GS) 386, was one of six HAA positions in operation in Brisbane by late 1943 – three to the north of the Brisbane River and three to the south of the river – arranged to protect Brisbane’s shipping and airfields from Japanese air attack. All of Brisbane’s HAA batteries were disbanded in late 1944.[64]

Camp Victoria Park was gradually vacated after the war, with the final occupants departing in 1946. Two steel flagpoles erected for the camp were retained: one on the eastern end of the camp near Gregory Terrace (extant in 2025 in a traffic island in the Gregory Terrace road reserve), which stood in front of the two-storey officers’ club building of the Gregory Terrace officers’ camp; and a second flagpole (extant in 2025 near the southeast corner of the 1975 golf clubhouse), which stood southeast of administration building No.1 of the USASOS Headquarters on Herston Road. Both locations were in front of the camp’s major buildings and on high points, prominent across the former camp.[65]

Emergency accommodation, and park improvements (1945-1960s)
The military facilities remained standing in the park for some years following the war and were put to other uses. The vacant huts were initially used to house Australian war brides: Australian women who had married US servicemen. During and immediately after the war, between 12,000 and 15,000 Australian women married US servicemen stationed in Australia, including around 4,500 in Queensland. Some remained in Australia, but most travelled to the US to live with their husbands. Mass transportation of the war brides to the US on ‘bride ships’ was arranged from 1945, from ports in Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne. In September 1945, passage for more than 200 brides on SS Lurline was cancelled at the last minute, and a number of the women were accommodated in the empty Victoria Park buildings until new passage could be arranged for them.[66]

The post-war reconstruction process heralded an era of rapid population growth in Queensland. This growth, concurrent with material shortages, led to an acute housing shortage. The Queensland Government began repurposing military facilities for temporary accommodation, establishing ‘housing camps’ in suburbs including Holland Park, Chermside, Wacol and Kalinga. Up to 100,000 Queenslanders lived in temporary housing between 1946 and 1960. In February 1947, as the last of the war brides departed, the State Government acquired buildings in Victoria Park for temporary housing purposes. The Queensland State Housing Commission made use of the military facilities in Victoria Park, creating the second largest temporary housing settlement in Brisbane. Each hut housed several families. By 1950 Victoria Park was the impermanent home for 460 families, occupying the park for up to three years while new housing was slowly constructed in outer-lying suburbs. The Victoria Park camp, being close to the city, was highly visible to Brisbane residents. In the 1950s, the camp became the subject of media coverage about the poor living conditions experienced by the ‘old and new Australian families’.[67] As residents were moved to new houses, the temporary housing camps in Victoria Park were gradually emptied in the late 1950s, closed in 1960, and the fibrolite buildings were sold or demolished, although four large huts from the HQ area of Camp Victoria Park, on Herston Road opposite Wyndham Street, survived well into the 1970s.[68]

With the end of the war, the removal of the housing camps, and the appointment of a new Parks Superintendent, improvements to Victoria Park were planned from the 1950s. In 1959 the Centenary Pool Complex (QHR 601240) was constructed by BCC as its principal contribution to the celebrations of Queensland’s centenary. The pool was placed at the southeast edge of Victoria Park, bordering Gregory Terrace, on the slope of the hill overlooking the park. It included a landscaped entrance drive through the park from Gregory Terrace, designed by BCC’s Superintendent of Parks and Gardens, Harry Oakman.[69]

Oakman was one of the pioneers of landscape architecture in Australia. In 1945 he began his seventeen-year appointment with BCC as Superintendent of Parks and Gardens, and the Director of Separate Parks Branch. One of his earliest roles was transforming many of Brisbane's parks that had been damaged by military use during WWII. He also led an extensive flowering tree planting programme on the slopes and gullies of the Victoria Park golf course, and poincianas (Delonix regia), oleanders (Nerium), jacarandas, and flame trees along the fairways. Oakman was recognised as a Fellow of the British and Australian Institutes of Landscape Architects and the Royal Australian Institute of Parks and Recreation.[70]

Another commemorative gesture made within Victoria Park was the planting of a grove of eucalypt trees in the southeast, between the railway and Gregory Terrace near Bowen Bridge Road. This area of Victoria Park had been the site of some of the Housing Commission (ex-military) buildings and required beautification. Named 'The Gundoo Memorial Grove', it was planted by the students of the Brisbane Girls' Grammar School as their contribution to the celebrations. The trees were provided by the Forestry Department and comprised different varieties of native trees (mainly eucalypts). In a memorandum, Harry Oakman stated that ‘tree planting along forest lines in this parkland would give a unique feature to the city of Brisbane, particularly if the trees chosen are Eucalypts'. He believed that eucalypts would provide an attractive, shady grove at low cost and require little maintenance.[71] In the early 1960s, the grove was supplemented by subtropical plantings in the area between Centenary Pool and Bowen Bridge Road, to beautify and create a ‘tropical atmosphere in the heart of the city’.[72]

Late 20th & early 21st century park improvements and changes (1950s-2025)
Beautification and improvement works were undertaken under Oakman’s time as superintendent. In order ‘to provide a pleasing view on one of the city’s outlet roads’, Brisbane tuff planter beds were added along the Gregory Terrace frontage in 1958 (two of these, flanking the Riding Row entrance piers, remain extant in 2025). The park’s main entrance was also repositioned from opposite the Queensland Museum in the east to a new road from Gregory Terrace, further south.[73]

Sports continued at the sports fields, with leases to the Brisbane Hockey Association, Queensland Rugby Union, and schools. The Hockey Association used up to seven of the fields during its playing seasons between the 1930s and the 1950s, holding junior and school fixtures, women’s practices, and regular matches. It contributed finance for the ongoing maintenance of the fields and hosted its grand finals at the park. The fields were also used to host archery contests, travelling circuses, military and royal parades, and parking for the annual Royal National Agricultural & Industrial Society show.[74]

A new brick dressing shed, with refreshment kiosk and toilets, was added to the sportsgrounds. Dressing shed facilities had been provided for the sportsgrounds from 1930, but the earlier dressing shed, a simple timber structure, burned down in 1947. When finance became available, the dressing shed was designed by BCC and erected by 1959, being opened for the use of the sports groups in 1960. The kiosk was leased to sports clubs and individuals to sell refreshments during the sports seasons. Improvements to the parking and facilities for the sportsgrounds were made in the following years, including two sets of steps from Gilchrist Avenue, flanking the dressing shed.[75]

Non-recreational and non-public uses also continued across the park. Small portions of land throughout the park were resumed for railway purposes, school use, hospital and temporary carparks, the Gregory Terrace road reserve, and telecommunications; and leases were granted for school playing fields. In 1968, the Department of Electricity acquired land in the park and built an office building behind (northwest of) the BCC Electricity Substation No. 4. They also purchased a large store building previously used by the Queensland Railway Department in the same corner of the park (not within the heritage boundary).[76]

Changes also occurred on the golf course in the 1970s. In December 1975, a new clubhouse was opened on a hill on the location of the original 17th fairway. It was a two-storey masonry building in an International Modern style, designed by BCC’s Office of the City Architect. It was in two parts: a large southern block was two storeys, accommodating a kitchen and bar on the top floor, with large southeast windows overlooking the golf course, above player ablutions and pro-shop on the ground floor; and a single-storey block on the north side accommodating offices and a caretaker’s residence. It included a new driveway from Herston Road to the clubhouse and a large carpark on the building’s western side. As a result of the new clubhouse’s construction, the numbering of the fairways was altered, to start and finish near the new clubhouse, rather than near the 1930s clubhouse which had been resumed for a possible northern freeway which did not occur. In 1993, a small kiosk building called the halfway house was added adjacent to the then 10th tee.[77]

There were also changes to the park’s landscaping. In 1988, after being reconditioned and having its size reduced and its shape changed, the 1933 lake in Victoria Park was officially named 'York's Hollow'. In the following years, artwork and sculptures were added, including figures from Expo 88. A section of lawn near Centenary Pool was planted with trees by the Royal Geographical Society of Queensland and named ‘Gregory Grove’ in 1989, in honour of Australian explorer and surveyor-general, Sir Augustus Gregory’s 170th birthday anniversary. Sixty trees were planted in the Gregory Terrace area near Rogers Street to commemorate Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012.[78]

In 1999, construction of a freeway bypass connecting Hamilton to Milton commenced. Envisioned since 1972, the bypass, called the Inner City Bypass (ICB), was undertaken to reduce traffic congestion in the CBD and Fortitude Valley. An area of 4.606ha was resumed from Victoria Park for the road, which ran through the park adjacent to the railway, exacerbating the park’s divided nature. The section of road through the park was constructed in 2001, with the entire bypass completed in 2003. Around 2001, the altered 1933 lake was removed and a new lake was constructed immediately to the northwest, in a serpentine shape, to make room for the ICB, and a landscaped pedestrian overpass was added to bridge the bypass (overpass is not in the heritage boundary).[79]

Archaeological investigations undertaken in late 1999, ahead of the construction of the ICB, revealed early sections of the York’s Hollow watercourse, fill associated with the construction of the 1880s railway, and refuse dating from the 1890s to early 1900s deposited in natural depressions and buried in rubbish trenches.[80] More than 100,000 artefacts were recovered, including: glass bottles and stoppers; ceramic kitchen, tableware, bottles, and doll parts; clay tobacco pipes; personal and clothing items including buttons, pins and beads; medicine, hygiene and writing implements; metal cutlery, nails, hardware, and coins; leather and textiles fragments; faunal and floral remains, and worked bone artefacts. The finds were analysed by archaeologists in 2004, who found they 'gave insight into rubbish disposal patterns, market access, nutrition, health, dietary patterns, and economic life' demonstrating 'a changing pattern in Brisbane’s patterns of consumption', '[t]he conditions of depression that prevailed in the local economy in the 1890s', and 'eating habits of nineteenth-century Brisbane'.[81] Further municipal refuse trenches, likely dating from the 1870s and 1880s, were uncovered within the railway corridor and in the southeast section of Victoria Park, during archaeological investigations associated with the Cross River Rail Project in 2020.[82]

The golf course area of Victoria Park continued to change during the first two decades of the 21st century. The Inner Northern Busway was constructed along the western and northern edges of the golf course c2003, affecting the fairways then existing in the northwest corner of the park, while in the early-mid 2010s, the southern part of the golf course was resumed during construction of the Legacy Way tunnel.[83]

The Victoria Park Golf Club closed in 2001, and a private lessee, CBD Golf Pty Ltd, developed a driving range, golf pro shop and café (later bistro), which opened in 2002 on the 7th, 8th and 9th fairways (originally 10th, 11th, 12th and 13th) to the west of the 1975 golf clubhouse. The clubhouse was substantially altered and extended to become the ‘Victoria Park Function Venue’, with its first function rooms opening in 2003. Over the following years, further buildings, including garden marquees (c2004 and 2008), and a putt-putt course (c2005) were added to the grounds around the clubhouse and the carpark was extended substantially on the northern side of the entrance driveway. The main golf course closed in 2021, although the driving range and pro shop, function centre, bistro, and putt-putt course continued to operate.[84]

From 2023, the park began to undergo a major transformation, following the release of the BCC 2023 Victoria Park Barrambin Masterplan. [85] This has included redeveloping the former golf course areas into public parkland, with the removal of bunkers and the addition of a public bicycle course, pavilions, gardens, paths, and park furniture.

Victoria Park has been used by the people of Brisbane for public recreation since at least 1875, with the organisation of sports, and group recreation, events, and activities (gambling, games, sparring, singing, travelling circuses, protests, and meetings). The openings of major commemorative activities and memorials in the park were attended by large crowds. Public protests against changes to the park that would reduce its public use as a park, have also occurred over time, including: in 1877 and 1886 against a rifle range in the park; 1885 into the 1890s against the use of the park for municipal dumping; in the 1880s against excision of land for the Sick Children’s Hospital; 1901-3 against excision of land for a government domain or university; 1928 against leasing the park to entities for profit; and during the 1930s against, and for, the protection of itinerants’ camps in the park. One example of the Brisbane public’s attachment to Victoria Park came in the early 1900s, with public protests against the proposed excision of land. The park was called ‘the People’s heritage’ in a 1903 Worker article; and local businessman, Member of the Legislative Assembly, and former Mayor, John McMaster, stated, in a 1903 Telegraph article, that he ‘had been fighting against giving up any portion of the park for the last 20 years’, that ‘[t]he park was the property of the citizens of Brisbane’ and ‘[p]eople were entitled to the park’. Excision of park land was fought by the Brisbane public repeatedly. A 1901 newspaper article argued: ‘[n]ever alienate a foot of it, for that would be like touching a lung with consumption. By-and-by, when population is larger, and when money is more plentiful, the park will be artistically laid out and planted, to become beautiful as well as useful.’[86]

In 2025, Victoria Park continues to provide recreational facilities such as playgrounds, dog off-leash areas, walking tracks, bike paths, open space, and sports fields.

Description

Victoria Park is a large public park spanning across Spring Hill and Herston, north of Brisbane CBD. Its undulating topography of ridges and gullies contains a manicured landscape, primarily lawned fields with mature trees. It provides visible legacies in landscape form of its former varied and evolving uses.

The park allotment is an irregular shape and is divided into two, non-contiguous parts by a later broad, curving road and rail corridor running southwest to northeast through a low gully. The two parts are: the smaller Southeast Park Section; and the larger Northwest Park Section. Originally one contiguous park landscape, the two sections are visible from each other across the road and rail corridor and are centrally linked via a modern land bridge.

Archaeological potential exists across both sections.

Features of Victoria Park of state-level cultural heritage significance include:

• Southeast Park Section:
  • Open Space, Sloping Topography, Lawned Fields, Mature Vegetation, and Visual Links to Northwest Park Section;
  • Gregory Terrace Road Reserve Traffic Island and US Army ‘Camp Victoria Park’ Officers’ Camp Flagpole;
  • Riding Row Entrance Piers and Planter Beds; and
  • BCC Electricity Substation No. 4 and Retaining Wall.
• Northwest Park Section:
  • Open Space, Undulating Topography, Lawned Fields, Mature Vegetation, and Visual Links to Southeast Section;
  • Ornamental Lake;
  • Gilchrist Avenue Features and Sports Fields Features;
  • Stone Retaining Wall, Herston Road;
    US Army ‘Camp Victoria Park’ Headquarters Flagpole; and
  • Views.
• Archaeological Potential Across All Park Areas.

Southeast Park Section

The Southeast Park Section is a long, curving, ribbon of parkland running along the southeastern side of the road and rail corridor. It is bounded on its other sides by Gregory Terrace (southeast), Bowen Bridge Road (northeast), and Brisbane Girls Grammar School (southwest). The terrain falls generally from the high ridge of Gregory Terrance down to the road and rail corridor in the northwest, which has been cut into a gully.

The section has expanses of lawn and mature vegetation across its open, sloping land, including the Gundoo Memorial Grove, perimeter trees, and remnants of the Riding Row’s early plantings. Near the centre of the section is the Centenary Pool Complex, a separate State heritage place (QHR 601240). Nearby in the Gregory Terrace road reserve is a large traffic island median with the US Army ‘Camp Victoria Park’ Officers’ Camp Flagpole. At the northeastern end of the section is the Riding Row Entrance Piers and Planter Beds, and the BCC Electricity Substation No. 4.

Features of the Southeast Park Section of state-level cultural heritage significance include:

• Open Space, Sloping Topography, Lawned Fields, Mature Vegetation, and Visual Links to Northwest Park Section;
• Gregory Terrace Road Reserve Traffic Island and US Army ‘Camp Victoria Park’ Officers’ Camp Flagpole (1943);
• Riding Row Entrance Piers (1936) and Planter Beds (1958); and
• BCC Electricity Substation No. 4 (1928) and Retaining Wall (c1928-44).

Open Space, Sloping Topography, Lawned Fields, Mature Vegetation, and Visual Links to Northwest Park Section

The Southeast Park Section has expanses of open space with lawns across a sloping topography and an informal, naturalistic layout of mature tree plantings, primarily Australian native species but also introduced species. Earlier tree specimens (pre-1936) survive along the northwestern edge of the section, against the rail line and some sections of Riding Row’s early (1930s) tree plantings survive. Mature trees of Gundoo Memorial Grove (1959) and adjacent ‘subtropical’ plantings (c1962) survive near the centre of the park section.

From most areas of the Southeast Park Section are vistas to the Northwest Park Section across the road and rail corridor, visually linking the two sections of the formerly contiguous park.

The character of the place as a park comprising expansive open space across a sloping topography, lawned fields, and mature trees is of state-level cultural heritage significance.

Features of the Southeast Park Section’s Open Space, Sloping Topography; Lawned Fields, Mature Vegetation, and Visual Links to Northwest Park Section of state-level cultural heritage significance include:

• open, manicured parkland across the sloping topography featuring lawns and mature trees in an informal, naturalistic layout, largely without building structures with vistas across the road and rail corridor to the Northwest Park Section, visually linking the two sections of the formerly contiguous park;
• tree categorised as ‘very old and veteran’ (>1201mm DBH), likely ‘pre-clearing’, in Appendix N, Victoria Park / Barrambin Local Government Infrastructure Designation Development Assessment Report Targeted Ecological Assessment Report, Rev H, 24 July 2023 by 28 South Environmental Pty Ltd for Brisbane City Council, being: Queensland blue gum (ID: 3233, Eucalyptus tereticornis) west of Gundoo Grove, near the rail line;
• mature trees along the east and southeast side of the rail line including fig trees (Ficus spp.), hoop pine trees (Araucaria cunninghamii), and camphor laurels (Cinnamomum camphora); mature trees adjacent to Gregory Terrace, including fig trees (Ficus spp.), queen palms (Syagrus romanzoffiana), and jacarandas (Jacaranda mimosifolia); and 1930s trees associated with the removed Riding Row (particularly palms) largely to the section’s perimeter;
• surviving specimens of Gundoo Memorial Grove (1959) comprising mixed Australian native trees, approximately 140m wide and 220m long (at its widest and longest points), and evidence of original radiating arched rows; includes Moreton Bay ash / Carbeen (Corymbia tessellaris); grey box / gum top box (Eucalyptus moluccana); red mahogany (Eucalyptus resinifera); forest red gum / blue gum / red irongum (Eucalyptus tereticornis); Queensland kauri (Agathis robusta); Queensland brush box / Brisbane box (Lophostemon confertus); lemon-scented gum / spotted gum (Corymbia citriodora); pink bloodwood (Corymbia intermedia); small-fruited grey gum / grey gum (Eucalyptus propinqua); Sydney blue gum / blue gum (Eucalyptus saligna); large-leafed spotted gum (Corymbia henryi); white mahogany / barayly (Eucalyptus acmenoides); flooded gum / rose gum (Eucalyptus grandis); and tallowwood (Eucalyptus microcorys); and
• ‘subtropical’ plantings (c1962); includes queen palm (Syagrus romanzoffiana); Cuban royal palm (Roystonea regia); traveller’s palm (Ravenala madagascariensis); dwarf date palm trees (Phoenix roebelenii); giant white bird of paradise (Strelitzia nicolai); and pandanus (Pandanus pedunculatus).

Features of the Southeast Park Section’s Open Space, Sloping Topography, Lawned Fields, Mature Vegetation, and Visual Links to Northwest Park Section not of state-level cultural heritage significance include:

• immature vegetation and plantings; furniture; hardscapes and hard ground surfaces; planter beds including concrete block-walled and concrete kerbed planter beds (2014, replaced earlier planter beds) along Gregory Terrace, southwest of the Entrance Piers; paths; roads; bollards; signs; utilities and associated infrastructure; lights; structures, fences, walls, and railings; and sculpture ‘Inukshuk’ (1988, relocated to Victoria Park 2005) adjacent to the railway line / ICB land bridge.

Gregory Terrace Road Reserve Traffic Island and US Army ‘Camp Victoria Park’ Officers’ Camp Flagpole (1943)

The Gregory Terrace Road Reserve Traffic Island, which was originally parkland contiguous with Victoria Park, is a median island of Gregory Terrace. Standing near the centre of the island is the US Army ‘Camp Victoria Park’ Officers’ Camp Flagpole, in its original location, an open high point on this side of the park. 

Features of the Gregory Terrace Road Reserve Traffic Island and US Army ‘Camp Victoria Park’ Officers’ Camp Flagpole of state-level cultural heritage significance include:

• open landscaped space of traffic island;
• location of flagpole (original); and
• flagpole’s metal pole with spherical finial and octagonal concrete base.

Features of the Gregory Terrace Road Reserve Traffic Island and US Army ‘Camp Victoria Park’ Officers’ Camp Flagpole not of state-level cultural heritage significance include:

• all vegetation; stone island edging (1978); road reserve fabric, including road surfaces, kerbs, signs, power poles, and all other services, utilities, and road infrastructure; recent interpretation sign; flagpole’s 1988 plaque; and sculpture ‘Showdown’ (1988, relocated here in 2018).

Riding Row Entrance Piers (1936), and Planter Beds (1958)

The Riding Row Entrance Piers comprises a pair of tall, Brisbane tuff piers standing at the northeastern corner of the Southeast Park Section, near the corner of Gregory Terrace and Bowen Bridge Road. Formerly framing the beginning of Riding Row (a horse-riding track that ran the circumference of the Southeast Park Section), in 2025 they mark a vehicle entrance into the park.

Attached to the rear of the piers are tiered, angular Brisbane tuff planter beds of a later construction.

Features of the Riding Row Entrance Piers and Planter Beds of state-level cultural heritage significance include:

• location of Entrance Piers (original);
• two Brisbane tuff piers, including their stepped and tapered form, dressed stone faces, and wrought iron gas lamp stands atop the piers (missing the lamps) and gas pipe inlets to the park-facing side of each pier; and
• tiered, Brisbane tuff-faced planter beds.

Features of the Riding Row Entrance Piers and Planter Beds not of state-level cultural heritage significance include:

• modern bitumen and concrete ground surfaces; services; modern bollards; and all vegetation and soil within planter beds.

BCC Electricity Substation No. 4 (1928)

BCC Electricity Substation No. 4 stands in the northeast corner of the Southeast Park Section, near and angled to face the intersection of Gregory Terrace and Bowen Bridge Road. It is a small, single-storey, masonry building with a rectangular footprint and symmetrically composed elevations. The exterior of the substation is highly intact.

A low Brisbane tuff retaining wall (c1928-44) stands nearby at the footbath boundary along Bowen Bridge Road and has a central stair leading to the substation.

Features of BCC Electricity Substation No. 4 of state-level cultural heritage significance include:

• location and orientation (original);
• modest, rectangular plan form and symmetrically composed elevations;
• timber-framed hip and gable roof and its terracotta tiles cladding;
• red-brown face brick walls, terracotta vents, and cement render dressings (render is scribed in places to appear as ashlar), including render crest bearing ‘BCC’ and raised letters ‘SUBSTATION. ---’ above front door (‘No. 4’ letters have been removed);
• multi-light, centre-pivoting and fixed, timber-framed windows;
• timber V-jointed (VJ) board-lined external doors;
• metal and glass sconce lights flanking front entrance doors; and
• low Brisbane tuff retaining wall at footpath boundary, including its piers and central stair.

Features of BCC Electricity Substation No. 4 not of state-level cultural heritage significance include:

• surrounding ground surfaces (bitumen, grass, gravel) and plantings; wire window mesh; gooseneck exterior lights; and non-original downpipes.

Northwest Park Section

The Northwest Park Section is a large, broad area of land on the northwestern side of the road and rail corridor. It is bounded on its northern side by Herston Road and its long western side by the QUT Kelvin Grove campus. The terrain is especially undulating with ridges and gullies, generally rising to the north. The section has areas that feature panoramic views within the green parkland and beyond to the towers of the CBD in the southeast.

Much of the land is former golf course and is highly manicured with stripes of former fairways separated by tree belts and the land is tightly terraformed with berms and small flat areas. A bus road corridor (the Inner Northern Busway) runs in a broad curve along the western and northern park edges, dividing two triangle areas of parkland from the main parkland, and is excluded from the heritage register boundary. Structures and carparks associated with the former golf course stand at the northern end of the section and are not of state-level cultural heritage significance.

Features of the Northwest Park Section of state-level cultural heritage significance include:

• Open Space, Undulating Topography, Lawned Fields, Mature Vegetation, and Visual Links to Southeast Section;
• Ornamental Lake;
• Gilchrist Avenue Features and Sports Fields Features;
• Stone Retaining Wall, Herston Road (pre-1944);
• US Army ‘Camp Victoria Park’ Headquarters Flagpole (1943); and
• Views.

Open Space, Undulating Topography, Lawned Fields, Mature Vegetation, and Visual Links to Southeast Section

The Northwest Park Section mostly comprises lawned fields (former fairways) and mature trees separating the former fairways. The landform along the former rifle range provides evidence of this former use.

From areas of the Northwest Park Section are vistas to the Southeast Park Section across the road and rail corridor, visually linking the two sections of the formerly contiguous park.

The character of the place as a park comprising expansive open space across an undulating topography, lawned fields, and mature trees is of state-level cultural heritage significance.

Features of the Northwest Park Section’s Open Space, Undulating Topography, Lawned Fields, Mature Vegetation, and Visual Links to the Southeast Section of state-level cultural heritage significance include:

• open, manicured parkland across the undulating topography, featuring lawned fields and mature trees in a picturesque layout with vistas across the road and rail corridor to the Southeast Park Section, visually linking the two sections of the formerly contiguous park;
• topography of the former rifle range, comprising a long rectangle (approximately 800m long x 80m wide) diagonally across the section, beginning in the northeastern corner of the section and extending west-southwest along a gully of the former swamp to end at a high ridge near the centre of the western side of the section;
• treed, ‘unbuilt’ character of few building structures, with buildings carefully located and scaled to complement the landscape, or screened by vegetation and fences;
• trees categorised as ‘very old and veteran’ (>1201mm DBH), likely ‘pre-clearing’, in Appendix N, Victoria Park / Barrambin Local Government Infrastructure Designation Development Assessment Report Targeted Ecological Assessment Report, Rev H, 24 July 2023 by 28 South Environmental Pty Ltd for Brisbane City Council, including: grey gum (ID: 266, Eucalyptus propinqua); Queensland blue gum (ID: 444 & 501, Eucalyptus tereticornis); large-leafed spotted gum (ID: 755, Corymbia henryi); broad-leafed iron bark (ID: 379 & 865, Eucalyptus fibrosa); and tallowwood (ID: 985, Eucalyptus microcorys); and
• mature trees dating to the 1930s planted between the fairways (associated with Moore’s time as superintendent of parks), including jacaranda (Jacaranda mimosifolia), camphor laurel (Cinnamomum camphora), hoop pine (Araucaria cunninghamii), bunya pine (Araucaria bidwilli), flame tree (Brachychiton acerifolius), coral tree (Erythrina), and palm.

Features of the Northwest Park Section’s Open Space, Lawned Fields, and Mature Vegetation not of state-level cultural heritage significance include:

• immature vegetation and plantings; furniture; hardscapes and hard ground surfaces; planter beds; roads; bollards; signs; utilities and associated infrastructure; lights; structures, fences, walls, and railings; and terrain and infrastructure associated with the land bridge and entrance drive.

Ornamental Lake

The Ornamental Lake, an artificial water body (c2001) is located at the southeastern edge of the Northwest Park Section. It is serpentine in shape, has no islands, and is sited slightly to the west of the site of the original, much larger Ornamental Lake (1933) and its 1988 replacement. A modern foot bridge crosses the lake. 

Features of the Ornamental Lake of state-level cultural heritage significance include:

• the provision of a naturalistic-looking, artificial water body in this approximate location.

Features of the Ornamental Lake not of state-level cultural heritage significance include:

• the water body’s shape, edges, and size; all vegetation; and all associated infrastructure, footbridge and statues.

Gilchrist Avenue Features and Sports Fields Features

Gilchrist Avenue is a public road running from Herston Road in the northeast corner of the park toward the southwest, ending at a cul-de-sac near the Ornamental Lake, having been truncated at approximately half its original length. On either side of the remaining length of road are mature tree plantings forming an avenue of a variety of species and ages, with original trees (1930-2) having been replaced over time with the same and new species, continuing the avenue. Stone retaining walls (1930-6) are on either side, supporting the road cuttings; the southeastern wall bears ‘PLAY THE GAME’ in large stone letters facing the sports fields, and the northwestern wall has a stone and concrete stair.

The sports fields (1925; re-laid 1935) are on the avenue’s southeastern side, forming a line of open, flat lawns between the avenue and ICB, approximately 500m long. The fields have been used interchangeably over time for a variety of sports including hockey, cricket, football (soccer), rugby, and athletics. Temporary carparks and demountable office structures stand on the northeastern-most field and the southwestern-most field has modern cricket nets. Adjacent to the fields on their northwestern side is a small brick building, the Dressing Shed & Kiosk (1960).

Gilchrist Avenue Features and Sports Fields Features of state-level cultural heritage significance include:

• Brisbane tuff retaining walls (1930-6) lining cuttings on both sides of the road, including: Brisbane tuff and concrete stair, capped balustrade, and ‘1936’ feature stone (northwest side of road); and ‘PLAY THE GAME’ inset letters in river stones (southeast side of road) and unobstructed view of the letters from the sports fields;
• rows of tree plantings lining both sides of Gilchrist Avenue, early (1930-2) species included: poinciana (Delonix regia); silky oak (Grevillea robusta); jacaranda (Jacaranda mimosifolia); flame tree (Brachychiton acerifolius); crepe myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica); cape chestnut (Calodendron capense); frangipani (Plumeria sp.); bauhinia (Bauhinia sp.); and hoop pine (Araucaria cunninghamii);
• turfed, flat sports fields (1925; re-laid 1935), used for a variety of sports; their location and extent, including those currently occupied by temporary structures;
• Dressing Shed & Kiosk building (1960); its location adjacent to the sports fields; face brick walls with hit-and-miss sections; skillion roof; kiosk at northeastern end, servery window with VJ timber boards lining above window, and shelter area with concrete slab and shelter roof supported on curved metal structure; and
• concrete retaining wall wrapping around the rear and sides of Dressing Shed & Kiosk, including its concrete stairs (post-1961) to the northeast and southwest up to Gilchrist Avenue.

Gilchrist Avenue Features and Sports Fields Features not of state-level cultural heritage significance include:

• Gilchrist Avenue road reserve fabric, including road surface, kerbs, signs, power poles, and all other services, utilities, and road infrastructure; later alterations to Brisbane tuff retaining walls including, concrete caps and metal balustrades; concrete retaining wall and concrete stairs, concrete block walls, and bitumen ground surfaces; sports fields line markings, cricket nets, goal posts, sheds, and other sports equipment and infrastructure; all fabric of temporary carpark and office structures, including bitumen surface, hard-stand, fences, signs, and services, and infrastructure; and all interior aspects of Dressing Shed & Kiosk.

Stone Retaining Wall, Herston Road

A stone retaining wall runs approximately 180m along the Herston Road boundary of the park.

Features of the Stone Retaining Wall, Herston Road of state-level cultural heritage significance include:

• worked stone wall with concrete cap along the Herston Road park boundary.

Features of the Stone Retaining Wall, Herston Road not of state-level cultural heritage significance include:

• later, raised concrete mortar.

US Army ‘Camp Victoria Park’ Headquarters Flagpole

The US Army ‘Camp Victoria Park’ Headquarters Flagpole stands in its original location at a high point in the park on the edge of a steep drop to the south, making it highly visible from the open lawned parkland to its south. The later adjacent clubhouse (1975) built to its northwest on the location of the demolished US Army ‘Camp Victoria Park’ Headquarters has diminished the visibility of the flagpole from this direction.

Features of the US Army ‘Camp Victoria Park’ Headquarters Flagpole of state-level cultural heritage significance include:

• open landscaped space around the flagpole;
• location of flagpole (original); and
• flagpole’s metal pole with spherical finial, octagonal concrete base, and octagonal concrete aprons.

Features of the US Army ‘Camp Victoria Park’ Headquarters Flagpole not of state-level cultural heritage significance include:

• all vegetation, fences, and garden beds; and plaque commemoration to former golf caretaker.

Views

The Northwest Park Section has many attractive views that unfold within the undulating terrain and two locations with impressive views that juxtapose the green parkland against the metropolitan context of the Brisbane CBD.

These views of state-level cultural heritage significance are:

• unfolding views within the parkland’s undulating terrain between and across areas of lawn and trees;
• from the high land near the 1975 golf clubhouse affording broad views from the east-northeast around to the southwest, centred on the Brisbane CBD’s high rise towers to the south-southeast; and
• from the high land near the park maintenance buildings north of the former HAA gun emplacements affording an acute view from the southeast around to the south, centred on the Brisbane CBD’s high rise towers to the south-southeast.

Archaeological Potential

Historical evidence and previous investigations indicate that archaeological deposits remaining from the place’s use as a municipal dump site during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, are likely to survive, as well as brick and stone (Brisbane tuff) drains. These types of deposits and features are likely to be found within refuse trenches and in areas that historically had natural depressions, hollows, and watercourses.

There is also potential that archaeological features and deposits may remain from different eras of occupation, including the 19th century, the Great Depression, and WWII.

Much of the place has the potential for archaeological finds. Particular areas of historical use where there is potential for archaeological evidence that could yield information that will contribute to an understanding of Queensland’s history (state-level significance) include:

Historically low-lying ‘York’s Hollow’ area:

• early to mid-19th century Indigenous gathering and camping in areas of the Northwest Park Section least disturbed by later brick-making activities, refuse trenches, and drainage works. Potential archaeological evidence includes hearths, and stone, glass, and ceramic artefacts; and
• mid-19th century brick-making, fringe dwelling, and immigrant camping in areas of the Northwest Park Section least disturbed by later refuse trenches, and drainage works. Potential archaeological evidence includes subsurface kilns, pits and discarded bricks, hearths and domestic glass, ceramic, and metal artefacts;

Southern ridgeline area of Northwest Park Section:

• WWII HAA gun emplacements. Potential archaeological evidence may include concrete gun emplacements, command post, and magazine structures and signal cables;

Eastern to northeastern area of Northwest Park Section:

• mid-to late-19th century rifle range. Potential archaeological evidence may include metal shot, casings, bullets, and stop butt / target features;

Much of the Southeast Park Section extending across and within the Northwest Park Section:

• late-19th to early 20th century municipal dump. Potential archaeological evidence may include  clay-capped refuse trenches, pits / depressions, former watercourses, and scatters containing domestic and commercial refuse, including: glass bottles and stoppers; ceramic kitchen, tableware, bottles, and doll parts; clay tobacco pipes; personal and clothing items including buttons, pins, and beads; medicine, hygiene, and writing implements; metal cutlery, nails, hardware, and coins; leather and textiles fragments; and faunal (bone) and floral food remains, and worked bone artefacts;

Former watercourse flows and low-lying areas of Northwest Park Section and Southeast Park Section:

• late-19th and early-20th century drains and utilities, associated with reclamation and drainage improvements and to control runoff. Potential archaeological evidence may include brick and stone (Brisbane tuff) drains;

Northeastern end of Southeast Park Section near BCC Electricity Substation No. 4:

• potential archaeological evidence may include subsurface infrastructure associated with the early distribution of electricity in Brisbane, brick and Brisbane tuff drains, and a WWII air raid shelter on the northwest side;

Northwest Park Section and Southeast Park Section:

• potential Great Depression-era dwellings and camping. Potential archaeological evidence may include flattened kerosene cans, roofing iron and other temporary building materials, and glass, ceramic, and metal artefacts;

Predominately across the higher areas of the Southeast Park Section along Gregory Terrace and Northwest Park Section along Herston Road:

• WWII military accommodation and administration camps. Potential archaeological evidence may include post-holes, artefact deposits concentrated around former structures, brick vaults, and air raid shelters and trenches. 

Features not of state-level cultural heritage significance

Features of Victoria Park not of state-level cultural heritage significance not previously mentioned include:

• all golf course-related landscape design, landforms, and layouts;
• all golf structures, including clubhouse, putt-putt course, driving range and fences, pavilions, shelters, kiosks (including the hallway house), carparks, roads, and maintenance areas and structures;
• vegetation and plantings (other than those previously mentioned), including the Spinaze Bushland (est. post-2014); lakes, dams, and watercourses; furniture; hardscapes and hard ground surfaces; planter beds; paths;
• park maintenance areas, bins, bays, and structures; temporary buildings; fences; modern stairs and handrails; toilet and amenity structures; barbeque and picnic areas, structures, and pavilions, seats, and water bubblers; playgrounds, and fitness structures and equipment; dog park enclosures and all related fences and equipment; gates; fences; lake footbridge; signs, pipes, and drains; power poles and lines; bollards; signs; utilities and associated infrastructure; lights; and structures, fences, walls, and railings; and
• paths and hardstand areas; roads and carparking areas (including Inner Northern Busway, and road fabric of Gilchrist Avenue and Gregory Terrace); bitumen surfaces and concrete gutters; and all fabric relating to the railway line and ICB.

References

[1] In 2025, the area of Victoria Park held by the Brisbane City Council covers 57.5ha. Some adjacent parkland is held by Queensland’s Department of Transport and Main Roads.
[2] Alternative spellings for the language groups of Meanjin include: Yugerra, Yagara, Yaggara, Yugg-ari, Yackarabul, Turubul, Turrabal, Turrubul, Turrabal, Terabul, Torbul, Turibul, Toorbal, Churrabool, Yerongban, Yeronghan, Ugarapul, Yerongpan, Biriin, Ninghi, Ningy Ningy, Duke of York Clan, Jaarabal, Jergarbal. State Library of Queensland, Aboriginal Languages of the Greater Brisbane Area, https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/blog/aboriginal-languages-greater-brisbane-area, 16 March 2015, accessed June 2021.
[3] C Petrie, Tom Petrie’s Reminiscences of early Queensland (dating from 1837), Brisbane, Watson, Ferguson & Co, 1904, pp.35, 55 & 316; Cross River Rail, Indigenous Cultural Heritage, 2011, pp.18-19; R Fisher, Boosting Brisbane: Imprinting the Colonial Capital of Queensland, Brisbane, Brisbane History Group, 2009, p.97; J G Steele, Aboriginal Pathways: in Southeast Queensland and the Richmond River, St Lucia, University of Queensland Press, 1984, pp.122, 124 & 129; R Kerkhove, ‘Aboriginal camps as urban foundations? Evidence from southern Queensland’, in Ingereth Macfarlane (ed), Aboriginal History, Vol. 42, Canberra, ANU Press, 2018, pp.141-172, at p.154.
[4] Kerkhove, ‘Aboriginal camps as urban foundations? Evidence from southern Queensland’, p.154.
[5] Brick-making for the penal settlement at Brisbane was conducted using clay from the ‘brick fields’ around the reservoir (on the site of the Supreme Court) constructed on Wheat Creek, which ran through today’s CBD (J G Steele, Brisbane Town in Convict Days 1824-1842, St Lucia, University of Queensland Press, 1975, p.114, and figure 59 (plan of Brisbane Town in 1829, based on Allan Cunningham’s survey)). Other early clay pit locations included Bowen Park; at the intersection of Barry Parade and Wickham Street; and Frog’s Hollow (House Histories, ‘Virginia Bricks’, https://www.househistories.org/virginia-brick (accessed 10 April 2025). The site of the show ring at the Brisbane Exhibition Grounds in York’s Hollow was being used for brick-making in 1849 (Petrie, Tom Petrie’s Reminiscences of early Queensland, p.143).
[6] Most of the early interactions with the Europeans at Meanjin/Moreton Bay – from 1823 to 1842 – were probably undertaken by members of the Duke of York’s clan. Three escaped convicts from Botany Bay had encountered the clan in 1823 and were offered hospitality for a brief period, which they overstayed. Ship to shore sightings of people were reported by the crew of John Oxley’s Mermaid as they travelled up Maiwar/Meeannjin (Brisbane River) in 1823, and an encounter between the clan and the crew of the Amity occurred at Enoggera Creek in 1824. Fyans’ 1836 visit took place along the Brisbane River, and he was able to watch a ‘fishing excursion’ which took place over several days (Steele, Aboriginal Pathways, 1984, pp.122-124). In 1837 the Petrie family arrived in Brisbane; youngest son Tom had frequent interactions with the Duke of York’s clan and learned to speak their dialect: N V Hall, 'Petrie, Thomas (Tom) (1831–1910)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/petrie-thomas-tom-4395/text7163, published first in hardcopy 1974, accessed online June 2021. The ‘Duke of York’ may be an Anglicised version of ‘Daki Yakka’: Maroochy Barambah, ‘Relationship and Communality: An indigenous perspective on knowledge and expression’, in B Fitzgerald and B Atkinson (eds), Copyright Future Copyright Freedom: Marking the 40th anniversary of the commencement of Australia’s Copyright Act 1968, Sydney, Sydney University Press, 2011, pp.159-160.
[7] From the 1850s, immigrants were housed in the Commissariat Store (QHR 600176) and other William Street buildings, but Victoria Park hosted new arrivals into the 1860s, including, for example, the November 1862 new arrivals evicted from tents on Windmill Hill (Albert Park), who were allowed to camp in York’s Hollow, ‘near the Brickfields’: Moreton Bay Courier, 3 February 1849 p.2; Courier, 18 December 1862 p.3; Darling Downs Gazette and General Advertiser, 4 August 1877 p.2; J J Knight, In the Early Days: history and incident of pioneer Queensland: with dictionary of dates in chronological order, Brisbane: Sapsford & Co, 1895, p.270; H Holthouse, Illustrated History of Brisbane, Frenches Forest, NSW, A H & A W Reed, 1982, pp.22-24.
[8] The Brisbane Courier, 27 February 1866 p.3; Northern Times (Newcastle), 27 March 1858 p.4; J Laverty, ‘Dissecting Victoria Park’, in R Fisher (ed), Brisbane: Houses, Gardens, Suburbs and Congregations, Kelvin Grove, Brisbane History Group, 2010, p.66.
[9] Kitty, pregnant at the time, died in the 1846 attack. At the trial, her father had attributed her death to the soldiers, and some reports circulated that the soldiers had violated her, inducing the birth of her child and the death of both. Other witnesses were called to state that Kitty had been assaulted by an Aboriginal man from another tribe, and her death was not included with the charges against the police (Moreton Bay Courier, 13 February 1847 p.2). In 1848 the clan was also reported to have clashed with the Chinese immigrants who had arrived in the town, but this took place on Queen Street (Darling Downs Gazette and General Advertiser, 4 August 1877 p.2). Moreton Bay Courier, 19 June 1847 p.2, 8 June 1850 p.2 and 8 December 1849 pp.2-3; Petrie, Tom Petrie’s Reminiscences of early Queensland, pp.143-145; Kerkhove, ‘Aboriginal camps as urban foundations?’, 2018, pp.154-156.
[10] ‘Lost tribes of Moreton Bay’, The Brisbane Courier, 19 June 1923, p.8; ‘Old Moreton Bay Tribes. Their languages’, The Brisbane Courier, 20 October 1923, p.18; J Richards and P Memmott, ‘Archibald Meston (1851–1924)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/meston-archibald-4191 (accessed 11 April 2025).
[11] References to Victoria Park as 'the lungs of the city' appear in, e.g., The Brisbane Courier, 23 September 1875 p.2 and 19 June 1878 p.5.
[12] R Aitken and M Looker, Eds, The Oxford Companion to Australian Gardens, South Melbourne, Vic. Oxford University Press, published in association with the Australian Garden History Society, 2002, pp.490-492. Australia’s first public park was Hyde Park in Sydney, proclaimed by Governor Macquarie in 1810 (‘History of Hyde Park’, https://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/histories-local-parks-playgrounds/history-hyde-park (accessed 7 March 2025).
[13] ‘Heritage Gardens in Queensland: a survey of Queensland’s parks, gardens, trees and other designed landscapes’, Report for Australian Garden History Society, Catherine Brouwer Architects; S Hill, Conrad Gargett Riddel; and J Nissan, Nissen Associates, June 2013, pp.64-74. There was an overlap in use between Botanic Gardens which were also used as public parks. Early Queensland Botanic Gardens included Brisbane’s Botanic Gardens (1855, QHR 600067); Queen’s Park in Ipswich (1858, laid out 1864, QHR 602356); Queen’s Park in Toowoomba (gazetted 1863, developed in 1873, QHR 601607); Queen’s Gardens in North Ward, Townsville (proclaimed 1870, QHR 601765); Queen’s Park in Maryborough (gazetted 1873, QHR 600708); and Rockhampton Botanic Gardens (gazetted as public gardens in 1869, developed from 1873, QHR 601819). The Brisbane Botanic Gardens had previously been a public garden, declared in 1828; while Queen’s Park on Alice Street was established next to the Brisbane Botanic Gardens in the mid-1860s (‘Brisbane Botanic Gardens’, QHR 600067).
[14] Courier, 17 February 1864 p.3.
[15] Moreton Bay Courier, 22 September 1858 p.2; Queensland Government Gazette, Vol.6, No.60, 24 June 1865, p.523; The Brisbane Courier, 4 May 1866 p.2, 4 December 1866 p.4 and 12 December 1866 p.2; Queensland Times, Ipswich Herald and General Advertiser, 19 April 1866 p.3; Parliamentary Debates [Hansard], Legislative Assembly, 26 September 1867, p.231; Queenslander, 26 March 1870 p.2.
[16] Queensland Government Gazette, Vol. 17 No. 133, 13 November 1875, p.2258; Laverty, ‘Dissecting Victoria Park’, 2010, pp.73,74.
[17] ‘Plan of the City and Environs of Brisbane’, 8 chains to 1 inch, Surveyor General’s Office, Brisbane 1865; Slaters Pocket Map of the City of Brisbane, 1865; ‘City of Brisbane’ 8 Chains to 1 inch, Surveyor General’s Department, 1874; Moreton ag.3 Sheet 1, 20 Chains to an inch, Surveyor General’s Office, Brisbane 1884. The rifle range, although not surveyed until 1877, seems to have been used for military purposes from the 1860s; and it was still used by the military as late as 1886-7 (‘Victoria Park/Barrambin. Archaeological Management Plan’, Urbis, for Brisbane City Council, September, p.15; ‘Courier’, The Brisbane Courier, 10 December 1868, p.2 (Queensland Volunteer Corps using rifle range); Survey Plan B2135 (1877); ‘The Victoria Park Rifle Range’, The Brisbane Courier, 10 March 1886, p.5.
[18] Queensland Government Gazette, Vol. 33 No. 62, 20 October 1883, p.1084.
[19] Deed of Grant No. 53218; Laverty, ‘Dissecting Victoria Park’, 2010, pp.73-74.
[20] Centre for the Government of Queensland, Queensland Places: Spring Hill, https://queenslandplaces.com.au/spring-hill, accessed June 2021. The importance of the park for recreation was emphasised by a deputation to the Minister for Lands in September 1883 (Queenslander, 22 September 1883 p.472), as well as in protests against the rifle range (e.g., Telegraph, 9 December 1885 p.4).
[21] Queensland Government Gazette, Vol. 13 No. 79, 12 August 1872, p.1263; Queensland Government Gazette, Vol. 14 No. 45, 23 May 1873, p.821. The practice of local councils burying rubbish in city parks to manage refuse, with the added benefit of reclaiming land and assisting beautification, occurred at other Brisbane parks, including Dutton Park (The Brisbane Courier, 29 November 1892, p.6) and Musgrave Park (The Brisbane Courier, 9 March 1885, p.3); and in regional Queensland such as Maryborough (Maryborough Chronicle, 4 February 1954, p.4), Toowoomba (The Toowoomba Chronicle and Darling Downs Gazette, 11 June 1931, p.8), and Ipswich (Daily Standard, 2 July 1931, p.16); as well as other Australian capital cities such as Sydney (Evening News, 8 September 1892, p.2), Melbourne (The Argus, 21 January 1897, p.6), and Adelaide (South Australian Register, 24 September 1896, p.6).
[22] The Brisbane Courier, 21 October 1873, p.1.
[23] Laverty, ‘Dissecting Victoria Park’, p.77.
[24] The Telegraph, 4 March 1885, p.5.
[25] The Telegraph, 24 January 1900 p.4; Laverty, ‘Dissecting Victoria Park’, 2010, p.77.
[26] The Brisbane Courier, 18 April 1901 p.2, 30 April 1901 p.7 and 18 June 1901 p.3; Laverty, ‘Dissecting Victoria Park’, pp.78, 86. Although there was an outbreak of the Bubonic plague in Brisbane in 1900, the burial of rubbish in Victoria Park was not seen as contributing to the rat problem at the time (‘Victoria Park’, The Brisbane Courier, 11 July 1900).
[27] Queensland Times, Ipswich Herald and General Advertiser, 7 May 1889 p.2; The Brisbane Courier, 15 April 1890 p.6 and Telegraph, 9 October 1890 p.3, ‘Victoria Park, updated Detailed Archaeological Assessment’, Unity, for Cross River Rail Project, 2020, p.8 (1km avenue). In 1890, it was reported that 200 trees had been planted on the Gregory Terrace side of the park, with a similar number to be planted on the hospital side (‘Victoria Park Golf Course. Assessment of the Application for entry of Victoria Park Golf Course in the Heritage Register, Report, Volume 1’. A study for the Environmental Protection Agency, May 2001, Catherine Brouwer Landscape Architects, p.4). In 1892, Soutter reported that a number of the young trees had been pulled up (Brisbane Courier, 8 July 1892 p.6).
[28] J J Knight, Brisbane: A historical sketch of the capital of Queensland; giving an outline of old-time events, with a description of Brisbane of the present day, and a municipal retrospect, Brisbane, Biggs & Morcom, 1897, p.70.
[29] In 1881 The Week condemned the larrikins for swearing, card parties and nude bathing in the park within view of both Gregory Terrace pedestrians and the Grammar School occupants: The Week, 19 February 1881 p.6. Sports matches included Warehouse Cricket competitions (e.g., The Week, 22 March 1894 p.19) and church football fixtures (e.g., The Telegraph, 3 August 1897 p.6); The Brisbane Courier, 21 September 1891 p.5 and 27 June 1892 p.5. Crowds at the mass meetings, which were held in support of union activity, were estimated at between 2,000 and 3,000 in August (The Telegraph, 25 August 1890 p.5); between 800 and 1,500 in early September (The Telegraph, 1 September 1890 p.5); and 2,000 in late September (Queenslander, 20 September 1890 p.561). Victoria Park was used for hospital purposes in subsequent years, such as a field hospital encampment in 1906 (The Telegraph, 27 June 1906 p.9; The Week, 29 December 1899 p.9; R Patrick, A History of Health and Medicine in Queensland 1824-1960, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1987, p.437); The Brisbane Courier, 17 June 1891 p.4.
[30] The boundary change was brought about by the absorption of the Division of Booroodabin into the City of Brisbane under the City of Brisbane Enlargement Act 1902 (The Brisbane Courier, 9 January 1903 p.5). The Council had been appointed as a trustee in 1896 (Queensland Government Gazette, Vol. 66 No. 145, 12 December 1896 p.1280) along with private citizens, and registered as a trustee on the Victoria Park reserve title after the resignation of the other trustees in 1906 (Deed of Grant No. 53218), before the formal gazettal in 1908 (Queensland Government Gazette, Vol. 91, No. 81, 7 November 1908 p.932); entry on the Queensland Heritage Register, New Farm Park (602402).
[31] Truth, 30 April 1916 p.12.
[32] Brisbane City Council Annual Report for 1916, p.130, and for 1917, p.154; Minutes, 1918, pp,154-5; Mayoral Minutes 1916, 1917 & 1918, in Brisbane City Council Archives,  Park History File D0083, ‘Victoria Park, Part 1 - General, 1890-1969’; Agreement between the Council of the City of Brisbane and Moreheads Limited 1922, Plan showing Wool Stores No 1 & 2, and Brisbane City Council Minutes 1919, p.81, in Brisbane City Council Archives, Park History File D0083, ‘Victoria Park, Part 1 - General, 1890-1969’; Jeannie Sim, ‘Harry Moore: The First Parks Superintendent in Brisbane’ [unpublished], 2000, pp.5-6. The university had opened in the former Government House on George Street in 1909, but this was considered too small to serve as its permanent site. Victoria Park, one of the largest undeveloped sites within reach of the city, was considered the only viable site for a university campus, and the University Permanent Site League had formed to advocate for the Victoria Park reserve (extract from Lord Mayoral Minute 1911, Brisbane City Council Archives, Park History File D0083, ‘Victoria Park, Part 1 - General, 1890-1969’; Telegraph, 7 April 1914 p.2). The experiment was to study the magnetic variation from ‘true’ north and ‘magnetic’ north to eventually gain accurate bearings. The Victoria Park station was one of several established in various locations around the world. The site of the experiment was marked with a sandstone block inscribe ‘CIW 1913’. This was uncovered in an archaeological dig in 2002 and moved to the Museum of Mapping and Surveying (Gillian Alfredson, A Report on the Impact on Cultural Heritage of the Excavation for INB5 (Inner Northern Busway Section 5) for Queensland Transport, August 2003, I, pp.2,5.
[33] Proposals for Victoria Park to host a state university had been mooted from the early 1900s, and the 58 acres [23.5ha] excised from Victoria Park for a Government Domain in 1883 had been converted to a reserve for university purposes, of just more than 60 acres, in 1917. This site, situated at the northwest end of the park, adjoined the 108 acres offered by the Brisbane City Council, creating a site of more than 168 acres, for the university. However, the suitability of the site for a university was questioned; and the grant of the parkland to the university was conditional on the reversion of the land to the Victoria Park trustee if it was decided not to use the site for a university. The land returned to the park excluded 10ha, reserved for a medical school, which was built in 1939 (entry on the Queensland Heritage Register, University of Queensland Medical School (601167)). Herston Road was also created through the site, separating the park reserve from the school. University Site Act of 1922 (13 Geo V, No. 19); extract from Lord Mayoral Minute 1911, and a list of gazettal’s and deeds issued for the park up to 1927, Brisbane City Council Archives, Park History File D0083, ‘Victoria Park, Part 1 - General, 1890-1969’; Telegraph, 24 December 1903 p.4; Laverty, ‘Dissecting Victoria Park’, 2010, pp.81-84.
[34] The Brisbane Courier, 1 September 1921 p.10.
[35] Daily Mail, 8 June 1924 p.13.
[36] Daily Mail, 28 January 1924 p.6.
[37] In the late 1920s, however, proposals to establish a speedway and a rugby union headquarters at Victoria Park were rejected as their proximity to the hospital was considered ‘undesirable’: Daily Standard, 21 March 1922 p.4, 10 July 1923 p.10 and 26 June 1928 p.5; The Brisbane Courier, 24 January 1924 p.8; Daily Mail, 16 August 1923 p.6, 20 October 1923 p.17, 28 January 1924 p.6 and 26 August 1924 p.6; Telegraph, 10 May 1928 p.4; Laverty, ‘Dissecting Victoria Park’, 2010, pp.88-89.
[38] Brisbane City Council City Design, Victoria Park (including BCC Electricity Substation No 4) Spring Hill Conservation Management Study Site Report, Brisbane: Brisbane City Council, April 2002, pp.6-7.
[39] Brisbane City Council had inherited the Tramway Company’s three power stations at Countess Street, Fortitude Valley and Logan Road, Woolloongabba; however, these supplied DC only and were becoming obsolete. Entry in the Queensland Heritage Register, Coorparoo Substation No 210 [602495]; Jim Simmers, The Coming of the Light to Suburban Brisbane, Queensland Energy Exhibition Centre, August 2003, https://qldenergyexhibitioncentre.com/light-to-suburban-brisbane.html, accessed April 2021.
[40] BCC Tramway Archives, High Tension Feeder System 1933, in City Design, BCC-owned Former Electricity and Tramway Substations Conservation Management Plan, Brisbane: Brisbane City Council, 2003, p.13; Coorparoo Substation No 210 [602495]
[41] Coorparoo Substation No 210 [602495]. This did not stop one correspondent to The Brisbane Courier from declaring that the substation at Victoria Park ‘destroyed’ the beauty of the ‘once picturesque corner’: The Brisbane Courier, 1 March 1929 p.8.
[42] Electricity Substation No 4, Victoria Park [image], c1944, Brisbane City Council Archives, BCC-B54-44445; Bowen Bridge Road – Tramlines in Operation [image], 1941, Brisbane City Council Archives, BCC-B120-30563; aerial images ADA00065849 (1936) and QAP1829027 (1967).
[43] Laverty, ‘Dissecting Victoria Park’, 2010, p.89.
[44] Brisbane City Council Minutes, Lord Mayor’s Review for Year 1930, in Brisbane City Council Archives, Park History File D0083, ‘Victoria Park, Part 1 - General, 1890-1969’; The Telegraph, 30 October 1930 p.6; Brisbane City Council Minutes, 1932-33, p.466, and 1933-34, p.75, in Brisbane City Council Archives, Park History File D0083, ‘Victoria Park, Part 1 - General, 1890-1969’; The Brisbane Courier, 25 July 1929 p.3, 20 December 1930 p.12, 11 May 1933 p.12 and 29 July 1933 p.15; Moreton Mail, 4 August 1933 p.4, Courier Mail, 18 September 1933 p.10. Other species in the avenue included cape chestnuts (Calodendrum capense), native cotton tree (hibiscus tiliaceus), flame trees (brachyciton sp.) and hibiscus heterophyllus by 1940. The lake was originally 500ft x 300ft (152m x 91m), 6ft (1.8m) deep, and dammed by a clay wall (Courier Mail, 26 June 1937 p.12; Telegraph, 12 February 1938 p.19, 7 May 1938 p.21, and 31 August 1940 p.10). The lake with its two islands is visible in the aerial photograph ADA00065890, 20 April 1936.
[45] ‘Victoria Park Golf Club. Golden Jubilee, Fifty Years of History’, (Golden Jubilee Report 1931-1981), Victoria Park Golf Club; ‘Victoria Park Golf Course. Assessment of the Application for entry of Victoria Park Golf Course in the Heritage Register, Report, Volume 1’. Catherine Brouwer Landscape Architects, 2001, p.7.
[46] ‘Golf. Victoria Park Golf Club. Governor opens new Links’, Telegraph, 21 November 1898, p.3; entry on the Queensland Heritage Register, Victoria Park Golf Clubhouse (former) (602034); ‘Victoria Park Golf Course’, Heritage Citation, Brisbane City Council; ‘Victoria Park Golf Course. Assessment of the Application for entry of Victoria Park Golf Course in the Heritage Register, Report, Volume 1’. Catherine Brouwer Landscape Architects, 2001, pp.5-6. The new Brisbane golf clubs included the [Royal] Queensland Golf Club at Hamilton in 1920, Sandgate (1921), Wynnum (1923), Goodna (Gaile) (1924), Indooroopilly (1926), Oxley (1928) and Nudgee (1929). Only three of these were eighteen-hole courses: Brisbane, Royal Queensland, and Indooroopilly, and the rest were nine-hole courses.
[47] ‘Municipal links. Start next week’, The Brisbane Courier, 7 June 1930, p.6; ‘Victoria Park Golf Course’, Heritage Citation, Brisbane City Council; entry on the Queensland Heritage Register, Victoria Park Golf Clubhouse (former) (QHR 602034); Department of Natural Resources and Mines, Manufacturing and Regional and Rural Development (Resources) Deed of Grant 14448108, 1970 (all of Victoria Park, including the golf course, was owned by BCC, ‘for public park purposes’); ‘Victoria Park Golf Course. Assessment of the Application for entry of Victoria Park Golf Course in the Heritage Register, Report, Volume 1’. Catherine Brouwer Landscape Architects, 2001, pp.6-7. Under Jolly, the BCC had decided to acquire land for ‘breathing spaces’ as the city expanded, and had resumed land in various suburbs before it was built on, while also reserving ranges around the city such as Mt Coot-Tha, White’s Hill and Mount Gravatt (William Jolly, Farewell Review by Lord Mayor Jolly on his retirement after 6 years of Greater Brisbane 23 February 1931, p.50, in Brisbane City Council Archives, Park History File D0083, ‘Victoria Park, Part 1 - General, 1890-1969’; ‘Victoria Park Golf Course, Brisbane. An assessment of cultural significance for the Brisbane City Council’, Allom Lovell Architects Brisbane, 2001, pp.26-28, 40). The first municipal golf course in Queensland was formed in 1924 in Ipswich (Brouwer, p.6)
[48] ‘Victoria Park Golf Course. Assessment of the Application for entry of Victoria Park Golf Course in the Heritage Register, Report, Volume 1’. Catherine Brouwer Landscape Architects, 2001, pp.7,8.
[49] ‘Victoria Park Golf Course’, Heritage Citation, Brisbane City Council; Resources, aerial photograph ADA00065890, 20 April 1936 (location of mature trees). New plantings included jacarandas, camphor laurels (Cinnamomum camphora), hoop pines (Araucaria cunninghamii), bunya pines (Araucaria bidwilli), flame trees, coral trees (Erythrina), and palms. A 1941 golf club annual report also noted additional plantings of 400 ornamental trees and shrubs, including ‘Kauri, Black Hoop, Cypress, Norfolk and She Pine, Picabean Palm, Pin Oak, Solandra Nitada, Bauhinia, Tulip, Eucalypti, Frangipanni, Acalypha, Oleander, Jacaranda, Poinciana Regia, Crowash, Silk Oak etc’ (‘Victoria Park Golf Course. Assessment of the Application for entry of Victoria Park Golf Course in the Heritage Register, Report, Volume 1’. 2001, p.11).
[50] ‘Victoria Park Golf Club. Golden Jubilee, Fifty Years of History’, (Golden Jubilee Report 1931-1981), Victoria Park Golf Club; ‘Victoria Park Golf Course. Assessment of the Application for entry of Victoria Park Golf Course in the Heritage Register, Report, Volume 1’. Catherine Brouwer Landscape Architects, 2001, p.10; ‘Victoria Park Golf Course. Assessment of the Application for entry of Victoria Park Golf Course in the Heritage Register, Figures & Maps, Volume 2’. A study for the Environmental Protection Agency, May 2001, 2001, Figures 1-4 (mapping changes to course layout).
[51] Daily Standard, 20 April 1933 p.2; Brisbane Hockey Association, Annual Reports 1931-1935; Telegraph, 9 June 1933 p.11, 7 August 1933 p.7, and 13 April 1935 p.19; Courier Mail, 11 July 1934 p.8. The new Victoria Park field were formally opened by the Governor, Sir Leslie Wilson, in April 1935. The expression ‘play the game’ was popularised by the 1897 Henry Newbolt poem Vitai Lampada. Brisbane Hockey Association President HA Kappe used the expression in his message to players in April 1936, referencing the players’ ‘highest ethics of true sportsmanship’ and proclaiming that ‘nowhere is there a finer spirit of “playing the game” displayed than in hockey in Brisbane’: Telegraph, 3 April 1936 p.13. The wall was visible in a 1950 image of the Victoria Park sports fields (Cricket Match – Victoria Park – 1950 [image], 16 January 1950, Brisbane City Council Archives, BCC-B54-685).
[52] ‘Victoria Park Scheme’, The Architecture & Building Journal of Queensland, 10 May 1932 p.17; Laverty, ‘Dissecting Victoria Park’, 2010, pp.91-92; Brisbane City Council Minutes 1932-33 and 1935-6, pp.65&68, in Brisbane City Council Archives, Park History File D0083, ‘Victoria Park, Part 1 - General, 1890-1969’; The Telegraph, 21 July 1932 p.2; Daily Standard, 4 August 1932 p.12 and 1 October 1935 p.6; The Brisbane Courier, 4 August 1932 p.6 and 8 August 1932 p.16; Courier Mail, 15 August 1936 p.14; Toowoomba Chronicle and Darling Downs Gazette, 8 August 1932 p.4. Riding Row had been constructed at a cost of £2321 (Daily Standard, 28 September 1932 p.6 and Brisbane City Council Minutes 1932-33, pp.152-153, in Brisbane City Council Archives, Park History File D0083, ‘Victoria Park, Part 1 - General, 1890-1969’). Resources, aerial photographs ADA00065890, 20 April 1936; BCC000234731, 31 May 1946; QAP1060061, 26 September 1960 and QAP37283648, 5 June 1980 (loss of riding circuit plantings).
[53] The Courier Mail, 13 September 1938 p.6.
[54] Victoria Park had been occupied by homeless people throughout the 19th century into the 1920s (e.g., Brisbane Courier, 16 November 1923 p.7 and Daily Mercury, 5 January 1929 p.14), but on a much smaller scale than was experienced during the Great Depression. Entry on the Queensland Heritage Register, Eagles Nest Camp, Redwood Park (650263).
[55] ‘Campers moved. Beautification of riding track. Opening next week’, The Telegraph, 30 July 1932 p.8.
[56] ‘Campers moved. Beautification of riding track. Opening next week’, The Telegraph, 30 July 1932 p.8.
[57] ‘Campers moved. Beautification of riding track. Opening next week’, The Telegraph, 30 July 1932 p.8.
[58] ‘”Not fair”. Destroying Trees. Victoria Park camp’, Courier Mail, 23 October 1933, p.10; ‘Life’s castaways in Victoria Park. Relief workers’ existence in hovels that blot Brisbane’, Sunday Mail, 17 January 1937, p.4 (relief workers’ camp ‘started five years ago’). The shacks of the second camp are visible amongst the trees in Resources, aerial photographs ADA00065890, 20 April 1936, southwest of the intersection of Aberleigh Road and Herston Road. Most of the camp site is now within the QUT Campus.
[59] e.g., The Telegraph, 16 May 1938 p.10, 16 February 1939 p.13.
[60] Queensland Government, 'South West Pacific campaign', Queensland WWII Historic Places, 29 July 2014, https://www.ww2places.qld.gov.au/south-west-pacific-campaign, accessed 9 December 2021.
[61] National Archives of Australia Item 1699026, ‘Victoria Park - RAAF No. 3 Stores Depot Site, Parish of North Brisbane, County of Stanley’, 1942 (shows air raid shelter behind substation); ‘38 (386th) Australian Heavy Anti-Aircraft (HAA) Battery, Victoria Park Golf Course’, https://www.anzacsquare.qld.gov.au/historic-places/queensland-wwii-history-map/38-386th-australian-heavy-anti-aircraft-haa-battery (accessed 22 January 2025); Laverty, ‘Dissecting Victoria Park’, 2010, p.93; ‘Victoria Park Golf Course. Assessment of the Application for entry of Victoria Park Golf Course in the Heritage Register, Figures & Maps, Volume 2’, 2001, Figures 1-4 (course layouts); ‘Victoria Park/Barrambin. Archaeological Management Plan’, Urbis, for Brisbane City Council, September 2023, pp.33-35 (trench shelters). A January 1943 aerial of the HAA battery (Australian War Memorial, Negative 45368, not digitised) shows the gun emplacements, command post, and possible reserve magazine sites, as well as the trenches alongside Gregory Terrace near Brisbane Girls’ Grammar. At this time the Gregory Terrace officers’ camp section of Camp Victoria Park had yet to be built. A photograph of one of the gun emplacements and its gun crew, looking south towards Brisbane Girls’ Grammar, is included in Australian War Memorial Item 457411, ‘Camouflage - Methods:] Photographs (including Aerial) 14th Australian Camouflage Unit, Tank Attack’, 1939-1946 (not digitised). A building existed within the northeast corner of the grove, on the site of the golf course’s maintenance depot, by this time. This was present on a 1936 aerial photograph, was later replaced in the 1970’s. Another building, located east of the grove, was present in 1946 but gone by 1951 (Resources, aerial photographs ADA00065890, 20 April 1936; BCC000234731, 31 May 1946; BCC000539334, 1 August 1951; QAP27569817, 29 January 1974; and QAP37283648, 5 June 1980).
[62] National Archives of Australia, Item 3273301, ‘Victoria Park - Site Plan [1/B/266]’ 1946; National Archives of Australia, Item 1672924, ‘Victoria Park - US Officer's Camp Site, Parish of North Brisbane, County of Stanley’, 1943; National Archives of Australia, Item 1674628, ‘Victoria Park - Contour Survey of RAAF Command Headquarters, Parish of North Brisbane, County of Stanley’, 1943; ‘Camp Victoria Park (Lower) - HQ and Enlisted Men’s Camp, Base Section 3 and US Army Service of Supply (USASOS) Headquarters’, https://www.anzacsquare.qld.gov.au/historic-places/queensland-wwii-history-map/camp-victoria-park-lower-hq-and-enlisted-mens-camp (accessed 22 January 2025);‘Camp Victoria Park (Upper) - Officer’s Camp, Base Section 3 and US Army Service of Supply (USASOS) Headquarters’, https://www.anzacsquare.qld.gov.au/historic-places/queensland-wwii-history-map/camp-victoria-park-upper-officers-camp (accessed 22 January 2025); Peter Dunne, ‘Camp Victoria Park Herston, Brisbane, During WW2,’ ‘USASOS Headquarters at Camp Victoria Park Herston, Brisbane, During WW2’ and ‘Gregory Terrace Officers’ Camp Base Section Three Gregory Terrace, Brisbane, Qld, During WW2’, Australia at War, http://www.ozatwar.com, 2015, accessed June 2021; ‘Victoria Park/Barrambin. Archaeological Management Plan’, Urbis, for Brisbane City Council, September 2023, pp.26-33. A RAAF Stores Depot was established in 1941, between Gregory Terrace and the railway near Bowen Bridge Road (outside heritage boundary) (National Archives of Australia Item 1699026, ‘Victoria Park - RAAF No. 3 Stores Depot Site, Parish of North Brisbane, County of Stanley’, 1942).
[63] National Archives of Australia, Item 3273301, ‘Victoria Park - Site Plan [1/B/266]’ 1946; State Library of Queensland ‘United States Service of Supply Camp at Victoria Park, Herston Brisbane’, images number 29721-0001-0001, and 29721-0001-0004 (these photographs show both entrances and each end of the retaining wall). The wall may have been erected as part of construction of the camp (‘Victoria Park Golf Course. Assessment of the Application for entry of Victoria Park Golf Course in the Heritage Register, Report, Volume 1’. 2001, p.10), or it may be of earlier construction.
[64]‘38 (386th) Australian Heavy Anti-Aircraft (HAA) Battery, Victoria Park Golf Course’, https://www.anzacsquare.qld.gov.au/historic-places/queensland-wwii-history-map/38-386th-australian-heavy-anti-aircraft-haa-battery (accessed 22 January 2025); Entry on the Queensland Heritage Register, Heavy Anti-Aircraft Gun Station 385, Lytton (650230). In late 1943 the other five batteries were located: just east of today’s Bannister Park in Hendra (GS 389); north of the settlement of Pinkenba (GS 388, site now on airport land); on the hilltop in Balmoral Park in Morningside (GS 387); off Fleming Road in Tingalpa (GS 390, QHR 601353); and adjacent to Fort Lytton (GS 385, QHR 650230). Earlier HAA gun positions in Brisbane included Heath Park in East Brisbane (US 3-inch guns, later Australian 3.7 inch), and Colmslie (first position of GS 385 prior to moving to Fort Lytton), west of the Commonwealth Acetate of Lime Factory (QHR 602465). In 1942 there were also 3-inch gun stations at Amberley airfield (GS 391) and Archerfield airfield (GS 392). From 1943, the six HAA batteries’ experienced gun crews were replaced by gunners drawn from the Australia Women’s Army Service (AWAS) and ‘C’ Company, 4th Battalion of the Volunteer Defence Corps (VDC) and were designated as Troops (Static) – and GS 386 became 386 Troop. Brisbane’s 3.7-inch gun emplacements had entrance corridors on one side, leading into the gun pit; and a central group of bolts for securing the gun’s hexagonal metal base plate to the concrete floor of the pit. At least one of the gun emplacements, located on the former 17th (originally 8th) fairway, may still exist underground.
[65] National Archives of Australia, Item 3273301, ‘Victoria Park - Site Plan [1/B/266]’ 1946 (plan shows flagpole currently near the 1975 golf clubhouse as building No.27 in the HQ area – just southeast of administration building No.1 and near the southwest end of administration building No.3); wartime photograph of the flagpole, with administration building No.3 behind it, on interpretation board located between the driving range and the bistro, in February 2025; State Library of Queensland ‘United States Service of Supply Camp at Victoria Park, Herston Brisbane’, image number 29721-0001-0002 (shows the officers’ club and the Gregory Terrace flagpole). The Brisbane City Council took control of the RAAF’s flagpole in the HQ section of Camp Victoria Park in 1946 and preserved it ‘in its present position’ as it ‘possesses some historical value’ (Brisbane City Council Minutes, 1946, p.548, in Brisbane City Council Archives, Park History File D0083, ‘Victoria Park, Part 1 - General, 1890-1969’ (the minute also states that the flagpole was at the eastern end of ‘Administration Building No.1’)). The officers’ club flagpole on Gregory Terrace was restored in-situ in the late 1980s (plaque on base of flagpole).
[66] Newcastle Sun, 13 September 1945 p.15; Courier Mail, 11 September 1945 p.3 and 18 January 1946 p.4. By January 1946 around 1,700 war wives, fiancees and children were positioned in and around Brisbane; approximately 4,500 were around Queensland, but not all wished to travel to the US. Victoria Park was the headquarters for the US Army officer in charge of transportation in Queensland and accommodated a number of war wives and children awaiting transport on one of the ‘bride ships’ to the US. Sunday Mail, 7 October 1945 p.1; Courier Mail, 17 January 1946 p.3 and 31 January 1946 p.1; Telegraph, 8 November 1946 p.7; Queensland Times, 11 September 1945 p.3.
[67] Sunday Mail, 1 August 1954 p.2.
[68] Brisbane Telegraph, 30 November 1953 p.3; Queensland Times, 15 February 1947 p.1; Laverty, ‘Dissecting Victoria Park’, 2010, pp.94, 96, 98-99; Brisbane City Council Archives, Park History File D0083, ‘Victoria Park, Part 1 - General, 1890-1969’; Brisbane City Council, ‘Recognising housing styles’, https://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/planning-and-building/do-i-need-approval/restoring-and-researching-heritage-properties/fact-sheets/recognising-housing-styles, May 2019, accessed June 2021; Courier Mail, 15 September 2014; Resources, aerial photograph QAP27569817, 29 January 1974 (surviving huts).
[69] Entry on the Queensland Heritage Register, Centenary Pool Complex (601240).
[70] J Gray, ‘Oakman, Harry (1906-2002)’, Biographical Notes, Council of Heads of Australian Herbaria, Australian National Herbarium, 2015; Laverty, ‘Dissecting Victoria Park’, 2010, pp100-101.
[71] Oakman requested permission for 1,000 trees in April 1959 and ordered 1,550 trees from the Forestry Department in July 1959, though reportedly 800 trees were ultimately planted. Brisbane City Council Archives, Park History File D0083, ‘Victoria Park, Part 1 - General, 1890-1969’; Laverty, ‘Dissecting Victoria Park’, 2010, p.105; Brisbane City Council Archives, images BCC-B54-12534 to BCC-B54-1236 (July 1959), BCC-D-120277 (1959), BCC-B54-26566 and BCC-B54-26467 (January 1967).
[72] Laverty, ‘Dissecting Victoria Park’, p.102. Species planted included phoenix canariensis, pandanus pendunculatus, phoenix roebelenii, oreodoxa regia, arecastrum romanzoffianum, ravenala madagascariensis, strelitzia Nicolai, Cortaderia selloana, nolina longifolia; as well as clumps of golden bamboo (Phyllostachys aurea), cocos/Queen palms (Syagrus romanzoffiana) and royal palms (Roystonea regia) (Brisbane City Council Department of Parks, Proposed extension of layout, Gregory Terrace Frontage, Victoria Park, November 1962, via Brisbane City Council Archives).
[73] Memorandum, H Oakman to Secretary Metropolitan Works Board (Parks), 4 August 1960, in Brisbane City Council Archives, Park History File D0083, ‘Victoria Park, Part 1 - General, 1890-1969’; Laverty, ‘Dissecting Victoria Park’, 2010, p.105; Brisbane City Council Department of Parks, Redesign of Gregory Terrace Entrance to Park, Plan No D83G1, April 1958. Three of the five beds originally planted were removed in 2014 (Google Earth Pro aerial imagery).
[74] Laverty, ‘Dissecting Victoria Park’, 2010, pp.102-104; Memo, Re Lease of Playing Fields in Victoria Park – Brisbane Hockey Association, c1951, in Brisbane City Council Archives, Park History File D0083, ‘Victoria Park, Part 1 - General, 1890-1969’. Brisbane Hockey Association, Annual reports, various years. While the condition of Victoria Park hockey fields was not as good as others, particularly the St Lucia university grounds, Victoria Park was preferred for its central location. ‘When [the finals] are played on other grounds, only the privileged few who have means of transport or are actually playing there can watch them.’ (Brisbane Hockey Association, Annual Report, 1956, p.3); Truth, 25 May 1952 p.26; Victoria Park – Archery Competition – Herston – 1950s [image], Brisbane City Council Archives, BCC-B120-31536 and The Great Moscow Circus in Victoria Park – Herston – 1968 [images], Brisbane City Council Archives, BCC-B54-29101 to BCC-B54-29103.
[75] The first dressing shed had been erected at a cost of £280 and partly funded by the Brisbane Hockey Association (The Brisbane Courier, 30 January 1930 p.12). A new, 200ft dressing shed had been designed by Council Architect AH Erwood in 1938 but was apparently not constructed. Following the 1947 fire, the Brisbane City Council Financial Committee recommended the calling of tenders for the erection of a kiosk, dressing room and lavatory facilities in 1950, but this also apparently did not happen (Brisbane Telegraph, 24 August 1949 p.30, The Brisbane Courier, 18 March 1950 p.6). The building was finally constructed in 1959 but not open for use for the sporting clubs until 1960. Lessees of the kiosk included soccer and cricket clubs. Brisbane Hockey Association, Annual Report 1959 p.8 and 1960 p.7. Laverty, ‘Dissecting Victoria Park’, 2010, p.105; Brisbane City Council Department of Parks, Victoria Park Proposed Improvements to Spectators’ and Parking Area, Plan No D83P1, April 1961; aerial images QAP5121187 (1992), QAP562760 (1999).
[76] Laverty, ‘Dissecting Victoria Park’, 2010, pp.104-106. This also included a diversion of Gilchrist Avenue around the hospital carpark near Bowen Bridge Road: survey plan RA3232; aerial images QAP4020279 (1982) and QAP4260001 (1985). Two small portions of vacant land were added to Victoria Park but are located outside the heritage boundary.
[77] ‘Victoria Park Golf Course. Assessment of the Application for entry of Victoria Park Golf Course in the Heritage Register, Report, Volume 1’. Catherine Brouwer Landscape Architects, 2001, pp.7, 10; ‘Victoria Park Golf Course, Brisbane. An assessment of cultural significance for the Brisbane City Council’, Allom Lovell Architects Brisbane, 2001, p.10; ‘Victoria Park/Barrambin. Archaeological Management Plan’, Urbis, for Brisbane City Council, September 2023, p.44.
[78] Brisbane City Council Archives, Victoria Park Ponds, Proposed Landscape Development, D83 No 32, December 1985 and D83 No 33, February 1986; Development application CHCH03369912, 26 June 2012; Laverty, ‘Dissecting Victoria Park’, 2010, footnotes to p.286; Royal Geographical Society of Queensland, ‘The Mystery of Gregory Grove’ and ‘The Gregory Grove mystery solved!’, RGSQ Bulletin, Vol. 54 Nos. 7 & 8, August & September 2019, pp.8&4 respectively. The trees planted by the Society do not survive.
[79] The section of Gilchrist Avenue between Ithaca Street and the ornamental lake was closed as the Inner City Bypass was opened. In 2018 the Inner City Bypass was connected to Legacy Way. Additional roadworks were undertaken, but largely impacted areas outside the heritage boundary: SKM & Connell Wagner, Northern Link Phase 2 – Detailed Feasibility Study, September 2008, p12-27; Linkt, ‘Escape the city to the western suburbs via the Inner City Bypass’, https://www.linkt.com.au/brisbane/using-toll-roads/news/escape-the-city-to-the-western-suburbs-via-the-inner-city-bypass, 12 February 2019, accessed 12 May 2021; Google Earth Pro, 2001 aerial imagery; aerial images SEQ_50cm_SISP_PeriUrban (2008) and 2021; Survey Plan SP123915 (1999).
[80] ARCHAEO Cultural Heritage Services, Archaeological Excavation of Victoria Park, Brisbane, Queensland, Vol 1, Main Report, Brisbane: Unpublished report prepared for Brisbane City Council, 2001.
[81] E Jeanne Harris, G Ginn, and C Coroneos, ‘How to Dig a Dump: Strategy and Research Design for Investigation of Brisbane’s Nineteenth-Century Municipal Dump’, Australasian Historical Archaeology, vol.22, 2004, p.25.
[82] UNITY, Victoria Park Updated Detailed Archaeological Assessment, Revision A, Brisbane: Unpublished report for CRRDA, 2020.
[83] Google Earth Pro, 2003, 2011-2015 aerial imagery; ‘Victoria Park/Barrambin. Archaeological Management Plan’, Urbis, for Brisbane City Council, September 2023, pp.46-47.
[84] ‘Victoria Park/Barrambin. Archaeological Management Plan’, Urbis, for Brisbane City Council, September 2023, pp. 46-47, 50-51; ‘Victoria Park’, https://victoriapark.com.au/our-story/ (accessed 6 February 2025); Certificate of Title 51299277 (Lot 3 SP185072), 2022. In 1999 the new operators had successfully tendered to the BCC to operate the 1975 clubhouse and develop new facilities.
[85] The 2023 Masterplan was a result of planning commenced in 2019 (‘Victoria Park Barrambin Master Plan 2023’, Brisbane City Council, pp.iii, 2-3). The Masterplan refers to a park area of 64ha, although this includes land not yet under BCC ownership, in the southwest corner of the park (outside heritage boundary).
[86] ‘Victoria Park’, The Telegraph, 21 September 1877, p.3; ‘Victoria Park’, Queenslander, 22 September 1883, p.492; ‘Rubbish and Victoria Park’, The Week, 7 March 1885, p.6; ‘The Victoria Park Reserve’, The Brisbane Courier, 16 January 1886, p.5; ‘Mass Meeting in Victoria Park’, Queenslander, 20 September 1890, p.561; ‘Wickham Terrace School’, The Telegraph, 25 May 1892, p.6; ‘Victoria Park’, The Telegraph, 16 April 1901, p.4; ‘University Site. Victoria Park Portion. MM.L.A. Protest Against Mayor’s Action’, The Telegraph, 13 January 1903, p.7; ‘Stealing the Park of the People’, The Worker, 17 January, 1903, p.3; ‘Heading ‘Em. An Incongruous Crowd. Victoria Park on the Lord’s Day. Woodcraft With the Word.’, The Truth, 13 September 1903, p.7; ‘Victoria Park. Protest Against Leasing’, The Brisbane Courier, 1 August 1928, p.16; ‘Wanton Slaughter of Trees. Damage in Victoria Park. Strong Protest by Citizens. Unsightly Unemployed Camps.’, Sunday Mail, 22 October 1933, p.2; ‘Victoria Park Men to Arrange Public Meeting’, The Telegraph, 4 February 1937, p.1; ‘Looking Back 50 Years … We Nearly Lost Victoria Park’, Sunday Mail, 14 January 1951, p.16; Brisbane City Council Library, photograph IDs BCC-B54-29102 and BCC-B54-29103, ‘The Great Moscow Circus in Victoria Park – Herston – 1968’, 1968.

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