North Pine Pumping Station

On the way from Petrie towards Whiteside on the Dayboro Road, you pass the dam wall of Lake Kurwongbah. The unobtrusive brick building opposite, houses the 1957 pump station. It fulfilled two important functions: firstly as part of the North Pine Water Supply Scheme supplying the new northern suburbs of the Pine Shire. Secondly the water supply was integral to the operations of the Australian Paper Manufacturer’s carton-board mill at Petrie. The APM mill was the largest industrial undertaking in southern Queensland immediately post-war and probably the largest individual industrial unit privately constructed in Queensland to that date. Lake Kurwongbah dam was designed by consulting engineers, John Wilson and Partners, assisted by Melbourne consultants Scott and Furphy. Construction of the pump house by Brisbane firm KD Morris & Sons Pty Ltd reached completion in mid-1957. The station housed two 100 000 gallons (.454609 megalitres) per hour and two 50,000 gallons (.227304 megalitres) per hour pumps together with ancillary equipment. Although it supplied the paper mill from 1957, the water supply scheme was not officially opened until 1961. At that time the scheme was Queensland’s third largest outside of Brisbane. The carton-board mill was demolished in 2016.