At 11am on the 11th November 1918 the guns of the Western Front fell silent after more than four years of continuous warfare.  The armistice between the Allies and Germany was signed at 5am in a railway carriage in Compiegne Forest, France, to take effect at 11am Paris time; the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.  In the years following, this symbolic end of the “war to end all wars” gained special significance, as allied countries adopted Armistice Day as the day for remembering all who died in war.

We hold many images of the soldiers serving on the Western Front and in the Middle East during the First World War.  A special feature is now appearing on our Picture Queensland website.

Armistice Procession, Brisbane, 1918.  No: 7729-0001-0034

Australian soldier in a dug-out at Gallipoli.  Image No: 136870

A. Franz, during a break in the fighting, ca. 1916.  Image No:131049

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The John Oxley Library photograph collection holds many of the earliest known images of Queensland’s towns and cities.

These early images are fascinating when compared with the same place or area today.

These images of Mackay date from the 1870s and show the future city at the beginnings of European settlement.  Are these photographs amongst the earliest surviving images of Mackay?  We’d love to hear from you if you know of or have an earlier photograph of Mackay.

Mackay, 1870s.  Image No: 00095

Sydney Street North, ca. 1883.  Image No: 6298-0001-0087

Township of Mackay, 1870s.  Image No: 00114

The following photograph is believed to be one of the earliest known photographs of another major Queensland city - do you know which it is?  More on this in the next Queensland places - earliest photographs post.

For more images of Mackay, see Picture Queensland

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Did you know that Carindale Shopping Centre in Brisbane turns 30 in 2009?  We recently received a query regarding this fact and in the course of research discovered some fascinating information about the suburb.

Carindale was originally part of the suburb of Belmont.  The area was officially recognized as a separate suburb in 1980, the name Carindale originating from the housing estate which was developed there in the 1970s.

The early history of the area began with timber getting in the 1850s.  Once the land was cleared sugar cane was grown along Bulimba Creek.  Farmers in the area also grew bananas, pineapples and other small crops.  In 1898 Baynes Brothers established their fellmongery and wool scour where Carindale Shopping Centre now stands.

Baynes Brothers wool scour, 1908.  Image No: 191799

Planning of the shopping centre began in 1975 when property consultants, Jones Lang Wootton, were approached to submit a report on the feasibility of a retail centre to serve the Carindale housing estate.  In December 1976 the site of 12.87 hectares was sold by Jones Lang Wootton to the SGIO (State Government Insurance Office) for a major shopping centre development.  The complex cost $12 million and opened on the 14th November 1979 featuring 50 specialty shops.

Site of the proposed shopping centre.  Image No: 181638

Site of Carindale Shopping Centre.  Image No: 181632

The Telegraph newspaper provided extensive coverage of the opening of Carindale in the issues of the 13th and 14th November, 1979.  An extract appears below:

Parties give way to shops

Back in the 1800s many of Brisbane’s social set trekked to Belmont House for parties and balls.  Today the area resounds with the noise and bustle of a different social function - the new Carindale Shopping Centre.  Carindale was built on the site of the old Belmont House which, 79 years ago, was the birth place of Mrs Jean Simons, now of Derby Street, Coorparoo.  “It was demolished while I was still a child, for a new house we also lived in.  It was built somewhere in the mid 1800s by a Colonel Berneker and was the original Belmont House after which Belmont was named.” she said.  Mrs Simons said that she lived on the site with her parents until her marriage in 1926.  “It was quite interesting when the shopping centre was being built and I went along often to see what was happening to the site.” she said….Mrs Simons said one of her most colourful memories of the old house as a child had been its citrus and mango orchard in the back yard.

Large crowds and traffic jams heralded the opening of the shopping complex.  Even before the doors opened at 8.15 a.m. today thousands of people had gathered outside shop doors.  A spokesman said trading had been hectic…The shopping centre will service Carina, Belmont, Coorparoo and other suburbs.  

(Telegraph, 14/11/1979, p.5)

Other photographs of Carindale and Belmont may be viewed on Picture Queensland.

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In January 1921 Brisbane was honoured by the visit of the internationally famous British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the unforgettable detective team of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. However it was not Conan Doyle’s tales of amazing feats of detection that attracted public attention but his controversial lecture tour preaching the “absolute truth” of the beliefs and practices of Spiritualism. A Presbyterian cleric in Melbourne prayed ardently that Conan Doyle may “never arrive safely in Australia” and in Brisbane Reverend James Cosh asked that he may be “brought into the true light, as it is in Jesus Christ”.

Conan Doyle was one of hundreds and thousands of mourners who turned to Spiritualism for consolation after losing loved ones during the First World War. Deeply depressed by the deaths of his son, brother, two brothers-in-law and two nephews Conan Doyle found solace in Spiritualism’s claims of scientific proof of spirit existence and communication between the living and the dead.

Addressing a packed Brisbane audience in “a big, strong, rolling voice” Conan Doyle outlined the “absolute strength of evidence” from his own scientific research into the subject, and referred to visits from his son who called “Father! Father!”, kissed him on the brow and told him he was “So happy”. His study of 40 scripts of spiritualist messages published as “The New Revelation” had left him without “the faintest doubt as to what awaits me at the other side of the bar; therefore, death loses all its terrors’.

In closing Conan Doyle observed that he’d been told he could expect only “one person” at his Brisbane lectures.  In fact the city had a strong core of devotees and one of Conan Doyle’s special honours during his visit was to lay the foundation stone for the Brisbane Spiritualist Church. Already in the early 1880s a weekly magazine The Australian Spiritualist was being published in Brisbane and there were practitioners like the daughters of German-born musician Professor A. Seal who recorded musical scripts transmitted to them by their father from the grave.

Copies of The Australian Spiritualist, the A Seal Papers and the E Jack Cutting Book, which contains press clippings about Conan Doyle’s visit to Brisbane, are held in the Queensland State Library.

We would love to hear from you if you have further information or any photographs relating to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s visit or to the history of Spiritualism in Queensland.    

  Illuminated address held by State Library of NSW. 
 
 Professor Anna Haebich

Historian in Residence

John Oxley Library

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