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Hold the line please – Brisbane Telephone Exchange

Posted on 07 May 2013| by Simon Miller |

I notice that we recently passed the 40th anniversary of the invention of the mobile phone. The telephone is now ubiquitous but you might be surprised at how quickly it arrived in Brisbane after its invention. Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated the first practical telephone in 1876 and published details in the Scientific American on 6 October 1877. The first experiments with telephones in Queensland were conducted at the Brisbane GPO on 26 January 1878 by W. J. Cracknell, Superintendant of Telegraphs. Cracknell was able to set up a demonstration of the telephones at the Exhibition in August of that year along with some other startling scientific exhibits as reported in the minutes of the National Association published in the Brisbane Courier.

That to Mr. W. J. Cracknell, Superintendent of Telegraphs, your committee are indebted for the promise of several highly interesting scientific exhibits at next month’s exhibition, all of which are comparatively unknown in Queensland, viz.:

1. The electric light, to be displayed every evening.

2. Explosion of torpedoes in the creek running through Bowen Park, by means of electricity.

3.Telephones fitted up in the main building, and in the park, by which visitors may, at distant points from each other, converse through the medium of these wonderful instruments.

These early telephones could only be used for communication between two fixed points but January 1878 saw the opening of the first commercial telephone exchange which allowed multiple telephone users to be connected and made the instrument truly practical. Brisbane’s first telephone exchange was set up at the GPO linking several Government offices in October 1880 and by 1881 there were 36 telephones connected including several private ones. By 1883 a continuous 24 hour service was being provided and 175 telephones were connected. The first country telephone exchange in Australia was opened in Maryborough in 1882 with 32 subscribers.

The first telephone exchanges employed message boys to operate the equipment, however, the boys quickly earned a reputation as inefficient, unruly and impertinent, and in an effort to improve customer service these first operators were replaced by women specifically employed for the job. In 1889 positions were advertised for thirteen telephone exchange switch-board assistants, at a salary of 10 shillings per week, 1671 young women applied. Mrs Dick was appointed as Supervisor.

Mrs William Heddle Dick, First Lady Superintendent of the First Telephone Exchange in the Colony of Queensland

Alterations were made to the building to allow for the employment of female operators, who worked from 8 am to 6 pm, the night shift being deemed unsuitable for female employment. An article published in The Queenslander and attributed to ‘Delphia’ provides a detailed description of the working environment of these early telephonists.

Group of the first female telephonists in Brisbane, Queensland started in June 1899

The new switchboard on the Telephone Exchange is now in working order; and the female operators are shaping to their novel experience in a manner that augurs well for their future utility, and for the increased convenience of the public service. Mrs. Dick, the lady superintendent, assisted by a monitress, has twelve operators under her charge. Perhaps a more capable-looking assemblage of young women could hardly be found In Brisbane; had the qualification been appearance only, instead of capability, they could well have stood the test. It is somewhat surprising, considering the small amount of salary offered, that such a refined and superior class of workers should have tendered their services, especially when. It is found that some of them come from a distance, as far as Ipswich even, and have to deduct travelling expenses from their earnings. They, no doubt, look upon the appointment as a beginning of better things, and anticipate future promotions in the Government service. It must also be borne in mind that, although they, have passed the necessary education tests, they are ignorant of the telephone duties, until patiently inducted into the method, under the personal supervision of Mr. Hesketh.

The girls enter their offices through a private door on the right hand of the Post Office lane, near Elizabeth-street. After ascending, two flights of narrow stairs, we find the lavatories on the right hand, with necessary fittings, and a comfortable little sitting-room on the left. Around the walls, convenient lockers are fitted up, a separate one, with lock and key, for each operator ; the open doors show a good arrangement for hanging hats and cloaks, and shelves for cups, lunch, books, &c.; outside, they look like wardrobes of polished Maryborough pine. One or two cane lounges, plenty of comfort-able chairs, a large table, and writing secretaire form part of the comfortable furnishings. In one corner a small gas stove is fitted, and a large kettle supplies hot water for the acceptable cup of tea at lunch time. The pretty light tint chosen for the wall colouring gives a brightness to the room and in every way possible in so small a space has the comfort of the girls when off duty been considered. Mrs. Dick is ever on the alert to see that the girls are relieved of duty for a time, when they feel the nervous strain too much, or when the incessant vibration tells upon their endurance. That there will be cause for watchfulness and anxiety in this respect a visit to the switchboard room will show. Such a babel of confused and subdued voices, in the strident, “are you-there” tone. The operators sit in chairs constructed upon pedestals to move slightly from side to side, so as to quickly operate upon the numbers from right to left. Each operator has 100 connections under her charge. To watch the incessant manipulation of the plugs, one would imagine that every telephone-owner spent a good part of his time with a transmitter at his mouth. Ten in the morning is the busiest hour, between 12 and 2 the switching slackens, and increase afterwards up to 4 o’clock.

Interior of Brisbane Central Telephone Exchange, Brisbane, Queensland, 1903

Each operator wears a leather band over the head, with a receiver pressed to the left ear and transmitter near the mouth. The indicators, at the top of the switchboard, rise and fall, showing the number which wants to be switched on. Below are the round holes, bearing the numbers of the telephones—one set called the questioning jacks, the other set the answering jacks. These are connected by plugs, and the connection is made as rapidly as possible. The work to a certain extent is mechanical, but needs the utmost smartness and dexterity, and will prove a trying test to nervous organisations. Being apparently such mechanical work, one is inclined to question the relevancy of such examination posers as the following, which appear on the papers submitted to the applicants as examination tests :—”State what you know of the Brisbane River under the following heads :—Source, course, affluents, outfall, basin, and watersheds.” “Where in Queensland are sugar, wheat, coffee, arrowroot, and cocoa-nuts grown? Where are gold, copper, tin, opals, and pearlshell found?” “The side of a square paddock is 440 yards long. How many palings, each 4 In. wide, will be used in fencing the paddock?” Other arithmetic questions about papering walls, bags of marbles, thousands of oranges, barrels of ale, and boxes of matches, but not one question about modern science, the discovery and development of telephony, or reference to the life of Edison, or the principles of acoustics and the transmission of sound.

The operators look very business-like and comely in their uniforms of dark-blue serge and neat white collars and cuffs. The lady superintendent and monitress wear black. The hours are not heavy—altogether about eight hours a day, with relieving operators to take charge at intervals of rest. At present there are boys employed on the switchboard, as well as the girls, but Mr. Hessketh hopes to replace them in time by the women, and is very sanguine of good results.

Inside the Brisbane Central Telephone Exchange, ca. 1927

The work of the exchange operators continued in much the same fashion until the Brisbane exchange was switched over to an automatic exchange in 1929. Trunk operators were still required for interstate and international calls until a new type of automated exchange, the Crossbar system, allowed the introduction of Subscriber Trunk Dialling in the 1960s. The first Crossbar exchange in Australia was installed at Toowoomba in 1960. In 1963 a new eight story telephone exchange was planned for construction in Elizabeth Street, Brisbane.

Model of the new telephone exchange to be built on Elizabeth Street, Brisbane, 1963

The John Oxley Library holds several titles on the development of telephone exchanges. The Palace of winged words : the development of telephone exchanges in Australia published by Telecom Australia in 1980 and Resistance on the line : a history of Australian Telephonists and their Trade Unions, 1880-1988 by Jeff Rickertt.

Simon Miller – Library Technician, State Library of Queensland

Messiah comes to Brisbane

Posted on 22 Apr 2013| by Simon Miller |

Handel’s Messiah has been performed hundreds of times in Brisbane, but the first ever performance in Brisbane of this favourite of all choral works took place 140 years ago, on the 25th of April 1873. This was the second concert of the Brisbane Musical Union, an organisation that is still performing Handel’s masterpiece to this day, under the name of the Queensland Choir.

The formation of the Brisbane Musical Union followed a series of failed attempts to form a viable musical society going back as far as 1849. The South Brisbane Harmonic Society consisted of a small group of music lovers meeting at the Mechanics Institute. Rehearsals had been suspended due to a lack of musical leadership but the arrival of Mr R. T. Jefferies soon sparked them back to life. Richard Thomas Jefferies had made a name for himself in London as a violinist, a conductor and as a thoroughly competent musician. The success following his appointment as conductor of the Harmonic Society led to the formation of a North Brisbane branch and then to the combining of the two branches into the Brisbane Musical Union.

Musician Richard Thomas Jefferies, Brisbane, ca. 1910

The John Oxley Library holds two pamphlets detailing the early history of the Musical Union. A brief retrospect of the Brisbane Musical Union published in 1882 and A retrospect and resume of the work done by the Brisbane Musical Union 1872-1906. The later publication has a description of the first concert of the Musical Union.

The first concert of the “Union” was given on Wednesday, the 18th December, 1872, Romberg’s ‘Lay of the Bell’ being the principal item. The newspaper comments were very cordial and eulogistic. The concert was given in the School of Arts Hall …, to a large and overflowing audience. His Excellency the Governor, and the Marchioness of Normanby and suite, were present. The bell used on that occasion was the one subsequently erected at the Ann Street Presbyterian Church, and is, we believe, in use there at the present time.

Histories of the Brisbane Musical Union and Messiah program from 1930

Strangely the first pamphlet gives the date of this first concert as Thursday, the 17th December, 1872 but they both agree that the Messiah was performed on the 25th of April, 1873. Early History of Music in Brisbane, a paper for the Royal Queensland Historical Society by C. G. Austin from 1961 provides more information about this performance.

The ever-green “Messiah” is now performed regularly in Brisbane, but it was only due to Mr. Jefferies’ energy in assembling an orchestra that the first performance of Handel’s “Messiah” in Brisbane came to be given on 25 April 1873. Mrs. Wilkie sang the soprano solos, and Miss Muriel Smith the contralto solos, and the tenor and bass solos were taken by two “gentlemen amateurs.”

The Brisbane Courier published a review of the concert the next day.

IT was certainly a rather ambitious undertaking to give the full oratorio of “The Messiah” in Brisbane. Even in London, the metropolis of the world, or in the large provincial towns of the United Kingdom, several of which contain more people than we have in a territory more than ten times as great as England, such an attempt has not always escaped adverse criticism. But, taking everything into consideration, the delivery of the oratorio last night was something far beyond what might reasonably have been expected. We try to avoid the fault of indiscriminate praise of all public performances which is a general failing of colonial journalists, but on this occasion we merely echo the opinion of all who were present when we say that the manner in which the oratorio was put before the public, last night, proves that there is an amount of musical talent in Brisbane that would be considered to reflect credit on a city containing a much larger number of inhabitants. It has also given evidence of the great care that has been taken by the conductor, Mr Jefferies, in training the vocal and instrumental performers. …

The concert yesterday evening was attended by a crowded audience. Early in the afternoon it was declared that no more seats could be reserved. The chorus consisted of more than a hundred ladies and gentlemen, and there were between twenty and thirty instrumental performers. The programme was so lengthy– very little being omitted from the original score of the oratorio–that we cannot attempt even to enumerate the pieces. Generally speaking, it may be said that the solemn and sublime magnificence of the music was well interpreted by the instrumental performers, and by the chorus. …

Altogether the Musical Union may be congratulated on the success which has attended their production of so extensive, varied, and difficult a work as the “ Messiah.” It certainly ought to be repeated, although we have seen no announcement to that effect. It is stated that Mr. Jefferies is making preparations for enabling the public to enjoy another great oratorio-” Elijah.” The energy, patience, and tact he has displayed in getting together and keeping together so many talented musical amateurs is very creditable to him. And it is likewise creditable to Brisbane that so many amateurs can be found, amongst a comparatively small population, who are willing to give up a great deal of their time to the practice of music for the purpose of giving pleasure to the public as well as to themselves.

North Brisbane School of Arts Building, ca. 1877

The Brisbane Music Union went from strength to strength until in 1930 it was combined with the Brisbane Austral Choir to form the Queensland State and Municipal Choir. It was this new version of the choir that sang the first Messiah to be performed at the brand new Brisbane City Hall, as eagerly anticipated in the Brisbane Courier.

Handel’s “Messiah,” which is eagerly looked for, by very many music lovers, will be performed for the first time in the City Concert Hall, on Saturday, November 22, when the Queensland State and Municipal Choir (incorporating the Brisbane Musical Union) will give the third concert for the 1930 season. The solo work has been entrusted to Miss Myrtle Power (soprano), Miss Lena Hammond (contralto), Mr. W. W. Crisp (tenor), and Mr. J. E. England (bass). A particularly large choir of over 200 voices will be assisted by the Queensland State and Municipal Orchestra, and both bodies will be under the baton of Mr. George Sampson, F.R.C.O.

Interior view of the Brisbane City Hall, April 1930

George Sampson arrived in Brisbane in 1898 as organist of St John’s Cathedral, a post he occupied until 1947. Sampson formed his own orchestra in 1907 which became the Queensland State and Municipal Orchestra in 1924 and ultimately formed the basis of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra. Sampson also took over the conducting of the Brisbane Musical Union in 1898 and led the choir until the merger in 1930. The Australian Dictionary of Biography has this description of Sampson.

Tall, of distinguished appearance and gentlemanly demeanour, to this day the only professional musician to have belonged to the Queensland Club, Sampson dominated Brisbane’s musical life for three decades. He died in Brisbane General Hospital on 23 December 1949 after being knocked over by a tram.

Caricature of George Sampson

Mr England, the bass soloist, was another prominent musician of the time. You can read more about him in a previous blog post.

The choir, in its latest incarnation as The Queensland Choir, will sing in the first performance of the Messiah in the newly refurbished Brisbane City Hall on the 23rd of November. The Queensland Choir’s website has been archived in Pandora.

Simon Miller – Library Technician, State Library of Queensland

Bunnies not welcome! The valuable work of Queensland’s Rabbit Boards

Posted on 02 Apr 2013| by Simon Miller |

Chocolate bunnies may be permitted but the real thing has been banned in Queensland since the 1880s. At that time a great plague of rabbits was spreading over the country causing widespread devastation. The plague seems to have originated with a dozen or so wild European grey rabbits released in Victoria in 1859 to provide sport for game-shooting and coursing on the estates of wealthy squatters. As the rabbit menace edged closer to Queensland the State Government was called upon to act. Mr E. J. Stevens, Member for Warrego, introduced a Bill to Prevent the Introduction of Rabbits into the Colony of Queensland in August 1880 and A Bill to Prohibit the Keeping of Rabbits in the Colony of Queensland and to Authorise their Destruction was introduced in July 1885. The government also proposed to build a fence to keep the rabbits from crossing into Queensland from South Australia and New South Wales. This proposal did not meet with universal acclaim, however, work began on the fence in 1886.

Stevensons wire fence. State Library of Queensland. Negative number: 185963

Stevensons wire fence, cartoon from 1884

In 1891 the Rabbits Board Act established a number of boards charged with building and maintaining rabbit proof fences. Rabbit Boards were established in Warrego, Maranoa, Mitchell, Gregory North and Leichhardt in 1892 and the Darling Downs Rabbit Board was split off from the Maranoa Board in 1893. The library holds several publications on the work of the Rabbit Boards. The Maranoa Rabbit Board : a synopsis of its work from April, 1892, to June, 1897 by C. L. Morgan covers the early history of the Maranoa Board and Keeping rabbbits out : Darling Downs-Moreton Rabbit Board by Rae Pennycuick is a comprehensive history of the Darling Downs and Moreton Boards, which were combined in 1964. C. L. Morgan, Clerk of the Maranoa Rabbit Board also published The rabbit question in Queensland in 1898.

The rabbit question quotes a report from the Brisbane Courier describing the road from Broken Hill to Wilcannia to illustrate the need for action against the rabbit invasion.

Emptiness, loneliness, and desolation characterise this plain country. It is a manless land, and the tread of the rabbit has beaten the life out of it … the bleached bones of sheep are strewn along the road, marking the track of gaunt famine, and at every few yards there are deserted rabbit warrens. Bunny has eaten himself out of this land, but his tracks are painfully clear. Of herbage there is none; the salt bush has been eaten bare of leaves, and the sharp sunlight makes the clumps of dry sticks look quite grisly. The trees have been stripped of their bark, and they have withered and gradually died like one possessed of leprosy. About twelve months ago this plain was abundantly covered with grass and foliage. Then came grasshoppers and rabbits. It was a fight for food, and there were three claimants — the sheep, the grasshoppers, and the rabbits. Dainty little bunny ate out the grasshoppers and the sheep, cleared out all the grass, the trees, and the edible bushes, and marched on.

Much of the history in Keeping rabbits out revolves around somewhat dry details of finances, methods of construction and availability of materials, however the foreword, written by Geoff Smith, the then Minister for Lands, points out a more interesting story that is contained within the dry account.

“… it recounts a remarkable commitment by numerous men and their families to ‘keeping rabbits out’ of south-east Queensland. It provides an insight into the dedication and persistence of individuals and families who devoted their working lives to the Rabbit Boards. In many cases, sons or brothers followed relatives into the employ of the Boards, maintaining family involvements that spanned three generations. For many people the control of rabbits was a way of life.”

Rabbit fence party at the Queensland and New South Wales Border. Scenic Rim Regional Council libraries. Image number: ba0881

Building the fences was only the beginning of the process. Boundary riders had to be employed to continuously inspect the fences and repair any damage. Cottages were provided for the boundary riders and their families but these were very primitive and isolated.

Boundary rider George H Stewart was appointed in April 1899 to patrol the Cameronian section along the Gerries Range. In 1900, when the Chairman, Mr F. A. Gore, thought that the cottages at Brigalow, Rocky Creek and Cameronian should have ceilings in the main rooms, the Board supplied timber for the men to erect their own ceilings. Stewart was the only boundary rider willing to try to put the ceiling up. The others felt the job was beyond them and did not want to spoil the cottages or the timber.

… By 1907, Mr Stewart found it almost impossible to make ends meet on the boundary rider’s wages which were still £75 per annum, the same as when he first entered the service of the Board eight years previously. He had seven children. The cost of food had increased and when there were sickness expenses, it was ‘…struggle and pinch to pay up’. … The board decided to give boundary riders an increase of £10 per annum in their wages as from 1 June 1907. Mr G. H. Stewart remained with the Darling Downs Rabbit Board, having given 44 years of faithful service when he resigned from the employ of the Board in 1943.

Loneliness was also a problem. One boundary rider wrote that he wanted to leave the work at once because he could not stand being alone. However, so that it would not put the inspector to any bother, he arranged for his brother to take the work until a permanent boundary rider was appointed. He asked the inspector to visit his fence to see that he had it all in order and free from suckers.

As well as these many all but anonymous boundary riders, the Rabbit Board story involves some of the most prominent citizens of the day. The first chairman of the Darling Downs Rabbit Board was Mr G. G. Cory who held the post for a few months until the first election of Board members and later held the position of Chairman from 1904 until 1917 when he sold his property. Gilbert Gostwyck Cory came to Toowoomba from New South Wales at the age of 19. He obtained work with the Hon. James Taylor and was soon managing his Cecil Plains property on the Condamine. He took up a half share of a property on the Thompson River with his brother Henry and later had his own property on Cecil Plains which he named Vacy Plains which he developed into one of the best properties in the district. Cory was on the committee of the Royal Agricultural Society for 37 years. He was a founding member of the Toowoomba Turf Club and served on the Jondaryan Shire Council for 36 years and was Mayor of Toowoomba in 1891.

Gilbert Gostwyck Cory 1891

The first elected Chairman of the Board was Mr Frank A. Gore, who served as Chairman from 1894 until his resignation due to ill health in 1903. Frank Gore’s Yandilla estate is described in some detail in an article in the Brisbane Courier of 1889. The correspondent was obviously much impressed the the sophistication of the set up.

Yandilla is quite a little township; the several houses for employees, the store, workshops, numerous sheds, and the little church being sufficiently numerous to form a street. In one large machinery shed I noticed a first class thrashing machine, reapers, mowers, and other agricultural implements. There is an engine-house, and in it a 6-horse engine, driven by an 8-horse Cochrane boiler, its duty being to saw wood, cut chaff, and crush corn. … The little private workshop of Mr. F. A. Gore is a model of neatness, and is replete with every possible tool from the most complicated of lathes to the latest shape of gimlet or bradawl. Near adjoining this is the photographic studio, and the many beautiful views I was shown of neighbouring scenery, &c., proved that Mr. Gore is as much at home with the camera as with the scroll-saw, turning lathe, or at the carpenter’s bench. … All the gates on Yandilla, whether big or little, are strengthened by a diagonal iron-rod stay extending from the top of the heel post to the foot of the front head. I challenged this design as faulty, because there was no diagonal wooden strut from the foot of the heel-post to the top of the head front, but Mr. Gore defied me to find a single gate on the estate that had sagged in the slightest, and I must confess I could not, although I closely scanned every one I came across.

Gore family at Yandilla 1884

The work of the Darling Downs – Moreton Rabbit Board continues to this day. Their website has been archived in Pandora.

The Board’s role is to maintain the fence in rabbit-proof condition and to monitor compliance with the Land Protection (Pest and Stock Route Management) Act 2002. The board provides technical and other advice to landholders in the board operational area to assist with rabbit eradication. The board area is made up of 8 local authorities, and covers approximately 28,000 square kilometres (7 million acres). The board currently employs 17 staff and maintains 8 houses along the fence for the patrolmen and their families. Although most of the patrols are now done by motor vehicle or all terrain vehicles, some patrols must still be done on foot, due to the rugged nature of the terrain.

Rabbit gate at Stanthorpe Christmas 1934

There is an opportunity to explore aspects of pastoral life on the Darling Downs in our exhibition Grass Dukes and Shepherd Kings in the Philip Bacon Gallery until the 21st of April.

Simon Miller – Library Technician, State Library of Queensland

A Scotsman an Irishman and a Tasmanian set up shop

Posted on 26 Mar 2013| by Simon Miller |

It might sound like an old joke but this is really the story of a shopping revolution and how it played out in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley. By the 1890s, three men, James McWhirter (the Scotsman), Thomas Charles Beirne (the Irishman) and William James Overell (the Tasmanian), had all established their own drapers shops in Fortitude Valley. Over the next few decades they would transform these humble shops into modern department stores and make the Valley a shopping destination rivaling the Brisbane City centre.

William James Overell was the grandson of another William James Overell (1790-1866) who arrived in Hobart Town in 1821 as a free settler. At the age of 23 young William decided to pursue his fortune in the warmer climate of Queensland, travelling with some of his brothers and sisters in the Florence Irving and arriving in Brisbane in 1877. In 1883, after working for another company for a few years he established a business in partnership with Mr. T. White in Fortitude Valley. A few years later, a branch was opened in Queen Street, managed by William’s brother Joseph. The great flood of 1893 inundated the Queen Street store to a height of 11 feet and destroyed all of the stock. The city store was then sold to Joseph Overell.

Overell's Drapery Shop in Fortitude Valley, ca. 1900

William bought out his partner and purchased a block of land with frontage on Brunswick and Wickham Streets, although he was never able to buy the block on the corner which was occupied by the Bank of New South Wales. William Overell, trading as W.J. Overell & Sons, built a fine new shop on the land but in 1904 disaster struck again when the shop and all the stock was destroyed by fire, the complete destruction taking less than an hour. William Overell was not daunted by this loss and rebuilt the store, even adopting the phoenix as his new trademark to symbolize the business rising from the ashes. The new shop replaced the earlier gas lighting with electricity generated on the premises, the power also being used to drive two passenger lifts and a goods lift. Overell’s company also had branches in Charleville and Laidley and the Charleville branch had also been destroyed by fire and rebuilt. Another branch in Childers was also burned out.

Fire-damaged Overell's Department Store in Fortitude Valley, 1904

The library holds a family history publication Overell connections 1821-1987 which includes copies of many documents relating to William J. Overell, the business, and the Overell family. An article copied from the Methodist Leader of Christmas 1908 describes the setup of Overell’s new store.

The Wickham Street building is entirely devoted to men’s and boy’s clothing, shirts, hats, travelling goods, and men’s boots. On Brunswick Street ground floor is found manchester, dresses, ribbons, laces, gloves, hosiery and fancy goods departments. In the basement the ladies’ boot department occupies a large portion ; also furnishing department, where are to be found the finest assortment of floor coverings in Brisbane. Wickham Street basement is used for bedsteads, bedding, and heavy goods.

The kiosk is an ideal Turkish Open Summer House, supported by pillars, where ladies are supplied with tea and light refreshments without charge. All are welcome to morning, mid-day, and afternoon tea. Adjoining Kiosk is a grass lawn, with comfortable seats, where gentlemen are supplied with coffee, where they can rest and enjoy a smoke while their lady friends are shopping.

Thomas Charles Beirne was born in the village of Ballymacurley in Ireland in 1860 to a family of small farmers. The library holds his autobiography The Life story of Thomas Charles Beirne published in 1947. Thomas was apprenticed to a draper at the age of 14 and worked at various companies before making up his mind to go to Australia. He arrived in Melbourne in 1884 and took work as a junior salesman for Eyre & Sheppard and then worked for Foy & Gibson’s, then the biggest store in Melbourne. In 1885 he recieved an invitation from a former employer from Ireland, Mr Pigott, who wanted Beirne to join him as a partner in a new business in Brisbane. After a setback when Pigott’s proposed premises were no longer available, the firm of Pigott and Beirne opened in Stanley Street in 1889.

Thomas Charles Beirne, aged 24 years

The company of Pigott and Beirne also suffered an early disaster as the whole block containing their shop caught fire in January 1889. They started again and after 18 months Pigott bought out Beirne’s share of the partnership and he had to start again on his own. Thomas rented a small shop in a block owned by the Church of England and after a few months rented a second shop in the block and then a third. He wanted the owners to make alterations so the shops could be joined together but instead the Church treasurer offered to let him buy the whole block for £8000. In 1894 Thomas Beirne employed a new manager who would become a partner in the firm for a limited term. This was James McWhirter and Beirne became so confident of McWhirter’s management that he felt able to make a trip to London to set up a buying office. In 1898 McWhirter left the partnership and set up his own shop on the other side of the street. This was the beginning of an intense rivalry between the two companies, yet the McWhirter and Beirne families remained good friends.

Beirne's department store in Fortitude Valley. State Library of Queensland. Image number: APA-004-0001-0009

Beirne's department store in Fortitude Valley, ca. 1919

Thomas C. Beirne was not just a successful businessman, becoming one of the first millionaires in Australia, but also took on other responsibilities in public life. He was a member of Queensland’s Legislative Council from 1905 until the upper house was abolished in 1917. He served on several boards including the Brisbane Gas Co. and the AMP Society. From 1927 until 1940 he was Warden of the University of Queensland and donated £20,000 to establish a School of Law which was named after him.

Thomas Charles Beirne 1936. State Library of Queensland. Negative number: 194210

Thomas Charles Beirne 1936 by Noel Cournihan

When James McWhirter joined T.C. Beirne’s company it was on his second venture into business in Brisbane, having first arrived in 1880. He worked for D.L. Brown & Co. before setting up his own successful drapery business but then sold up and returned to Scotland. After ending his partnership with Beirne, McWhirter launched his own small business in Brunswick Street, employing around 30 people.

McWhirter & Son Drapery warehouse in Brunswick Street. State Library of Queensland. Negative number: 177780

McWhirter & Son Drapery warehouse in Brunswick Street, 1900

McWhirter's department store in Fortitude Valley, 1913

McWhirter soon expanded his business, buying adjoining properties and then in 1912 building a new five story building with all modern conveniences. All three of these companies developed thriving mail order businesses which were very profitable and also provided a valuable service to far flung parts of Queensland. McWhirter’s offered free shipping on drapery orders. The Library holds catalogues from McWhirter and Beirne as well as McWhirter’s shopping guides from the 1920s.

McWhirters shopping guide 1922

The competition between the three department stores led them to adopt all the latest trends in department store shopping, ensuring that ‘The Valley’ would be one of Brisbane’s prime shopping locations for many decades.

Phone orders section in T. C. Beirne's deparment store, 1952

Customers using the escalators at McWhirters store Brisbane 1950

The iconic art deco facade of McWhirter’s last big expansion was constructed in 1932 to a design by Hall & Phillips, who also designed Brisbane City Hall. By the 1970s all three department stores had been taken over by big southern companies. McWhirters was run by Myers, Beirnes became David Jones and Overell’s store was run by Waltons and by the end of the 1980s the rise of the big suburban shopping malls had led to the inevitable decline of Fortitude Valley as a major shopping hub. McWhirter’s heritage listed building was refitted as McWhirters Markets and the Beirnes building has also been refurbished and re-purposed, now just called TCB.

Facade of McWhirters' department store in Fortitude Valley. State Library of Queensland. Image number: 6668-0001-0012

Facade of McWhirters' department store in Fortitude Valley, ca. 1960

Simon Miller – Library Technician, State Library of Queensland

Recreating the Brisbane Band of 1857

Posted on 12 Mar 2013| by Simon Miller |

BRISBANE BAND.

THE public are respectfully informed that the arrangements for giving regular performances have now been completed, and that the FIRST PERFORMANCE OF THE BRISBANE BAND will take place in the Botanic Gardens, on MONDAY AFTERNOON, at four o’clock, and terminate at six. The second performance will take place on SATURDAY AFTERNOON, at the same hour. The performances will be repeated every MONDAY and SATURDAY, from 4 to 6 o’clock.

In announcing their programme they hope to have the attendance of all who can make it convenient to attend.

The Instruments consist of a Clarinet, Cornet, Sextuba and Trombone.

PROGRAMME:

1. Grand March-Annie Laurie .. BOSSINI.

2. Aria from Romeo and Juliet…. BELLINI.

3. Carlslust Polka…. KESSLER.

4. Cavitina from Anna Pollena …. DONIZETTIE.

5. Faust Waltz…. D’ALBERT.

6. Cavitina from Attilla….VERDY.

7. Como Quadrille…. D’ALBERT.

8 Cavitina from Robert Diavolo .. MEYERBEER.

9. Victory Galop…..TINNY.

10. French and English Alliance National Air….H. RUSSEL.

11. God Save the Queen.

ADMISSION FREE.

ANDREW SEAL.

AUGUSTE SEAL.

F. CRAMER.

G. CRAMER.

September 19, 1857.

South Brisbane in the 1860's, with part of Botanic Gardens in foreground

To coincide with the opening of the State Library’s exhibition Live! Queensland band culture we were inspired to attempt to recreate this concert advertised in the Moreton Bay Courier in 1857. Before embarking on a library career, I was a musician in the Australian Army, and continue to play in bands and orchestras around Brisbane. I was approached to arrange the music for the concert and have taken on the project with great enthusiasm.

This concert was the first in a series organised by Mr. R.R. Mackenzie (later Sir Robert Mackenzie, first Colonial Treasurer of Queensland and later Premier). He had found a group of German professional musicians working in Sydney. Andrew Seal (born Andreas Siegel) and his older brother Auguste were born in Wiesbaden, the sons of a prominent bandmaster, who evidently trained them well. At the age of 14 Andrew Seal went to London where he obtained work in the orchestra of the Princess Theatre. Here he caught the attention of the great tragic actor G.V. Brooke who was planning a tour of Australia. Brooke persuaded Andrew Seal to accompany him along with his brother and the four Cramer brothers, also German musicians.

Robert Ramsay MacKenzie

Mackenzie engaged the Seal brothers and two of the Cramers to come to Brisbane for a series of concerts to be paid for by subscription. After the early success of the concerts Mackenzie induced the musicians to stay in Queensland and found work for them. Frederick (or Ferdinand) Cramer, the clarinet player, moved to Ipswich and took up work on the railways. He married and had nine children, as well as conducting the Ipswich Volunteer Band.

His brother Ernest was evidently a fine flute player, but all these musicians were versatile and played a number of instruments. Ernest seems to have eventually returned to Sydney. A notice in the Sydney Morning Herald of January 1913 gives us some information about him.

Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Cramer, of Park road, Camperdown, celebrate their golden wedding to-day. Mr. Cramer was formerly a bands-man aboard the London, during the Crimean War. He took part in the bombardment of Sevastopol, and met Florence Nightingale at Scutari.

Auguste Seal was the older Seal brother but deferred to his younger sibling’s leadership in the band. Auguste often played the double bass in orchestras around Brisbane when he wasn’t playing the trombone with his brother. He is described in one account as a very timid man although there is a court report from 1858 in which both the Seal brothers “were admonished and discharged for using threatening language.”

Andrew Seal was the leader of the group, played the cornet, and also arranged all of the music. He too was a versatile musician, playing violin and viola as well as the cornet and other brass instruments. He became a prominent figure in Brisbane’s musical scene, opening a music shop in Queen Street, teaching extensively, and forming and conducting bands, both military and civilian. Professor Seal, as he became universally known, could justifiably be called the father of band music in Queensland as described in his obituary in 1904.

Of Mr Seal it might have been truly said that he was the father of Queensland brass bands, for most of the local bandsmen have either received some of their training at his hands, or from pupils whom he has tutored. … A man of much talent and activity, the late bandmaster found time, besides performing his duties as conductor, to compose several pieces of music. He was of a generous nature, and he has been a favourite with those with whom he has been associated during his forty-five years in Queensland.

His funeral, described in the Brisbane Courier, was very well attended with many “prominent musicians of the city” being present. The funeral procession “was headed by the Police Band playing the” Dead March” in ” Saul.” During the procession to the Toowong Cemetery a massed band of musicians from the various civil and military bands played Beethoven’s ” Funeral March.”

Professor Seal 1890s. Royal Queensland Historical Society.

Professor Seal in the 1890s.

In reproducing the concert the first puzzle to be solved was in the instrumentation. The clarinet, cornet and trombone are clear enough and those instruments remain little changed since the mid-19^th century. The ‘sextuba’ was a mystery that was only partially resolved by realising that the name had been misspelled and should have been ‘saxtuba’.

The saxtubas were a whole family of instruments invented by that most creative instrument maker Adolf Sax. Sax was a Belgian instrument maker, living in Paris, whose inventive brain came up with the saxophone and the saxhorns, which in a more modern form make up the bulk of brass bands. Both of these instruments were made in families of seven or eight different sized instruments ranging from sopranino to contrabass. This was also the case with the saxtubas, an experimental design that never really took off.

Their design was based on the shape of ancient Roman instruments, the cornu and tuba. They had a curving shape with bells facing forwards over the players shoulder. Although Sax first came up with the design for the instruments in 1845 he doesn’t seem to have built any until 1852 when they first appeared in an opera ‘The Wandering Jew’ by Fromental Halevy. The opera was not a success and when it disappeared it seams that the saxtubas largely vanished as well. It is a mystery how an obscure instrument, first made only five years earlier for an opera in Paris, turned up in the hands of a German musician in Brisbane in 1857.

Saxtuba in E-flat

One practical difficulty for us is that there are only a very few saxtubas left in the world hidden away in various museums. Another difficulty is that there is no indication of which of the family of instruments, that were made in at least eight different sizes, was the one employed. My solution was to substitute an instrument that is known in England as the tenor horn and in Europe and America as the alto horn or Althorn. This is a member of the saxhorn family and its range, between that of the cornet and trombone, would balance the ensemble and match the position that it is listed in the advertisement. This also had the advantage that I could play the tenor horn part myself.

Having settled the instrumentation it was then necessary to find the music from the original program. We are fortunate that the Royal Queensland Historical Society is in possession of original part books hand written by Professor Seal for a larger ensemble of eight instruments dating from only a few years after this first concert and including the four operatic selections from the original concert. I was able to transcribe the parts into a full score in a music notation program and then, based on the score, arrange the music for the smaller group.

Professor Seal's part books

This left a variety of marches and dances to be located. The Faust waltz was discovered in a version for piano and the Como Quadrille was eventually found at the National Library in a version for cornet and piano. The Grand March Annie Laurie by ‘Bossini’ we were not able to find, but we did come across another Annie Laurie March for piano of the same period which I have arranged for the concert. The Victory Galop of Tinny was not found but I did discover a copy of the Overland Mail Galop by Charles D’Albert which featured in the second concert program of the Band performed on September 26^th 1857 which serves as a reasonable substitute. The Carlslust Polka by Kessler has proved elusive and I have substituted the Clarinet Polka which, although probably not composed as early as 1857, is a great favourite of German bands everywhere. God Save the Queen was not difficult to find but the French and English Alliance National Air is one that we have been able to discover nothing about.

Brass band outside the conservatory in the Brisbane Botanic Gardens, Queensland, ca. 1885

This photograph is one of the earliest we have of a band in Brisbane. The burly cornet player on the left, holding a conductor’s baton is certainly not Professor Seal who was a very small, dapper gentleman. Could the clarinet player, 3rd from the left be Frederick Cramer, who was described at the time of the first band concert as a muscular chap around six feet tall? What of those curling instruments on the right? Are they various sizes of saxtuba? There were a number of bands active in the 1880s including Professor Seal’s Young Australia Band, which gave performances in the Botanic Gardens, but we don’t know if this photo depicts them or another band.

Musicians of the recreated Brisbane Band 2013

The Brisbane Band 1857 recreation concert Brass on the Grass will take place at the Brisbane Botanic Gardens on Sunday 28th of April 2013 at 3:00 pm. The Brisbane Band 1857 performance will be followed by the Brisbane City Big Band which is a subgroup of the Brisbane City Concert Band, the oldest continuously established band in Brisbane. There will also be a preview concert as part of the State Library’s Tea and Music series on Tuesday 19th of March at 10:30 am at the State Library. This concert will feature music from the first concert together with information and anecdotes.

Simon Miller – Library Technician, State Library of Queensland

The empty North : 100 years of schemes for Northern Australia

Posted on 21 Feb 2013| by Simon Miller |

In recent weeks two leaked discussion papers from the Federal Coalition have, not for the first time, attempted to shift the nation’s focus on to the northern parts of the country. The first discussion paper Developing Northern Australia : a 2030 vision begins with this statement.

Northern Australia, the parts of Australia north of the Tropic of Capricorn and spanning Western Australia, Northern Territory, and Queensland, is often regarded as Australia’s ‘last frontier’. It has historically remained underutilised relative to the rest of the country. However, it is well acknowledged that this region has tremendous potential and competitive advantages through its significant natural, geographical, strategic and other attributes.

The second draft discussion paper, on water management, apparently reiterates this focus on the north, the Courier-Mail reporting “The majority of the dams would be in northern Australia, where they would be used to irrigate arid zones for agriculture and more than double Australia’s food production.”

View of Flinders Plains from the top of Mt. Walker

The question of what to do with northern Australia is hardly a new one. In 1907 a paper was presented to the Royal Geographical Society by the Right Reverend Gilbert White, Bishop of Carpentaria, entitled Some problems of northern Australia. Bishop White sums up the problem in this paragraph.

Now few persons will, I suppose, be inclined to deny that the unpeopled and unknown condition of most of the far north is an acute danger to Australia. While much of the land is barren and useless, there are great areas of good and fertile land, of which we are making no use whatever, and which are a standing temptation to anxious foreign countries who do not know what to do with their surplus population. Japan and China are close at hand, and who knows how soon China may become as formidable as Japan? Germany believes that her future lies in a colonial Empire. Personally, I believe that no greater danger threatens Australia than this empty and unprotected state of the north.

Right Reverend Gilbert White

The chief problem in settling these apparently vulnerable northern regions was seen as the tropical climate. Bishop White asks Can the white man live and work in the far north, and can he bring up there children who are healthy, and fit to become parents in their turn?. Matthew Macfie explores this question in more detail in another paper presented to the Royal Geographical Society a few years later, Are the laws of nature transgressed or obeyed by the continuous labour of white men in the Australian tropics?

The white population as might be expected, in these regions has long been stationary, with a marked tendency to decline. It is this class who are constantly leaving our excessively hot latitudes after discovering the incompatibility of these regions with the health and available vigor of those who hail from an ancestry indigenous to the the temperate zone. Even on the erroneous assumption that an actual rush of European whites to tropical climes was in progress, the fact remains that only an insignificant proportion of the inexperienced white immigrants, up to their arrival in North Australia, ever considered the question of the unfavourable relation of a tropical climate to their physical racial characteristics. Sooner or later, however, the discovery is made by them, and is necessarily followed by a continuous emigration from tropical North Australia of the majority of white immigrants who arrive there in ignorance of the science of climatology, and who feel compelled to retire from tropical labours when they learn by painful experience that if they persist in their dangerous indiscretion the end must be a premature grave.

Drover's camp at Hughenden, ca. 1916

Apart from these questions of racial suitability the most serious problem with northern development was recognized as the distribution of rainfall. Bishop White summarizes the problem. The first and most salient characteristic of Northern Australia is that, while the rainfall is large, increasing in volume as we go north, it nearly all falls between the 1st of January and the 31st of March, the rest of the year being for practical purposes rainless.

In the 1930s prolific author Ion Idriess and engineer Dr. J.J.C. Bradfield both proposed schemes to divert water from north Queensland’s coastal rivers into inland rivers to provide water to the parched interior. Idriess plan was published in his book The great boomerang in 1941 but he had been writing articles in the press since the mid 1930s. He makes the plan sound simple in this passage from the book.

We must lift or divert the floodwaters from the eastern Queensland coast and drop them back over the ranges into the headwater channels of the inland rivers: the Cooper and Diamantina in particular, the Georgina as the Plan develops, and later the Bulloo, Paroo, and Warrego. We must divert the headwaters of the northern rivers which flow into the Gulf of Carpentaria and, by means of channel, cutting, or tunnel, lead them back into the head channels of the Diamantina and Georgina.

Nature will attend to the rest, for she dug the channels long ago; she will carry that water right down through Queensland, then through South Australia almost to the coast. … It is obvious, then, that if water in sufficient quantity is dropped where we stood it must flow down those old rivers and be carried to Lake Eyre and far beyond. It will only remain for us to clean out a few channels that are blocked, to build dams for storage, and to divert the irrigation water as the different localities need it.

Idriess’ plan is very much a big picture scheme with little detail about how it might actually be achieved although he does write with the benefit of much experience travelling in the areas he is talking about. Bradfield’s scheme, first proposed in 1938, is less broad in scope but much more specific in detail. It also has the advantage of being proposed by an accomplished civil engineer, the man who designed the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Brisbane’s Story Bridge. The scheme is outlined in Utilizing Queensland’s coastal floodwaters in the Central and Western Districts, an article that is included as an appendix in The battle for the inland : the case for the Bradfield and Idriess plans by F.R.V. Timbury, published in 1944.

J. J. C. Bradfield and his wife at an engineering conference in Brisbane, 1933

Within an area of about 17,000 square miles, the headwaters of the Tully, the Herbert, the Burdekin and the Clarke rivers have their origin, also the headwaters of the Flinders River on the other side of the Divide. In this region the Storm King holds sway, flooding these coastal-flowing rivers with heavy monsoonal rains as the clouds drift in from the ocean and break with fair regularity against the main divide and the subsidiary ranges. It is possible to combine and store their flood flows in one or more reservoirs from which a permanent stream can be fed to traverse Queensland from near Hughenden to Windorah and the Queensland border, passing near Longreach and Winton.

Dam under construction on the Tully River at Koombooloomba, ca. 1955

Bradfield’s scheme attracted substantial interest but details of the plan later proved to be based on faulty data. Bradfield had intended that gravity flow alone would take the water to its intended destination via a system of holding dams and channels but improved topological data have shown that this would not be possible. Bradfield’s estimates of water flow in the rivers has also been shown to be optimistic. Interest in the proposal has been revived periodically and in 1981 The Revised Bradfield Scheme was proposed by colourful MP for Kennedy, Bob Katter. In 1982 a preliminary study of the Bradfield concept was undertaken by Cameron McNamara for the Queensland Co-Ordinator General. This study found “… that a modified version of the Bradfield Scheme is physically possible. However, the quantities of water available and land that could be irrigated, although still large, are much less than in Bradfield’s original forecast of 1938.” The report concludes “Bradfield’s central concept of interbasin transfer of water for the benefit of arid inland areas is physically possible but only tenable if high costs are acceptable.”

In the 1960s the cause of northern development was taken up by the People the North Committee. The Committee was established in 1961 as an initiative of the North Queensland Local Government Association. The aim of the Committee was “to press for the immediate development of Australia’s open North … by stirring up nation-wide interest in the North and its vast agricultural, mineral and industrial potential, and alerting the nation to the dangers of continued neglect of the North.” They hoped “to see the population of the North increase from its present 350,000 to 1,000,000 by 1973 … by getting the Federal Government to set up a Northern Development Corporation to develop, industrialise and settle the North as a matter of urgency.”

The Committee’s efforts culminated in a conference North Australia Development held in Sydney in February 1966. Among the speakers were The Hon. D. E. Fairbairn, Minister for National Development and The Hon. E. G. Whitlam, Deputy Leader of the Opposition, who took time off from election campaigning to address the conference, as well as scientists, economists and engineers. Professor C. H. Munro addressed the conference on Harnessing the North’s water resources.

People the North Committee ephemera

The State Library holds a collection of ephemera relating to the People the North Committee

Interest in northern development has continued into the 21st century. In 2008 members of the Tropical Savannas Cooperative Research Centre produced a paper called Future options for north Australia looking at the major drivers that will shape the north in the future in population, social function, property rights, Commonwealth policy, the global economy, resource use, oil futures, climate change, invasive organisms, and technological innovation. They then describe seven possible futures for the north: chronic underdevelopment, degeneration, a northern ricebowl, an industrial powerhouse, environment first, an Indigenous community Utopia, and dynamic urbanisation. The authors believe that critical decisions made now will determine the possibility of realisation of some of these scenarios.

Like people everywhere, residents of north Australia must adjust to the effects of many forces that are outside their control but which will shape their lives in fundamental ways. Nevertheless and understanding of both the constraints and opportunities can empower them by helping to direct their efforts to areas of greatest importance to them and where they can have the greatest impact. Perhaps the most wonderful feature of life in the Australian tropics is that there are opportunities for leadership towards a future that satisfies many needs. A vision expressed may be realised, but a vision suppressed will never have a history.

Will the next decades see the realisation of dreams for the north expressed over many years or will the problem of the empty north remain a thorn in the national consciousness to periodically surface with demands for action that ultimately remain unrealised?

Simon Miller – Library Technician, State Library of Queensland

Nauru : Pleasant Island to Pacific Solution

Posted on 22 Jan 2013| by Simon Miller |

Nauru is a small isolated island 3000 km North East of Queensland past Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. With an area of just 21 square kilometres it is the world’s smallest republic. Recently in the news for its role in the Australian government’s ‘Pacific solution’ for refugee processing, Nauru’s importance to Australia goes back much further.

Nauru satellite 2011 Courtesy: U.S. Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program.

Nauru satellite photo 2011

The island prior to European discovery was inhabited by around 1500 Micronesian people with a distinct language and culture due to their isolation from other islands. The people were organised in 12 matrilineal clans. The island is surrounded by a reef which drops off to very deep water on the outside. The main features of the island were a fertile zone around the perimeter of the island dominated by coconut trees where all the inhabitants lived. There was a brackish lagoon fed by seepage from the ocean where the Naruans raised fish collected from the reef in palm frond enclosures. The island has a central plateau rising to 71 metres where the Naruans cultivated pandanus. Nobody lived on the plateau except during the pandanus harvest which was marked with festivities. Nauru has a tropical climate marked by very variable rainfall. Prolonged drought periods could lead to starvation. Strong ocean currents made it dangerous to venture far on the open sea and use of canoes was restricted to fishing around the reef.

Nauru was late in coming to the notice of European explorers, the first reported visit being from British merchant captain John Fearn in the ship Hunter who named it Pleasant Island. He did not land but received gifts of coconuts and fruit from the natives, who came out in canoes through the surf. The island received few visits, owing to its isolation, until the 1830s, when whaling ships began to call looking for provisions. Some European ‘beachcombers’ came to live on the island. These were mainly escaped convicts and other undesirable characters who stirred up trouble between the clans and who’s introduction of alcohol and firearms led to a chaotic civil war that afflicted Nauru from 1878 until 1888.

In 1888 Nauru was annexed by the German Empire. The German administration sent a warship, the SMS Eber, to raise the German flag and confiscate all the firearms on the island. Some 765 firearms were handed in and more than 1000 rounds of ammunition. The Nauruans were evidently sick of the fighting and glad to get rid of their guns as long as everyone else did. The Germans banned the sale of firearms and alcohol. This was a blow for the traders on the island who made a living exchanging copra from Nauru’s extensive coconut groves for guns, alcohol and tobacco. Germany was only established as a single nation in 1871 and their Chancellor, Prince Otto von Bismarck, set out to establish Germany as an imperial power by gathering colonies in those areas not already claimed by other European nations. An agreement with Britain saw the two empires divide the Western Pacific between them, the Germans taking the Caroline and Marshall Islands as well as northern New Guinea, New Britain and Bougainville. Nauru was on the German side of the border and its nearest neighbour, Ocean Island (Banaba) 300 km to the east, went to Britain.

Nauru’s future was changed dramatically in 1899 when an odd rock, collected on Nauru as a souvenir and being used as a doorstop at the Sydney offices of the Pacific Islands Company, drew the attention of Albert F. Ellis, known as Bertie. Ellis was a New Zealander and a relative of John Arundel, the English founder of the Pacific Islands Company. The Company, among other interests, was in the fertilizer business and Ellis was employed as a prospector, analyst and island supervisor digging up phosphate rich deposits of guano (ancient deposits of bird droppings) on islands around the Pacific. The door stop at the company office was believed to be petrified wood but Ellis thought it looked like phosphate rock that he had seen and had a sample analysed. Everyone was astonished when it proved to be 78 % phosphate, much richer than the deposits they had been working.

At this time the fertilizer trade was undergoing a revolution. Agricultural chemists had discovered the importance of phosphorus in ecological systems and the value of soluble phosphate in unlocking plant nutrients lying dormant in the soil. This led to the development of a fertilizer industry based on the treatment of phosphate rock with sulfuric acid. In Australia’s phosphate poor soils in particular the introduction of superphosphate would underpin the development of large scale agriculture, particularly of wheat growing.

Harvesting wheat with a McComick International harvester in Dalby Queensland 1947

Ellis was sent off to do some discrete prospecting on Nauru and nearby Ocean Island which was geographically similar, so might also have significant deposits. The situation was delicate as Ocean Island, while nominally British, had not been officially annexed and Nauru being a German territory would require difficult negotiations between with the British and German authorities. It would be important to establish the extent of the phosphate deposits without giving away their value to the Germans. Ellis found rich deposits of phosphate rock on both Ocean Island and Nauru in amounts estimated at tens of millions of tons.

On Ocean Island Ellis negotiated an ‘agreement’ with the natives giving the Pacific Islands Company exclusive rights to mine all the rock and alluvial phosphate on the island for a period of 999 years. The natives were to be paid fifty pounds per annum or trade to that value. The situation on Nauru required slow and difficult negotiations led by the Company’s Chairman in London, Lord Stanmore. The Company was eventually reconstituted as the Pacific Phosphate Company with some German representation on the board with an agreement meaning that mining could commence in 1907 at Nauru. The native Naruans were not consulted but would be allowed a small royalty of a half-penny a ton on phosphates exported.

Phosphate mining on Nauru was labour intensive as the phosphate rock lay between pinnacles of limestone and had to be chipped out and hauled to the surface before being carted on tramlines to the coast. Large numbers of labourers were brought in from surrounding island groups and Chinese labour was also used. The land of the plateau was stripped of its vegetation and topsoil. Trees were valued, paid for , cut down and burnt. The viable phosphate was then gouged from between the hard coral pinnacles, leaving a waste land.

Phosphate field in process of working on Nauru, ca. 1942

World War One led to the Germans losing their Pacific territories. The fate of Nauru was the subject of intense political maneuvering by Australia and New Zealand over who would control the phosphate that the farmers of both countries depended on. Eventually it was decided that the island would be run for the British Empire by a Commission with British, Australian and New Zealand Commissioners, who would buy out the assets of the Pacific Islands Company. Billy Hughes, the Australian Prime Minister, had lobbied strongly for Australia to have sole possession of Nauru but New Zealand were not about to let Australia have all that phosphate without a fight and Hughes had to agree to the joint Commission but secured administrative control for Australia.

Mining continued until World War Two caused a halt. In 1942 the loading facilities were bombarded by the German ship Komet. Most of the foreign workers and all but a skeleton staff were evacuated and the Japanese occupied the island. The five Europeans who had stayed behind, including the Administrator, Colonel Chalmers, were executed. The Naruans were forced to work constructing an airfield and 1200 were deported to the Japanese naval headquarters at Truk Island. Only 732 survived to be repatriated after the war. The 49 inmates of the leprosy station were put in an old boat which was towed off the coast and sunk.

Smoke from burning oil tanks on Nauru, ca. 1942

After the war the United Nations established a trusteeship to govern Nauru with Australia, New Zealand and Great Britain as trustees. The business of the Phosphate Commission would continue and Australian and New Zealand farmers would continue to be supplied with cheap superphosphate. This arrangement continued until 1968 when Nauru was granted independence. Little was done to prepare the Nauruans for independence. The Phosphate Commissioners and the Australian authorities were certain that the Nauruans would agree to be resettled on another island or in Australia. The Banabans from Ocean Island had been resettled on Rabi Island in Fiji. Most of the people had been deported by the Japanese during the occupation to Nauru and other islands and their home had been devastated by mining, drought and war. Most Banabans continue to live on Rabi Island but some hundreds have returned to Banaba. The indigenous Fijian community that formerly lived on Rabi was moved to Taveuni after the island was purchased by the Banabans. Bananba and Rabi Islands are in a politically complicated position. Although the Banabans on Rabi are citizens of Fiji, the Rabi Islanders still hold Kiribati passports, remain the legal landowners of Banaba, and send one representative to the Kiribati parliament, and the Rabi Council municipally administers their original homeland of Banaba which is part of Kiribati.

The Nauruans had no intention of being resettled, however. They were determined to assert their ownership of Nauru and the valuable phosphates that covered it. In 1967, the people of Nauru purchased the assets of the British Phosphate Commissioners, and in June 1970 control passed to the locally owned Nauru Phosphate Corporation. Nauru became self-governing in January 1966, and following a two-year constitutional convention it became independent in 1968 under founding president Hammer DeRoburt.

The people of Nauru had been poorly prepared for self government by their Australian, New Zealand and British trustees who had been much more concerned with maintaining supplies of cheap fertilizer for their farmers than the long term welfare of the Nauruan people. The Nauruans were particularly vulnerable in dealing with the financial management of the wealth generated from phosphate mining. During the 1970s Nauru had the highest per capita income in the world but the Nauruans were repeatedly cheated and badly advised and much of the money that should have ensured their welfare after the phosphate ran out has been lost. During the 1990s the Nauruan government tried to set the island up as a tax haven to generate an alternative source of income but Nauru became identified as a hot spot for money laundering and sanctions from the international banking community forced them to abandon their efforts.

Nauru’s main phosphate deposits were exhausted in 2002 and although there may be secondary deposits of up to 20 million tonnes, the viability of mining these deposits depends on the highly volatile market for phosphates. 80% of the island’s surface area has been stripped and is unusable for agriculture or housing. After a legal settlement the Australian government agreed to provide $100 million towards rehabilitation of the island’s environment. Nauru has no significant tourist industry and little in the way of fishing industry or food production. It is dependent on a desalination plant for nearly all of its fresh water needs. Nauru does derive significant income from issuing fishing licences to foreign fishing vessels but is heavily dependent on aid. The unemployment rate in Nauru is close to 90% and the Nauruan people have significant health problems with very high rates of obesity due to their diet of imported, processed food with corresponding high rates of diabetes and heart disease.

Worked out phosphate fields leaving coral pinnacles on Nauru, ca. 1942

In 2001, the MV Tampa, a Norwegian ship that had rescued 438 refugees from a stranded 20-metre-long boat and was seeking to dock in Australia, was diverted to Nauru as part of the Pacific Solution. Nauru operated a detention centre for these refugees in exchange for Australian aid. By November 2005, only two refugees remained on Nauru from those first sent there in 2001. The Australian government sent further groups of asylum-seekers to Nauru in late 2006 and early 2007. The refugee centre was closed in 2008. In August 2012 the Australian government re-adopted the Pacific Solution and has since re-opened the refugee centre in Nauru.

The John Oxley Library collections are focused on Queensland but the Content Strategy also allows for collection of material about the areas contiguous to Queensland that are relevant to Queensland’s development including Papua New Guinea and the Pacific islands. The State Library holds significant resources relating to Nauru:

Ocean Island and Nauru : their story by Albert F. Ellis. The story of the discovery of phosphate on Ocean Island and Nauru written by New Zealander Albert Ellis who made the initial phosphate discoveries and was later the Phosphate Commissioner for New Zealand. Published in 1935.

Island exiles by Jemima Garrett, former ABC South Pacific correspondent. The story of Nauru under Japanese occupation 1942-1945 based on interviews with 14 Nauruans as well as diaries and accounts from the time.

Nauru 1888-1900 by Wilhelm Fabricius. An account of the German colonial period of Nauru’s history based on transcriptions of original documents. In German and English.

The Phosphateers : a history of The British Phosphate Commissioners and the Christmas Island Phosphate Commission. An in depth record of the work of the Phosphate Commissioners over a period of sixty years.

Paradise for sale : a parable of nature by Carl N. McDaniel and John M. Gowdy. A study of Nauru’s history as a microcosm of the problems arising from the human relationship with nature.

Phosphate, wealth & health in Nauru : a study of lifestyle change by Helen J. Rubinstein and Paul Zimmet. A study of the effects of Nauru’s history on the health of the Nauruan population.

The library also holds an album of photographs taken during World War II.

Australian soldiers carrying out a gun emplacement on Nauru, ca. 1942

Simon Miller – Library Technician, State Library of Queensland

Blue coast caravan : Queensland road trip 1930s style

Posted on 13 Dec 2012| by Simon Miller |

Summer holidays are upon us and many will be taking to the roads. No doubt many will complain about the state of the roads, particularly the Bruce Highway that snakes along the Queensland coast from Brisbane to Cairns, but what was that journey like in the 1930s? Fortunately we have an account of just such a journey. Two men and their wives set out to drive from Sydney to Cairns in a car towing a trailer full of camping gear. The book that resulted from this adventure was Blue coast caravan by Frank Dalby Davison and Brooke Nicholls, published in 1935.

Road dental clinic vehicles preparing for a muddy crossing over boggy land, outback Queensland, ca. 1928 State Library of Queensland Negative number: 90045

Perhaps a similar car and trailer setup brought the travellers north. This one belongs to the Road dental clinic.

Frank Dalby Davison was in his late 30s when they set off. He had already seen quite a lot of the world, having moved the the USA at 16 with his family and served with the British cavalry in WWI. He spent four tough years farming in southern Queensland with his wife and young family before being driven by drought to retreat to his father’s real estate business in Sydney. Frank had several novels to his credit, one of which, Man-shy, the story of a wild red heifer, had won the Australian Literature Society Medal. Frank did most of the writing work on the book.

Frank Dalby Davison

Dr. E. Brooke Davison had trained as a dentist and did original work in dental anatomy but gave up dentistry for natural history writing. He was a pioneering wildlife cinematographer and two of his films, The Living Heart of Australia and Great Barrier Coral Reef were shown commercially in 1923. Davison, refered to as ‘The Doctor’ in the book, was a director of the Melbourne Zoo and a founder of the Gould League of Victoria. He was in his late fifties at the time of the trip and died only a few years afterwards, in 1937. Frank’s wife, Kay and Brooke’s wife, Barbara play only supporting roles in the book and we don’t know what they thought about the adventure.

We will skip over the initial chapters covering the journey through New South Wales towards the Queensland border including an accident caused by a broken trailer axle and delays due to flooding. Sadly for those car enthusiasts who might wish details of the vehicle employed for this adventure, the authors have given us no information at all and there are no illustrations. We join the adventurers as they reach the Queensland border.

Skirting the hill we came to Tweed Heads. Tweed Heads is, we believe, considered a beauty spot. It may have been ; but humanity has settled there – and that is hard on any place of beauty. There is a scattering of houses whose individual ugliness is relieved – or intensified, according to how one views the matter – by scraps of wooden lace and similar attempts at the adornment of their facades. No doubt there is much natural beauty yet remaining in the vicinity, but to appreciate it the observer would need to occupy a position free from the evidence of human presence.

The crossing of the border is effected by passing through a gateway in a wire fence. We were impressed by the unimpressiveness of our entry in Queensland. We hadn’t expected to pass under a series of lofty arches, but a few slack wires and an open gate seemed rather trivial. Why have them? Why have anything? One of us suggested that the purpose of the fence and gate was to keep Queensland cattle-ticks out of New South Wales ; but the rest could not imagine an enterprising tick being held up by a wire fence. At any rate, we gave a hopeful cheer as the car rolled over the bumps between the gate-posts – a proceeding that caused the gate-keeper to eye us askance.

Border between New South Wales and Queensland, looking east to the coast

Coolangatta is a wide and wind-ridden town just across the border. It offers no attraction to the traveller and none, as far as we could see, to the permanent resident. It is a watering-place. At first sight the visitor gets the impression that the houses are all two-storied. This is owing to the Queensland custom of building dwellings on stumps six or seven feet high.

It was curious to notice that a political division such as the state border should mark the bounds of a custom in house construction. Approaching the border from the New South Wales side we had not seen half a dozen houses built on tall stumps, but as soon as the boundary was passed, it became the exception to see a house built close to the ground.

The season of our passing was in the last days of May, and people in the town were returning from the beach wearing large straw sun-hats and carrying brightly-coloured beach towels.

You might think that their assessment sounds a bit harsh, but it is typical of their descriptions of towns and houses. They reserve their admiration for the unspoilt natural environment and disparage nearly all the works of man. There are few towns that escape a scathing assessment. The travellers stayed for a week in Brisbane, at Kangaroo Point.

Brisbane proper is a pocket-edition city. Nothing has been left out. It is not abridged, nor, we suspect, from what we observed is it expurgated. In the height of its buildings, the congestion of its foot-paths, its briskness, self-absorption, and sophistication, it is every inch a city. But its inches are not many. Whether you take a conveyance or walk, you are continually surprising yourself by coming to the end of it.

Brisbane generally gets a good report, particularly the trees adorning the city, but we skip most of that and get back on the open road.

Queensland’s roads are dreadful. This is not a complaint, merely a statement of fact. The northern State is large and sparsely populated. If the condition of her highways is good enough for her own haulage requirements she is under no obligation to put down concrete for the pleasure of southern motorists.

She doesn’t! Brisbane puts a tar macadam highway under the wheels of the north-bound traveller for about thirty miles and then abruptly leaves him to his own devices. From then onward the main coast road is not much more that a bush track in bad condition ; in many places it is a bush track. At long distances apart horse-drawn scrapers are met with, and, at equally long distances, groups of three of four men working with picks and shovels. But the miles are many and the workers are few. The man in ancient legend, whose task it was to push a boulder up a hill as often as it rolled down, had little to do compared with the road repair gangs of Queensland.

On the slopes, the metal, if there is any, is loose and scored by wash-outs. On the level stretches the road is made of stiff mud rutted axle-deep. The ruts are water-logged, and if a vehicle has recently preceded the traveller the sides of the ruts will be coated with slush as slippery as butter. The cautious driver creeps along in second gear, straddling the ruts and praying for his differential case should the car side-slip. The depressions between the hills are pitted with water-filled holes, many of which are shaped exactly to fit a car wheel as high as the hub. In front of these the driver comes to a dead stop, then lowers the car into them. In many places ruts and water-holes exist together, making avoidance by steering an impossibility. Here the driver crawls along at about two miles per hour, his car lurching and rolling like a ship in a storm. Care for the trailer, if there is one, is out of the question ; at best, hopes for its survival may be entertained.

Back-seat passengers are shaken about in a manner that may be good for their health but does not make for their comfort. Although Frank and the Doctor drove with all possible care, Barbara and Kay were not without bruises before the first day’s run was over. About seven miles per hour [11 kph] was our average speed. Where we could travel as fast as fifteen miles an hour [24 kph] the drivers blew out their cheeks and revelled in a sense of speed. Occasionally they were able to reach twenty miles [32 kph], but at that pace they felt as if they were indulging in reckless excess.

Driving through the Glasshouse Mountains District,1935

Our travellers struggle on over the dreadful roads until they get to Landsborough. From here they plan to venture up the Blackall Ranges where they have an invitation to visit a farm on the road to Maleny.

The road up the range was worth the struggle at cost to reach it. Good in itself, its scenic outlook was exceptional. We rose to something approaching two thousand feet, passing from hill to hill along narrow saddlebacks where the road, no wider than a bullock-wagon track, had just room to pass, with steep declivities on either side. To the left we could see far over the low country through which we had come ; and the glasshouse Mountains distinct in the distance. Even far away they lent a character to the land they dominated. Something about that far view stirred the feelings in a way not readily understood, like the notes of a barbaric chant.

Landsborough-Maleny Road, Landsborough Shire, Queensland, ca 1933

The travelling party have an enjoyable stay at the farm of High Tor and appear to find a kindred spirit in its owner Mr Lawrence.

It was interesting to listen to the discourse of one who, clearly, regarded himself not only as the owner, in law, of certain lands, but also as the custodian, in trust, of its beauty. He subscribed to the view that our home must be made habitable. He spoke regretfully of the ruthless slaughter that had been done with the axe. He spoke of developing the latent part of the new beauty that had been revealed – at least within the area given him to control. He talked of the preservation of the last remaining patch of tropic jungle on that part of the range ; and of his efforts to obtain sanctuary for the last of the native birds, who had sought refuge in it.

There are extensive and enthusiastic descriptions of our adventurers’ explorations of the rainforest at High Tor but eventually they set off again and come to Maleny.

Maleny, where we stopped for petrol, interested us. It made no pretensions to being more than a hardy frontier town. Its main street wandered crookedly up a hill and its bare buildings wandered crokedly beside it. There were no trees, no foot-paths, and, as far as we could see, no building alignment. Yet Maleny rather fascinated us. The blood of commerce flowed richly in its veins. Its stores were jammed full of goods, and each establishment, in its hearty way, pretended by means of a false front, to be a two-story structure. Maleny was too happily busy with the cash-register to bother what it looked like. We were reminded of stories of places where men are men.

Main centre of Maleny, ca 1922

From Maleny our travellers descended from the ranges into the Mary Valley.

About us stood brown hill-sides dotted with eucalypts, above them rose the ranges, olive green near at hand, blue in the distance. On the slopes the cattle were feeding knee-deep in the tall grasses, their heads down to the green picking that grew close to the earth. The homesteads were wide apart. There was just the metallic gleam of a roof here and there among the hills. along the winding river grew white gum, brush apple and she-oak. It was our own familiar land and we took a deep breath of it.

The brown of it seemed to rest the eyes. We learned again, as we followed our road through the land’s soft folds, what we had learned before, that green is not the only sign and symbol of beauty. With eyes newly opened we saw the beauty of browns and yellows. There was infinite variety of tone : paddocks where the brown lay over beneath the breeze and disclosed a silvery sheen ; squares of yellow that had along their upper surface a tinge of purple given by the ripening seed-heads. Green, when it was seen, was a fine dark carpet underlying the protective top growth ; or in hard-grazed paddock and standing crop it had a richer value by reason of the softer colours that flanked it.

There is little that can be told of the Mary valley, its features are so simple. There are only the ranges, the brown hills, the gums by the roadside, split-rail fences, a homestead or two, and the river, rearranging their groupings as we advanced toward them. Hour after hour, at a comfortable pace, we moved into that picture, and hour after hour it changed before our eyes. Always there were the same components ; always the picture was different.

Car crossing the Mary River Bridge in Kelinworth, ca. 1928

The travellers made their way to Maryborough and from there by boat to spend several weeks on Fraser Island. On their return to Maryborough they decided to abandon the idea of travelling all the way to Cairns by car. The roads were bad and there were still 800 miles to travel so they went by train. The adventure continued in and around Cairns and on the Great Barrier Reef but we will leave them here with the abandoned car and trailer.

Simon Miller – Library Technician, State Library of Queensland

TOAD ARMY LANDS : the cane toad in the press

Posted on 07 Dec 2012| by Simon Miller |

TOAD ARMY LANDS

American Foes of Cane Beetles

A new war is about to be waged in the canefields of the North. This time it is not the rat, but the grey-back cane beetle that is to be the subject of the offensive, which will be carried out by giant American toads. The first contingent arrived from Honolulu this week. The toads — 100 of them — reached Brisbane, in charge of Mr. R. W. Mungomery, assistant entomologist of the Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations, Department of Agriculture, who left last night with his charges for the entomological laboratory at Meringa. This is the first time such an agency has been used to cope with insect pests in the cane fields, and more than one pair of interested eyes watched when the case in which the toads had made their long journey was opened at the department yesterday. They were big, brownish fellows—the largest of them from 6in. to 8 in.long — and they were as fresh as toads can be, although they had made the voyage packed together in a box with woodwool for padding. They did not require food on the way, and not one of them was lost in transhipment.

Cane toad in Queensland

This is how the Courier-Mail announced the arrival of Queensland’s first cane toads on 21 June, 1935. Since then the reputation of the cane toad in Queensland has suffered and they would be hard pressed to find a champion to argue in their favour. In 1935 cane farmers had high hopes that the toads would rescue them from the beetle grubs that were devastating their crops but even as the toads arrived doubts were raised about how effective they would be. An article from the Rockhamton Morning Bulletin is generally hopeful but also raises doubts.

The present introduction to Queensland is made in the hope that it may prove an important factor in the control of the white grubs which inflict such costly damage in the cane fields. It is to be understood that the toad deals with the insect in the beetle stage.

The Puerto Rico beetle, in the period between its emergence from the soil and its return for oviposting is said to spend the night in feeding trees or plants and to return to the soil early each morning. The toads are thus able to deal with the beetles as they leave or return to the soil.

The habits of the Queensland grey-back beetles are somewhat different, inasmuch as between the time of primary emergence and their return for oviposting – a period of about 14 days the beetles ordinarily spend their time between the feeding and resting trees, and do not make a regular return to the ground.

The success of the toad against the greyback. therefore, appears likely to be controlled by the length of time during which the beetle is on the ground and accessible to the toad – a matter which can only he determined by further observation when the toad has established itself in numbers.

They conclude by wondering if the toads might become a pest themselves.

The introduction of any new form of life naturally raises the question as to whether it is likely to become a pest. Careful consideration has been given to this aspect, and no reason can be found to assume that Bufo will be found in any way an undesirable immigrant. He at least comes with irreproachable credentials. It is to be hoped that he will be found an effective worker.

The cane toad, or giant American toad (Bufo marinus) is a native of Central and South America. Cane toads were introduced into the Caribbean to control pests from the 1840s but it seems to have been the enthusiasm of Dr Cyril E Pemberton of Hawaii that led to the export of toads more widely around the world. Dr Pemberton came across the toads while attending the International Congress of Sugar Cane Technologists in Puerto Rico in 1932 and promptly collected 154 specimens which he had shipped back to Hawaii. Also attending the conference in Puerto Rico was Arthur Bell from the Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations in Queensland.

Giant cane toad 1975

A report in The Queenslander of the the annual Queensland cane growers conference gives an indication of the enthusiasm of Queensland’s sugar scientists for the toads.

Different methods of dealing with cane pests were considered by the conference, and a form of biological control quite new to Queensland was discussed. When Mr. Arthur Bell, of the Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations, was on an official visit to Porto Rico some little time ago the employment of giant toads in pest destruction was brought under his notice, and he reported favourably on their usefulness in the cane fields. It is claimed for the giant toad—or Bufo marinus, to give it its scientific name—that it would prove very effective against the grey-back beetle, North Queensland’s most serious cane field pest. It would probably be useful, also, in keeping down cane weevils, army worms, and mole crickets—insects that do a lot of damage to cane in the course of a season. The genus bufo will stand wide differences of climate, for it is found from Mexico to Argentina, living in localities varying in altitude from sea level to 6000 ft. It has proved very adaptable to a changed environment in tropical countries into which it has been introduced. In Porto Rico, for instance, it is recognised as a valuable factor in the control of the “white grub.” It is believed that the toad would thrive in North Queensland. It is a night feeder, so the risk of its destroying beneficial in-sects of the cane fields, which are mostly about in daylight, would be very slight. …

It is proposed to introduce a colony of toads and attempt to breed them at the experiment station at Meringa, and to liberate the first generation in the surrounding grub-infested areas. Failing to induce them to breed in captivity, their liberation in a suitable locality near Meringa is proposed. The proposal to introduce the giant toad into Queensland is, therefore, regarded as worthy of serious consideration, particularly as there is no evidence to show that its presence here would prove harmful in any way.

Not everyone was convinced that importing the toads was a good idea and entomologist Walter Froggatt was so alarmed that he lobbied the Commonwealth Department of Health to ban further releases arguing in a paper that ‘This great toad, immune from enemies, omnivorous in its habits, and breeding all the year round, may become as great a pest as the rabbit or cactus’.

The federal health department imposed a ban on the release of more toads which was promptly protested by Queensland’s cane growers as reported in The Sydney Morning Herald, 29 November, 1935.

Canegrowers’ organisations throughout Queensland protest against the declaration of the federal Director-General of Health (Dr. Cumpston) that no more giant toads are to be liberated on the northern canefields.

The announcement surprised canegrowers, as much time and money have been spent in investigating the habits of the giant toads, which are considered likely to be effective in combating canefleld pests. The Federal authorities made no objection to their introduction to Queensland from Hawaii. Already thousands of young toads have been liberated in the Gordonvale and Innisfail districts.

The outcome of representations of the Minister for Agriculture to the Federal Government is being awaited with interest.

Queensland agriculture minister Frank Bulcock and Premier William Forgan Smith pressured the Commonwealth Government and Prime Minister Joseph Lyons overturned the ban a few months later. Frank Bulcock was a strong defender of the cane toad as in this article from The Queenslander of January 26, 1938.

“Giant Toad Not A Menace.”—From careful inquiries made before the introduction of giant toads into Northern canefields there was nothing to suggest that they would ever become a potential danger to human life, said the Minister for Agriculture (Mr. Bulcock). Mr. Bulcock ridiculed a recent report from North Queensland that a greyhound had been attacked and poisoned by a toad, and that residents were afraid of them, particularly as they were being attracted by lights to places of habitation. He was satisfied they were doing excellent work in the destruction of canefield insects, for which purpose they were imported. The giant toad, he said, was imported into Hawaii from South America, and its habits had been closely observed in both countries. One of the department’s own officers was sent overseas to study it, and his inquiries did not reveal any objectionable features.

Politician Frank William Bulcock pictured working at his desk November 1942

Objections to the toads came from several quarters. Beekeepers had been worried from the outset but government scientists continued to dispute claims of problems. This report is from the Courier-Mail of February 5, 1947.

Agriculture Department officials were sceptical yesterday whether the Bufo Marinus otherwise the cane-bug expert—could have reached Brisbane. Originally from the West Indies, this giant toad was introduced from Hawaii into Australia in 1935, liberated in the Cairns area, and then in other sugar-cane areas south to Maryborough. Officials said yesterday that the toad bred freely in the wet tropics north of Townsville, but South Queensland was too dry for it to breed appreciably. The Sugar Experiment Stations director (Mr. Bell) agreed that the Bufu Marinus would eat bees, but he disputed the claim by the Queensland Beekeepers’ secretary (Mr. E Evans) that the toad had a tongue 6in. long, and that the stomach of one held 500 bees. He said the tongue did not exceed slightly more than an inch, and it was physically impossible for one toad to hold 500 bees at the one time.

Mr. Bell said the toad had been very successful against the cane beetle borer, but had not been of much use in attacking cane beetles. It also attacked a number of garden pests, and was sudden death to cockroaches — in North Queensland. Its most unsuspected virtue, however, was as a snake killer. By killing vast numbers it had reduced the snake population considerably — generally at the sacrifice of its own life.

This last point, painted here as a virtue, hints at the damaging effects of the cane toad on native animals that is now one of the main concerns as the toads continue their spread across the north of Australia. Another group to raise concerns was the Central Coastal Graziers’ Association reported in the Townsville Daily Bulletin of April 15, 1947.

TOAD MENACE TO STOCK WATER

ROCKHAMPTON. April 14.— At the Central Coastal Graziers’ Association annual Conference, Gin Gin branch asked that attention be drawn, to the alarming spread of the giant sugar cane toads into grazing areas, resulting in the pollution of water supplies for stock. Mr. Elliot (said that the huge toads imported to control pests in the canefields, were moving up the Burnett and other streams into grazing areas and had been found 40 miles from sugar districts. They had got into water supplies and there was a danger they would be poisoned. “We think it is time the scientific people who released those toads should be told of the menace they have created.’ he added.

The Agriculture Department responded with a letter reported in the Cairns Post.

The Department in the letter stated that before the toads were imported inquiries had indicated that there was no danger of their polluting water or endangering livestock, and the experience in North Queensland had confirmed this information.

The letter stated that the toads were imported in 1935 and no stock had been adversely affected by their presence.

The caging of toads and hens in the same pen for long periods demonstrated that the toads would not harm poultry flocks. Cases were known of dogs being poisoned after having mouthed a toad for some time. Toads had greatly improved the cane beetle pest situation and had generally reduced the numbers of plant pests in the higher rainfall areas.

Extraordinarily, the publication Fifty years of scientific progress : a historical review of the half century since the foundation of the Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations published in 1950 makes only fleeting mention of the cane toad in the introduction. The chapter titled A review of sugar cane entomological investigations written by none other than R. W. Mungomery, the very man who imported the first toads in 1935, does not mention Bufo marinus at all, despite Agriculture Department officials continuing to defend the toad in the press as late as 1949. I can find no mention of the the toad in the 75th anniversary publication 75 years of scientific progress. The John Oxley Library holds a number of publications of the Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations.

Large number of cane toads waiting extermination 1990

Nobody defends the cane toad today. Its adverse environmental impacts and relentless spread have made the toad the target of control efforts as scientists look for a possible biological control with more care than was shown when the toad arrived. The insect pests that were attacking the cane crops were a serious problem and possibly the scientists involved were made overly optimistic by the recent dramatic success of the cactoblastus moth against the prickly pear, but there were alarms raised from the beginning. In hindsight the introduction of Bufo marinus was clearly a mistake but those in charge remained convinced for many years that the benefits outweighed the possibility for harm.

Simon Miller – Library Technician, State Library of Queensland

A prickly problem : Dr Jean White-Haney and the prickly pear

Posted on 27 Nov 2012| by Simon Miller |

Prickly pear is the common name for several species of the genus Opuntia that are native to the Americas. Prickly pears arrived in Australia with the First Fleet in 1788, picked up as cuttings in Rio de Janeiro. Governor Arthur Phillip had decided to import the plants as the basis for a possible cochineal industry. Cochineal is a red dye made from the bodies of the cochineal scale insect that lives on one variety of prickly pear. Over the succeeding decades other varieties of prickly pear were imported and the plant was used for hedges.

Leaves of the prickly pear cactus plant at Clermont 1986

The plants were taken from Sydney to Scone in the Hunter Valley and from there to the Darling Downs in the early 1840s. The hard-coated seeds of the prickly pear were spread by native birds and browsing cattle who ate its fruit and fragments of the plant spread by floods along riverbanks would take root wherever they landed. Up until the 1870s the plant was generally regarded as a useful addition to the local flora and an emergency stock fodder in times of drought.

By the 1870′s the rapid spread of the pear was beginning to cause some alarm. In 1872 a petition was presented to parliament calling for a prohibition on the use of prickly pear for hedges but others were advocating for more widespread use of the plant and extolling its value. It would take several more decades before the Queensland government would take any direct action against prickly pear. The Crown Lands Act of 1895 was the first Queensland statute to mention prickly pear and this was merely to provide some incentives for lease holders to clear the pear from land they held.

Prickly pear Dulacca 1910

Over the first decades of the twentieth century the rate of spread of the prickly pear increased dramatically until, at the peak of infestation, some 250,000 square kilometers were rendered useless. Arthur Temple Clerk published a pamphlet on The prickly pear problem in Queensland in 1913 in which he dramatically describes the scale of the problem.

Undoubtedly no part of the World has ever had or even now possesses such a soil affliction to contend against, as this State has in that most terrible and most appalling gigantic ‘octopus’ Prickly Pear, which has already with its huge and rapid far reaching feelers got possession of fully 30,000,000 acres of this grand and most magnificent State’s richest and closer settlement lands. Yes, so marvellously and with such rapidity has it spread (and is still spreading) that it is almost, if not quite beyond realization. But, alas, it is only too true, and if not checked by some quick and huge method, then this great State’s closer-settlement lands, practically as a whole will be doomed.

In 1912 the Queensland government established an experimental station in the heart of prickly pear country at Dulacca under the direction of a full time scientist. The biologist chosen to establish and run this experimental station was Dr. Jean White. Dr. White was only the second woman to be awarded a doctorate of science in Australia and this was the first ever scientific appointment of a woman by an Australian government.

Queensland Prickly Pear Boards research station Dulacca ca 1913 State Library of Queensland Negative number: 200496

Dr. Jean White and staff at the Dulacca research station ca 1913

Dr. Jean White, or Jean White-Haney as she was known after her marriage, was born Rose Ethel Janet White in 1877 at Melbourne Observatory. Her father was astronomer and meteorologist Edward John White. She was educated at Presbyterian Ladies’ College and the University of Melbourne, being awarded her doctorate in 1909. She was elected a member of the Royal Society of Victoria in 1908.

In an article in The Register News-Pictorial of 1929 she recalls the experience at the little railway siding of Dulacca, now a small town between Miles and Roma on the Warrego Highway.

“It was in the midst of the thickest pear -a desolate little place where living was primitive. I was young then, and still rather nervous, but I insisted on not being given any special privileges because of being a woman. If you do that, you make it harder for all women to engage in research. The inevitable response to any suggestion that a woman should be sent out on field work is, ‘But she couldn’t live alone out there.’ Failures of women who cannot rough it would naturally be magnified.

“I lived in the little public house there, and worked on my fascinating job with all the enthusiasm of those who see small beginnings to great ends. The methods chosen for experiment were the introduction of suitable insects and poison.”

Queensland Prickly Pear Boards research station Dulacca ca 1913

In the course of her work she met American-born agricultural chemist Victor Haney and they were married in 1915. Unusually for the time Dr. White-Haney was able to continue her work at the experimental station after her marriage.

“We lived in two little tents,” said Dr. Haney, “with floors and walls as high as the back of a chair, and finished off with hessian. Since then I have lived in all kinds of huts and tents, and can make my home anywhere, though I love the luxury of city life.”

World War One put an end to the experimental work as it became impossible to get research workers or supplies of poisons for testing but by 1929 the war against the prickly pear had been all but won.

“Work is still proceeding on those lines, and it has been most wonderfully successful. I have seen lately areas which used to be quite impenetrable, where you could not have walked except on the top of the pear — and for miles you can see nothing but dead pear.

“Two insects are mainly responsible, the cochineal and cacta blastus, and of these the cacta blastus is the more spectacular, and gets most of the credit. But they are a great team!

“Poisoning is also used, but poisoning alone would never clear Queensland. It is far too expensive except, to clear special areas; but useful for killing off pear that sprouts again after ravages by the insects, and also for use together with insects. Insects are rather spasmodic. Usually, in special areas,Queensland has an army of men working inwards systematically with poison, while the insects work outwards, missing some patches.”

Dr. White-Haney had success against one species of tree cactus (Opuntia monacantha) prevalent in North Queensland using cochineal insects (Coccus indicus) and, although this insect was not effective against the most prevalent species of pear, this success encouraged the continuing search for biological controls that led eventually to the introduction of the Cactoblastis cactorum moth that eventually brought the pest under control. So successful was this insect in destroying the prickly pear scourge that it is the only insect to have a memorial hall dedicated to it, the Boonarga Cactoblastis Memorial Hall near Chinchilla.

Cactoblastis cages at the Bug Farm, Chinchilla, Queensland, ca. 1930

The importance of the eventual victory over the pear is summed up in an article reprinted from Geographical Review, October 1992 Prickly pear menace in eastern Australia 1880-1940 by Donald B. Freeman.

Prickly pear infestation delayed by more than fifty years settlement of large areas of eastern Australia. After elimination of the pest, close agricultural settlement began energetically. By 1940, ten million hectares, formerly dense prickly pear-covered country, had been selected for settlement, and the revenue of Queensland was boosted by income from beef, cotton, grain, and dairy products. On already settled land that had suffered only moderately from prickly pear infestation, agricultural productivity also increased dramatically. At Chinchilla, production of dairy products surged sevenfold from 400,000 pounds in 1926 to 3,100,000 pounds in 1939.

Harvesting the first crop of wheat on land reclaimed from Prickly Pear infestation Chinchilla 1933

Jean White-Haney lived for a short time in Western Queensland before moving to Brisbane. She was a founding member of the Lyceum Club with stints as secretary and president. After a break from scientific work to raise her two sons she returned to research to study the pasture weed, Noogoora burr, that was causing major problems for the wool industry and also studied pasture grasses at Glen Innes in New South Wales. In 1930 she gave up research and joined her husband, who had returned to the United States. She died in 1953.

The John Oxley Library holds the reports from the Prickly Pear Expermental Station, Dulacca for 1914, 1915 and 1916.

Simon Miller – Library Technician, State Library of Queensland