Esk – Queensland Stories

“The settlement,” Cowper had told Clunie on the Isabella, “is mostly on one point of land. Penis-shaped, we shall say, backed by a high ridge we shall call the Line of Bollocks.”[1]

Jessica Anderson wrote a wise and interesting novel of convict Brisbane, “The Commandant”, published in 1975. It includes this pungent description of the site of the Moreton Bay Convict Station, in the words of the notoriously bitter, badly-behaved drunk, Henry Cowper, the convict station’s first medical officer. The site of the Moreton Bay Convict Settlement, established in 1826, runs along the ridge where William and George Streets run now.

Queensland’s government buildings still occupy this “penis-shaped” piece of high ground along the river.

Henry Cowper was the medical officer for the Settlement from 1826 to 1832. He worked in primitive conditions in this isolated, under-funded and under-supplied outpost of the British Empire. Captain Patrick Logan was the commandant.

Captain Patrick Logan, 57th Foot Regiment, Commandant of Moreton Bay Convict Station 1826-1830 *State Library of New South Wales*

Jessica Anderson’s excellent novel was thoroughly researched, and conditions in the settlement, and many of the characters, are based on records of the time. The novel culminates in the sombre discovery and retrieval of the body of Captain Logan.

Captain Patrick Logan of the 57^th Foot Regiment, a veteran of the Peninsula War against Napoleon, was commandant of the settlement from 1826 until his murder in 1830 at the age of just thirty-nine.

Many men who came to Australia in the early years of European occupation, to supervise convict stations and run governments, were veterans of the European wars of the early nineteenth century. Violence and flogging were not new to them. Logan was a notoriously harsh disciplinarian who followed the rules without mercy. The floggings Logan ordered for convicts would have provided Cowper with a stream of grievously injured patients.

Constant complaints about the treatment of Moreton Bay convicts were made to the government in Sydney. The famous old song “Moreton Bay” has a convict describe it:

For three long years I was beastly treated
And heavy irons on my legs I wore
My back from flogging was lacerated
And oft times painted with my crimson gore
And many a man from downright starvation
Lies mouldering now underneath the clay
And Captain Logan he had us mangled
All at the triangles of Moreton Bay

Like the Egyptians and ancient Hebrews
We were oppressed under Logan’s yoke
Till a native black lying there in ambush
Did deal this tyrant his mortal stroke
My fellow prisoners be exhilarated
That all such monsters such a death may find
And when from bondage we are liberated
Our former sufferings will fade from mind[2]

In Esk, in the Brisbane Valley, the Memorial Park has shady trees and picnic tables. We stopped there for lunch one day. Sandwich in hand, I wandered around the park, and found a rock with a plaque attached. The plaque describes Patrick Logan as “an enthusiastic and energetic explorer of Southern Queensland’, and provides the information that it was near here, on 18 October 1830, on his last exploratory trip before his term as commandant was over, that he was killed by an Aboriginal group.

Plaque on the monument in Esk Memorial Park

It may be true that escaped convicts were also involved in Logan’s murder; but there is always going to be violence when one group invades another’s traditional homelands and takes them for their own.

Patrick Logan made frequent exploratory expeditions and is credited with many “discoveries” in south-east Queensland. His name is on lookouts at Rathdowney and Mount French in the Scenic Rim. He is credited with discovering the Logan River, Dugulumbah to Yugumbeh people who had known it for thousands of years. Logan Road, the City of Logan, and many other plaques, streets and suburbs carry his name.

During Logan’s time as commandant, the first permanent buildings in what was to become Brisbane were erected. Two of them still stand: the windmill up on Wickham Terrace (on Cowper’s “Line of Bollocks”, in fact) and the Commissariat Store in William Street, the oldest inhabited building in Brisbane. The Commissariat Store building is now the Convict Museum and the headquarters of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland, and on its lower floor can be seen models of the Convict Station the way it looked at the time of Logan’s death.

The Commissariat Store, in its original two story form, can be seen above the wharf towards the end of the point of land. The Commandant’s house is the last one on the right above the Store. The wharf was not called “Queen’s Wharf” in those days. George IV had recently died, and William IV was king. Queen Victoria did not gain the English throne until 1837. “Image of early Brisbane Town in convict days, ca. 1831. From a painting by Cedric Fowler.” *collections.slq.gov.au*

These include a model of the Commandant’s house, with a verandah in front.

Model of the Commandant’s house, in the Convict Museum, William Street, Brisbane

A museum volunteer tells me that the house, which features in Jessica Anderson’s novel, looked across William Street to the river, near the site where huge casino and hotel buildings are currently rising: the Queen’s Wharf Development Project.

The roof and top floor of the Commissariat Store, now headquarters of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland, William Street. Queen’s Wharf Development site in the background

According to the website, the finished Queen’s Wharf development will include a Sky Deck 100 metres above William Street, and fifty restaurants, bars and cafes.

This whole area is a massive construction site; and in the midst of it sits, incongruously, the Commissariat Store.

Commissariat Store in the midst of construction site

I’m told the developers wanted to take over the convict-built Commissariat Store. It would have made a fine site for a restaurant and bar, this old stone building opening out on to the riverbank. But somehow the RHSQ managed to keep it.

The white peaked roof of the Commissariat Store can just be seen behind the freeway overpass. The Commandant’s house would have been behind the building with the cranes

Other historical buildings within the William and George Street precinct are being protected and preserved, but it’s difficult now to imagine the environment of simple wooden buildings, dirt pathways and gardens that occupied this stretch of land two hundred years ago.

Today there’s a huge, powerful white snake rearing out of the Brisbane River, looking as if it’s about to strike.

Neville Bonner Bridge under construction

It’s the new Neville Bonner Bridge, startling in its design but destined to become a Brisbane icon. The last sections have been craned into place, and soon pedestrians will be able to cross from Southbank Parklands to take part in the promised glories of the new development.

The ridge above the river will never be the same again. Patrick Logan would not recognise it.

It’s to be hoped that enough well-off tourists come to spend their money there to pay for it all.

[1] “The Commandant”, Jessica Anderson. First published 1975. This edition: The Text Publishing Company, Australia. 2012. P. 74.

[2] folkstream.com

In Goondiwindi, in the Gunsynd Lounge, my cousin Nadine orders a Kahlua and milk.

“I’ll have what she’s having,” I tell the barman.

“Hah! You’re a bad woman at heart,” says my cousin.

Nadine and I are on a family history road trip: ten days, from the Darling Downs to the Central West. We’re eating – and drinking – at the Vic. The Victoria Hotel is double storied, with black and white timbers and a slightly crooked corner tower. It’s an outstanding feature of Goondiwindi’s main street. On one trip, Con and I spent the night at the Vic. I loved it, but Con hated it because he had to walk down the hall to go to the bathroom.

Country hotels with their wide, hardwood verandahs, grand staircases and ornate fretwork are Australia’s most spectacular buildings. Built in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, they had to be big. Travelling for work was common, and bush people would come to town for race meetings and agricultural shows. Hotels provided the accommodation.

People travel for work and pleasure more than ever now, but most of them, like Con, want ensuite bathrooms and comfortable beds. They want air-conditioning and a car park out front. They don’t want stairs or noisy bar rooms.

I like climbing the stairs that take you up to the long hallways, the verandahs and a view over the street. I’m not so keen on the noisy bar underneath. Con and I spent one Thursday night in the magnificent old George Hotel in Ballarat, Victoria, with a cozy fireplace in the lounge, an ensuite bedroom and breakfast on the wide verandah overlooking the heritage buildings of the main street; but in the bedside table there were complimentary earplugs. We didn’t stay on to hear the Friday night disco in the bar.

One year we went to Esk for the races and spent the night in the Grand Hotel. The party in the Beer Garden went on for most of the night, and we tried to sleep to the sound, much repeated, of “Living next door to Alice,” followed by the shouted chorus of “Alice? Who the fuck is Alice?”

The hotel bars are often empty in these days of random breath checks, and many hotels have closed. During the day there might be one or two drinkers, nursing a beer and waiting for someone to come in so they can tell them about how things were in the old days or show off for tourists.

The poker machine room always has customers. At the Purple Pub in Normanton, it’s the only room with air-conditioning.

Overnight guests have the run of these fine old buildings. As a guest you are allowed up the grand staircase, past the “House Guests Only” sign, to the upstairs lounge, with its television and sagging couches. You can pad down the hallway in your night attire to a huge, tiled bathroom, or clean your teeth in the washbasin in the corner of your room. You can have breakfast on the verandah and lean over the railing to watch the affairs of the street below.

The enormous, heritage listed State Hotel at Babinda was erected in 1917 by the Queensland government. Constructed from local timbers, it has an entrance and staircase of golden silky oak, many bedrooms, and verandahs with a view up the main street to the rain-forested hills behind the town.

I’d like to stay there sometime. If I suggest it to Con, I know what he’ll say.

“Does it have ensuites?”

The pub is still the heart of many a tiny town. A few years ago, we spent a comfortable night in the hotel at Laura, now named the Quinkan Hotel – the only accommodation in town apart from the caravan park. It’s a plain, single storey pub – no grand staircase or sprawling verandahs – but the owners have found it worth their while to provide comfortable beds, modern air-conditioning and flat-screen televisions. The mining engineers and geologists who stay here like to be comfortable.

It was November when we visited Laura, and the many mango trees shading the front of the pub and lining the street were laden with ripe fruit. I’ll always associate the Laura Hotel with the smell of mangoes and the thud, thud, thud of the fruit hitting the ground.

Country pubs. Every one of them is memorable.

At the Vic in Goondiwindi, last time we were there together, Con ordered a glass of beer. The glass was sponsored by Saint Mary’s, the local Catholic Parish: What? I asked for a glass of water. It’s a miracle!

You wouldn’t find that at the Brisbane Hilton.

Images: Victoria Hotel, Goondiwindi; State Hotel Babinda c. 1924 (State Library of Qld, “Picture Queensland”); the Laura Hotel; beer glass from the Vic, Goondiwindi.

Tag: Esk

Captain Logan and Queen’s Wharf

Kahlua and Milk

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