Brisbane Between the Wars
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BRISBANE BETWEEN THE WARS EXCERPTED FROM AN ONLINE EXHIBITION BY FORMER FRYER STAFF MEMBER, LIBRARIAN JEFF RICKERTT, THIS ARTICLE EXPLORES SOME OF THE WAYS BRISBANE ARCHITECTURE REFLECTED POLITICAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGES DURING THE INTERWAR PERIOD. fter taking on a pilot near Cape Moreton, was established in 1824 with one goal in mind: the Orient Line mail steamer slowly made to create a secondary punishment centre Aits way across Moreton Bay and into for recalcitrant convicts. This narrowness the mouth of the Brisbane River. Its voyage had of purpose, the brutality that came to be started in London and progressed via the Suez associated with it, and the settlement’s Canal to Ceylon and on to Australia, berthing administrative and economic subservience at Fremantle, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney. to Sydney, combined to discourage the Brisbane was the end of the line. As the ship emergence of an urban entrepreneurial class progressed upstream, one passenger stayed capable of shaping Brisbane into a strong on deck and took in the view: centre for independent commerce and manufacturing. When significant economic After passing Pinkenba, the character development did occur, in the 1840s, it was led of the river banks improves. And we not by Brisbane capitalists, but by pastoralists steam between high slopes on which pushing their flocks overland from New England are pleasantly dotted the charming to the Darling Downs. suburban homes of the well-to-do citizens. Alongside the new wharf at Bulimba, on Whereas Sydney and Melbourne produced an the waters of a wide and deep river, the urban bourgeoisie with distinct interests and ship makes fast, and her outward voyage the political will to contest the dominance of is at an end. the ‘squattocracy’, in Queensland, rural capital (initially pastoral, later mining and sugar) had no After a brief excursion around the city, our equivalent rivals. observer recorded: Throughout the interwar period, Brisbane’s It is a busy city, but, of course, lacks the development remained tied to rural commodity magnificence of the greater capitals. But production in two fundamental ways. Firstly, it with Queensland increasing in prosperity was a processing centre and port for southern at its present pace, it may not be many Queensland’s primary produce. Brisbane was years before Brisbane will vie with Sydney also the commercial and administrative hub of 1 and Melbourne in importance. rural industry for the entire state. Many Brisbane workers supported pastoralism, agriculture and Eight years later, war and recession had dimmed mining in white collar roles. the hopes of Brisbane’s boosters. The city remained a quirky and limited provincial centre, Brisbane manufacturing, meanwhile, remained with fewer than 210 000 people living within ten small by national standards. The larger factories 2 miles of the GPO. were simply processing sites for primary commodities such as meat, sugar and timber. The economic and imperial considerations that Manufacturing proper was limited to light industry influenced the decision to found the colony of producing consumer goods for the local market, New South Wales appear to have played no especially clothes, processed foods, beverages role in the founding of Brisbane. The settlement and furniture.3 20 UQ LIBRARY 9 Although most Brisbanites did not grow of beautiful and interesting villa sites.’ The villa Above far left: Plans prosperous under the sway of an economy was a comparatively expansive and detached for Kedron residence, dominated by mining, sugar and pastoralism, dwelling, and the gardens blended European flora HW Atkinson & their city certainly expanded, especially in the with plants from the tropics, remnants of native AH Conrad, 1924, 1920s. From an estimated population of 209 946 vegetation, and vegetable plots and fruit trees UQFL228, Job in 1921, Greater Brisbane was home to 284 758 from which householders stocked their larders. 292, Fryer Library, people by 1929, and 325 890 by 1938.4 Hens, too were a common sight; a 1927 census The University of turned up 141 000 of them.10 Queensland Library. On 1 October 1925, nineteen municipalities within a ten-mile radius of the Brisbane GPO ceased to Other, introduced styles were modified to Above: Plans for shops and flats exist, replaced by a single authority: the Greater complement the local traditions. The Californian in Paddington, Brisbane Council (GBC). This had a profound Bungalow, for instance, became popular in HW Atkinson & impact on the city’s development; growth Australia in the 1920s, but the Queensland AH Conrad, 1938, between the wars would probably have occurred version was invariably an elevated, high- UQFL228, Job regardless, but orderly growth, accompanied ceilinged dwelling constructed from timber and 317, Fryer Library, 11 by a systematic expansion of vital infrastructure, galvanized iron. The University of would simply not have been possible under the Queensland Library. old system. For Ussher, the reasons for the Queensland style lie principally in climate and construction Unlike the growth spurt of the 1880s, interwar costs. Balwant Saini, however, takes issue with expansion did not markedly alter overall this explanation. Though agreeing that the early population density but led instead to greater wooden and iron bungalow was cheap and suburbanisation. This was largely the result quick to build, he points out that the internal of improved transport systems and new town design of many of these homes prevented cross planning ordinances which raised the minimum ventilation, while the thin wooden walls and iron area of residential allotments in new subdivisions roofs were far from ideal for heat proofing. In the from sixteen to twenty-four perches.5 From 1925 summer months verandahs were often the only to 1929, over 13 000 new dwellings were built.6 habitable spaces.12 Europeans persisted with this inappropriate mode of shelter, he argues, For coolness’ sake, most of the houses because of their notion that a house should are built of wood and possess wide function as a barrier (rather than a filter) between verandas screened from the sun by its occupants and the outside environment.13 straw blinds; they are raised high from the ground on piles, capped by inverted The sub-tropical and tropical bungalow, though, saucers to resist the depredations of the was not a fixed form. It evolved and features white ant, the bane of the settler in this were incorporated to enhance climate control. and other parts of Australia.7 Latticed screens and shutters were introduced to manage the effects of sun, wind and rain. In this 1928 description, Kathleen Ussher Doorways were topped with fretwork panels captures some of the defining elements of the and arches which were both decorative and Queensland house: the use of tin and timber, the facilitative of cross ventilation. In the twenties verandahs, the reliance on elevation to reduce sash windows were replaced by casements heat and escape pests. Many of these features which caught the breezes. were not, of course, unique to Queensland. Most Europeans, moreover, readily accepted Many of those new dwellings of the late twenties their verandahs and gardens as legitimate living would have been villas, in the form of elevated spaces, despite the notional cultural barriers timber and tin bungalows set amongst gardens. that separated them from nature. For its part, ‘The many hills in and around Brisbane are dotted nature penetrated the sanctity of indoor life with 8 with villas and comfortable cottages’ observed impunity. ‘You are on the threshold of the tropics,’ Thiel in 1922. This bore out the predictions of noted Thomas Wood, ‘and a little of the tropics John Dunmore Lang, who in 1851 had written comes over the threshold to meet you. None of ‘there is no place I have ever seen in all our the teeming, pulsating life of the East, not all its Australian colonies, with the single exception colours and its smells; but the heat and the fruits of Sydney, in which there is so great a number and the flowers, the velvety nights, the stars like FRYER FOLIOS | AUGUST 2014 21 14 Above: Plans for a lamps in the sky.’ The verandah became the builders looked to new stylistic influences for new house, New point of mediation between these two worlds. inspiration. Many of the brick flats, houses, and Farm, HW Atkinson Few Brisbane verandahs lacked a table and commercial buildings erected in this era reveal & Chas McLay, chairs for dining. The day bed and the ‘sleepout’ a strong affinity with the international Art Deco 1914, UQFL228, Job were common. and Modernist schools of design. Despite the 381, Fryer Library, depredations of progress Queensland-style, The University of The interwar years heralded bigger stylistic some examples of these can still be found. Queensland Library. changes as well. In 1926, falling wool and mineral prices pushed From the late 1920s, homes of brick, concrete, Queensland into recession. The situation fibro and tiles became more popular, partly worsened in 1929 with the collapse of world because new construction techniques for brick stock markets. As the Australian economy veneer dwellings reduced the quantity of bricks plunged into crisis, the official national rate of required and therefore the cost. But the cost unemployment reached 23 per cent in 1930, was still sufficiently high to prevent brick and and rose to 28 per cent a year later.16 Because tile challenging timber and tin as the preferred of its smaller manufacturing base, Queensland material of mass housing, particularly once rate of joblessness remained around ten per economic depression set in. cent lower than the national average, but it was a catastrophe all the same.17 Once workers on In 1935 brick and tile dwellings purchased relief projects and ruined farmers were included through the Queensland Government’s in the tally, about 30 per cent of the Queensland home finance company, the State Advances workforce were out of work.