'A Difficult Witness'

A difficult witness: A contextual history and cultural heritage assessment of the Law Courts, George Street, Brisbane James Robertson Wadsworth Forbes Submitted as partial requirement for the degree of BA Honours, The University of Queensland 2002 2 Table of Contents List of Abbreviations 3 List of Illustrations 4 Abstract 5 Introduction 6 Chapter 1 Handsome Beginnings 14 Development of the Supreme Court of Queensland 21 ‘A most handsome addition’ 24 Within the walls 31 Chapter 2 Deterioration 35 Difficulties and decline A question of control Abandoned plans, forgotten commissions, itinerant judges Chapter 3 Desertion 36 Revival of the District Court Pyrrhic victory Building on backflips Court on trial Court undefended Chapter 4 Development 58 Excavations and explanations ‘Debt’, delay and disruption The Supreme Court fire Whose courts are they anyway? The modern era Conclusion 77 Bibliography 107 3 List of Abbreviations BCC Brisbane City Council BDA Brisbane Development Association BC Brisbane Courier CM Courier-Mail QBN Queensland Bar News QPD Queensland Parliamentary Debates QWHA Queensland Women's Historical Association RAIA Royal Australian Institute of Architects RAIAQ Royal Australian Institute of Architects (Queensland Chapter) RHSQ Royal Historical Society of Queensland RSSILA Returned Soldiers' and Sailors' Imperial League of Australia 4 List of Illustrations 1 Conjectural map, Moreton Bay penal settlement c. 1826 14 Reproduced from Graham De Gruchy, Brisbane’s city centre. A study of change in the built environment. PhD thesis, University of Queensland, 1977, p. 57a, courtesy of the author. 2 Moreton Bay Plan No. 2 (extract), in JH Tyrer, 16 History of the Brisbane Hospital and its affiliates. A pilgrim’s progress. Brisbane: Boolarong, 1993, p. 4. 3 Elevation and floor plans of Moreton Bay hospital buildings, 16 c.1835, in Tyrer, Pilgrim's progress, p. 5. 4 Old Court, c. 1880, from Ian Cameron, 23 125 years of State public works in Queensland, 1859-1984. Bowen Hills: Boolarong, 1989, p. 83. 5 Old Court, c.1901, from black and white photograph, 23 Works Department file, A/6803, QSA. 6 Old Court Ground and First Floor plans, from 35 Department of Works, Supreme Court of Brisbane historical survey, Brisbane, 1968. 7 Public Lands Building, c.1882, Views of Brisbane, 39 Queensland folder, Applied History Centre, University of Queensland. 8 'In Memoriam', Ian Gall editorial cartoon, 57 from Courier-Mail, 29 December 1965. 9 Works Minister J. Bjelke-Petersen and Costains Australia Pty Ltd 66 officers on the occasion of the execution of contracts for Stage I, Law Courts Complex, 14 March 1967, from The Queensland Master Builder, 23 March 1967, p. 7. 10 Pine trees, south-west corner of Law Courts Complex, 66 28 April 2002, author's photograph. 11 Partially demolished Old Court, October 1968, from 71 Courier-Mail, 10 October 1968. 12 'Foundation' stone, District Court building, Law Courts Complex, 71 28 April 2002, author's photograph. Note: Additional illustrations appear in Appendix 1, and a separate list of references is contained at the end of that Appendix. 5 Abstract This is a study of the site of Brisbane’s superior law courts, a site dedicated to official use since European settlement in 1824, and associated with the administration of justice since 1879. The study focuses particularly on the transition from the original Italianate colonial courthouse (the 'Old Court') to the current complex. This transition, begun in 1965, was finally completed in 1981, and was greatly influenced by the tensions in the relationship between the executive, judiciary and the city’s legal profession. Central to that relationship was the control wielded by the executive over the premises of the judiciary. Improvements and alterations to the courthouse were ultimately at the discretion of government and the public works bureaucracy. As the Old Court’s physical and spatial inadequacies multiplied and successive Labor administrations turned a blind eye, the judiciary and profession lapsed into resigned apathy, adopting an insularity that blinded them to the underlying heritage value of the colonial building. Plans by the conservative Nicklin coalition after its election in 1957 to provide new courts – while preserving the Old Court – were undone firstly by spirited public reaction against any interference with the colonial building, and later by the diffidence and obstinacy of the legal fraternity. Notwithstanding their lack of any formal power, the lawyers influenced Government decisions on the court issue and demonstrated a pragmatic preference for a new complex on the same site, heedless of the adverse impact on the Old Court. By the start of 1963 the Nicklin government's previously sympathetic attitudes toward the Old Court had changed. Realising that new courts provided an opportunity for a project symbolic of its commitment to progress through development, the government favoured demolition. In August 1963 the lawyers and the government colluded to condemn the Old Court, when a sub-committee involving judiciary, bureaucracy and executive formally recommended that the colonial courthouse be demolished and new buildings erected. The subsequent development process was a concrete demonstration of the Country-Liberal coalition’s ethos of progress, and an early episode in the period of insensitive development that characterised the ‘anti-heritage’ era of the coming decades. Both the Nicklin and Bjelke- Petersen administrations lauded the project as a manifestation of progress through official action. Once the decision to demolish was secured, however, the legal fraternity slumped back into apathy, allowing the executive government to claim total ownership of the project. The distance between judiciary, profession and executive – though narrowed during the early 1960s when government and lawyers colluded as to demolition – was a yawning gulf by the opening of the new complex in 1981. This study uses a chronological narrative to examine this process of change, treating the site as a ‘document’ in order to elicit the actions and attitudes that have influenced its use and appearance. To demonstrate the cultural heritage significance of the site, the study also canvasses cases and events of legal and political importance associated with the law courts housed upon it. Given the site’s dedication to official service since European settlement in 1824, its long association with the administration of justice, and the very process of transition from Old Court to new, it is argued that it possesses cultural heritage significance. 6 Introduction After being admitted to practise as a solicitor in the Supreme Court of Queensland in January 2001 I then worked in the George Street courthouse for a number of months. Seeking a viable thesis subject and having conducted some initial research into the colonial courthouse that had previously sat on the George Street site, I became interested in exploring the reasons why the current replaced the previous. On confirming that all other state capitals retain colonial courthouses within which their Supreme Courts have sat (or, in Victoria’s case, continue to sit), my interest was heightened, and I determined to investigate the forces that had left Brisbane’s legal profession alone in practising without a physical past. A brief reconnoitre at the outset of research revealed that thirty- three regional courthouses – in Townsville’s case, the site of a former courthouse – appear on the Queensland Heritage Register (the ‘Heritage Register’); yet the principal home of the state’s Supreme Court is absent. What, then, was behind the disappearance of the former building? Arson is the accepted cause, the old building torched by vagrant on a destructive spree one night in September 1968. The photographs and artwork of the fire-ravaged colonial pile that hang in the contemporary building’s foyer graphically underscore this accepted wisdom, stark illustrations of the random criminal act that robbed the city and her legal profession of a grand historical edifice, composition of one of Brisbane’s most significant architects, professional home to some of the nation’s foremost lawyers, leaders and jurists. 7 Yet further research revealed a story with greater complexity. A story involving judicial and professional antipathy, executive neglect, and, in time, a shared commitment to demolish the building regarded as architect Francis Stanley’s most significant public work. For by the time of the 1968 fire, the grand old Italianate colonial courthouse already stood doomed, condemned not by a ranting delinquent but the calculated machinations of the conservative government and the state’s Supreme Court judiciary. The arsonist’s torch merely hastened the building’s demise, cheating the demolition contractors of a day or two’s reward. Purposes and approach This study explores the processes that led to the condemnation of the Old Court, and in doing so seeks to provide an historical evaluation of the site’s cultural heritage values. It is argued that through its use since settlement, its long association with law and justice, and its later association with the executive, the site possesses significance as assessed against the statutory criteria set out in the Queensland Heritage Act 1992. The study is structured as a lengthy historical context report ('HCR'), ordered chronologically. This approach enables events of significance and the various historical forces that have impacted upon the site to be clearly identified and explored, and

Load more