“Floating About on the Wide World”: William Pettigrew at Woogaroo, 1849-1853*
“Floating About on the Wide World”: William Pettigrew at Woogaroo, 1849-1853* Elaine Brown History Philosophy, Religion and Classics, University of Queensland Woogaroo is a placename rarely mentioned in Queensland today, although it was well-known in colonial times. It began as the Aboriginal name of a rainforested creek, which flowed from the south into the Brisbane River at one of the river’s bigger bends. According to the ethnologist F. J. Watson, Woogaroo was a Yugurubul word meaning “cool”, and it probably indicated a place on the creek where there was cool water.1* 2During the convict period (1825-1842), travellers on the primitive track between Brisbane and Ipswich had to cross Woogaroo Creek, and a punt was moored there to assist them. On the Ipswich side of the creek, at a government station known as Redbank, a small number of soldiers and convicts looked after a flock of sheep.“ On the Brisbane side, before entering the river, Woogaroo Creek curves around a high, flat-topped ridge, which has splendid views upstream, downstream, and across the river to the floodplain of Prior’s Pocket. No developer has ever exploited this magnificent spot, because it has always been government land. During the 1840s, it became a police post and the residence of Dr Stephen Simpson, the Commissioner for Crown Lands. In 1865, Simpson’s unpretentious house was replaced by a substantial, two-storey, stone building — the Men’s Quarters of the Woogaroo Lunatic Asylum, now euphemistically renamed the Wolston Park Psychiatric Hospital. Today, an avenue of tall hoop pine trees leads to the edge of the Wolston Park golf course, where a small, rectangular, brick building occupies the site of Simpson’s residence and the now demolished Men’s Quarters.
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