Capalaba & Sheldon Capalaba town looking north. Clockwise from middle left: Mobil garage, Old Cleveland Rd, original Capalaba Hotel and beer garden, Danny Holzapfel’s garage, 1965 HP0791 Capalaba town looking north. 1965 HP0791 WARNING: Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples should be aware that this document may contain the images and/or names of people who have passed away. Information and images from resources held in Local History Collections, Redland Libraries. Local History website [email protected] or 3829 8311 1 | P a g e Contents Reviewed & updated May 2021 Quandamooka people ...................................................................................................................................................... 3 Settlement ........................................................................................................................................................................ 6 A school ............................................................................................................................................................................ 8 The Divisional Boards ....................................................................................................................................................... 9 1902 ................................................................................................................................................................................ 10 Capalaba School 1939 .................................................................................................................................................... 14 A PIECE OF HISTORY - 2 SEPTEMBER 1945 ..................................................................................................................... 16 Council Amalgamation 1949 .......................................................................................................................................... 17 Drive-in Theatre ............................................................................................................................................................. 19 The Leslie Harrison Dam ................................................................................................................................................. 21 Capalaba High School ..................................................................................................................................................... 23 Sheldon ........................................................................................................................................................................... 23 The Commonwealth Games ........................................................................................................................................... 23 Expo 88 ........................................................................................................................................................................... 24 Redlands Indigiscapes Centre......................................................................................................................................... 25 1973 ................................................................................................................................................................................ 27 Population boom ............................................................................................................................................................ 28 2021 ................................................................................................................................................................................ 29 Tingalpa Creek Bridges ................................................................................................................................................... 30 Coolnwynpin Creek Bridges ........................................................................................................................................... 35 Sources: .......................................................................................................................................................................... 37 Appendix 1...................................................................................................................................................................... 39 Owen brothers’ store and garage, Old Cleveland Road Capalaba West, 1950s HP00224 2 | P a g e Quandamooka people have lived on and around this area for tens of thousands of years. Geological evidence dates occupation at a minimum of 21,000 years. Local people identify the Noonucal, Gorenpul and Nughi as the traditional owners of the Island and adjoining areas. Food supplies were plentiful. Fishing, hunting and gathering were part of the communal economy, with people collecting food according to their carrying capacity, and food shared according to families’ needs. Dugong as well as fish such as mullet and tailor were caught with nets, sometimes aided by dolphins. Turtle and shellfish were also collected. Oysters, mullet, crabs, cowrie, prawns, cockles, eugarie, mussels and turtle were common foods at different times of the year. Other foods hunted and collected at different times of the year included kangaroo, wallaby, goannas, flying foxes, birds, possum, and bandicoots, native fruits and berries, honey, and drinks made from flowers. Bungwal/dingowa the rhizome of a fern, was pounded into flour, to make a type of damper or bread, and once a year a journey was made to the Bunya Mountains to gather bunya nuts, which could also be used the same way, or eaten roasted or fresh. This journey was either made on foot following well-worn tracks, or at least part of the way via the Maiwar (Brisbane River) which had the advantage of being able to carry the huge Bunya nut cones home and across Quandamooka land and islands. Nuts could weigh upwards of 10kg, could be eaten raw, roasted or ground between stones to make flour, which was used to make what would later be called journey-cakes (or Johnnie cakes). Grind stones have been dated back more than 30,000 years, making Aboriginal people the world’s first bakers. Google maps Corroborees and other ceremonies were an integral part of community life, and huge regional celebrations were likely to have had ceremonial, spiritual, social, cultural and economic significance. When the first Europeans arrived in the area in the 1820s, Aboriginal people in the area we now call Redland City numbered more than 5,000. 3 | P a g e Campsites and permanent dwellings existed wherever there was fresh water nearby, and according to early Europeans, large villages existed in the area of the Bloomfield and Middle Streets intersection between Ross Creek and Doobawah (Raby Bay); Ormiston near Hilliards Creek; near Eprapah Creek near the site of Lake Sherrin Homes for the Aged on Boundary Road Thornlands; and ‘down from the Capalaba Rifle Range’ so possibly to the west of Judy Holt Park where a creek with waterholes runs through, and on into Tarradarrapin Creek. The banks of Tingalpa Creek (named Tunim Creek for a short time in the 1840s) were also well populated, along with Moogurrapum, Coolnwynpin and around many smaller seasonal creeks and some deep water-holes. Tracks existed between these sites, and these were later used by Europeans, becoming roads. Other tracks continued on to the Brisbane River (Maiwar) and out to the Toowoomba Range, and north to the Bunya Mountains. One such waterhole was described in Oral History interviews with early Capalaba residents Tom Blunt and his sister Iris Daley, who spoke about their childhood in the southern part of Capalaba, and a large water hole that they frequently visited. Tom: We used to go and swim there. There was a beautiful big waterhole that was tidal and salty, and it was down where another little Creek run in from Mt Petrie. We used to call it The Pocket, and that would be about a quarter of a mile up from the dam wall. Everybody from Capalaba used to go and swim in that what we called The Pocket. It was beautiful and deep. Otherwise, that was all timbered. Where the dam was, it was mostly timbered. Your sister Iris spoke of an area on the creek that had big sandstone cliffs. Whereabouts would that have been? That was on our property. It was actually a tributary to Tingalpa Creek. It would have been part of Stockyard Creek, and it was like a big elbow, the shape of it, and on one side of it was huge cliffs, you know, 50 or 60 feet high, vertical. On the other side it just tapered up to a normal slope, and we had a boat on that. There were a lot of fish, and there were actually caves in under the water in that. There were big rocks used to come up in dry time, but it never went dry. It was just completely fed, and it was a huge hole, but that again is totally submerged now. QImagery 1936 Iris: Now, you did say to me that some of the old people living at Capalaba when you moved here had told you about how some of the Aboriginals used the waterholes. Well, we were told that the Aboriginals used to come right up from way up Ipswich and further on, Beaudesert and that, because those lagoons never went dry. They were very deep. We used to swim in them and you could be swimming along, and all of a sudden it would get icy cold, which would indicate how deep it was. We were told that Capalaba to the Aboriginals meant "Place of Many Waters." And do you remember what sort of wildlife,