Tales of Brisbane

There is a forgotten house nestled precariously high above Adelaide Street in Brisbane between Queen and Wharf Streets. It was centre stage in the birth of the state of Queensland and its separation from New South Wales in 1859. It is number 410 Adelaide Street, right next door to St John’s Cathedral

Observe the balcony in this recent picture. It is from here that the first Governor of the new state, Sir George Bowen, read the proclamation of the State of Queensland.

Back then it was called Adelaide House and was on the highest point in Brisbane, with views over the Brisbane River to Kangaroo Point. Neither was it pitched on the edge of a cliff. Then it was the apex of a hill, as can be dimly seen in the distance in the historic picture of Adelaide Street below.

Since then there has been considerable work on Adelaide Street, widening it in parts and cutting its path through the hill to create the cliff.  The city fathers almost a hundred years ago, in 1928, instigated the cutting down of the hill to improve access to Petrie Bight, which, close to new city wharves at the end of Boundary Street, boomed in the 1920s as a warehousing district.But that is another story. 

Let’s recall that heady day on the balcony at Adelaide house.

Thirty eight year old Sir George Ferguson Bowen was appointed the first Governor of Queensland. He was a highly educated, intellectually minded official not renowned for incisive decision-making who, like many later governors, came from a Protestant Irish Establishment background. 

He arrived in Brisbane from the Ionian island of Corfu in Greece, a well-fortified English staging post for the Crimean War, where he had become accustomed to authoritarian, military rule.

Following his appointment, he, his Greek wife Lady Diamantina, and baby daughter Nina sailed to his new domain via Sydney on the sloop HMS Cordelia. During the voyage both Sir George and Lady Bowen suffered repeated bouts of seasickness, but they arrived in Moreton Bay at sunset, Friday December 9 fresh and eager for their challenge. 

They were met at the mouth of the Brisbane River by a welcoming party in a small Royal Navy paddle-wheel steamer, Breadalbane, whichtook themupstream on a hot, 33 degree December Saturday. All along their journey up the river, they were enthusiastically greeted by paddle steamers filled with sightseers, fireworks, bunting and flags; one local citizen, a Mr Gaskarth, renamed his yacht the Lady Bowen and flew the Greek flag in honour of her homeland. 

Then four thousand people lined the river banks near the Botanic Gardens and gave them ‘a most wholehearted and joyous welcome’, after which they were taken by vice-regal carriage along dusty streets to the temporary vice-regal residence – the said Adelaide House, vacated and leased for three years to them by the owner Dr William Hobbs, the Government Health Officer and Surgeon. There Diamantina held 16-month-old Nina high over Adelaide Street for the crowd to see. Later that day, from the same veranda, Sir George read the proclamation of the State of Queensland.

These two pictures show a side and rear view of the house as it is today, with little to remind us of its place in history. I believe it is now The Deanery, St John’s Cathedral.