HISTORICAL SKETCH OF QUEENSLAND

Atlas Page 54
By W. H. Traill

THE FIRST SETTLEMENT

THE spot named Redcliff by Flinders during his exploration of the bay was selected for the settlement and considerable buildings were there erected. For reasons not now very apparent, the site was found disappointing; the settlement was abandoned, and a fresh lodgment was made on the banks of the river Brisbane, and thus, though not with perfect prescience, the nucleus of the present capital of the colony of Queensland was formed.

This removal, however, did not take place till some time subsequent to Oxley’s second visit above referred to, and while preparations were proceeding under Lieutenant Millar, the officer in charge, to found the original settlement, Oxley, accompanied by Allan Cunningham and Lieutenant Butler, made a fresh expedition up the river. On this occasion, he proceeded as far as his boat could be navigated, and there, leaving the river, he and Cunningham made an expedition on foot, ascended an eminence, and obtained an extensive view over the whole of what is now the West Moreton district, extending as far as the Albert River, the course of which was inferred from the line of native fires which threw up their thin spirals of smoke against the dark majestic background of the main range, now known as Macpherson’s.

In May, 1826, Sir Thomas Brisbane himself visited the place, and confirmed the last selected situation with his approval. Less impressionable than Oxley, Sir Thomas seems to have been inaccessible to the inspirations of the noble river and the rich vegetation which clothed and embellished its banks. His mind appeared closed to conceptions which lay outside the ordinary channels of his functions as a keeper of convicts. The site for the new penal depot mainly commended itself to his approbation as being "difficult for escape." In his despatch on the subject to his superiors in England, Brisbane appears to have had Earl Bathurst’s lamentable inclination for free colonisation in his thoughts, and to have insinuated a rebuke when he included in his remarks the sage aphorism that "the establishment of penal depots is the best means of paving the way for the introduction of free populations." Whatever might have been the aberration of Earl Bathurst, it is certain that Governor Brisbane could reckon upon official and general recognition of his sentiment as an incontrovertible truism. Although that theory has been discarded by British politicians, it still lingers somewhat; and, until the French have ceased the attempt to colonise New Caledonia on the principles of Sir Thomas Brisbane and his contemporaries, these ideas cannot be regarded as entirely superseded.

Sir Thomas ordered that the buildings at Redcliff should be abandoned to the natives, apparently prompted by the sort of generosity which induces some charitable people to exclaim, "This thing is utterly useless; give it to some poor person." The deserted houses received from the new owners, to whom they were about as valuable a gift as a church organ might have been, the name of Humpy Bong, which in the aboriginal dialect signifies the "dead -houses." This name the locality still bears, although traces of the buildings would be hard to discover. It is possible that the ingenious vandalism of land auctioneers may ere long replace the traditional name by some more pompous designation, for, after forty years of neglect and contempt, the rejected site for the settlement is now attracting the attention of Brisbane citizens panting for the breezes and longing for the waters of the sea, and thousands of pounds have but recently been paid for areas there that, till within the last half-dozen years, could have been purchased for a less number of pennies.

Lieutenant Oxley’s connection with the fortunes of Moreton Bay settlement, and indeed with Australian exploration, appears to have ended about this time. Sickness and infirmity seized upon him, and robbed him of his vigour and activity. His name must ever live so long as the story of Australian exploration is preserved. But here he disappears from prominent notice. No marble perpetuates his services and his fame; but perhaps his best monument endures in the tributary of the Brisbane River and the adjacent district, which bear his name. His spirit was unabated when his infirmities reduced him to inaction. Mr. Barron Field, writing about this time, says of Oxley, whose friend he was, "That such indeed is the ardour to finish what he has so successfully begun and continued, that he would sooner resign that valuable and important office (surveyor-generalship) than suffer another to bear away from him the honours of New Holland interior discovery."

CAPTAIN LOGAN.

IN the year 1825 Captain Logan, of the 57th Regiment, was sent up from Sydney to take charge of the little settlement. This had as yet but small dimensions, the entire population about this time being recorded at only forty-three males and two females. It was not till August in the following year that Moreton Bay was proclaimed a penal settlement, a formality rendered necessary to legalise, under the provisions of an Act specially passed for the purpose, the transfer of prisoners from the older stations at Sydney and Port Macquarie, I the chief justice having questioned, the right of the governor to make such removals. From this time the expansion of the establishment was rapid and the character of its inmates deplorable. Moreton Bay was a place for the disposal of doubly-convicted criminals. The discipline appears to have been terribly severe. Logan was a man of energetic and resolute character; his military career had been distinguished. He had served in America, and had participated in the Peninsula war, under Wellington, in six general actions. During the whole duration of the convict settlement in Moreton Bay, flogging seems to have been of frightful frequency, and a feeling of exasperation and desperation was engendered among the wretched prisoners.

The chain gangs endured an existence which robbed death of its terrors. The ferocious cruelty of the overseers drove the despairing convicts to expedients quite inconceivable were they not vouched for by the records of the supreme tribunals in Sydney. To secure a transient abatement of their torments by promotion to the comparatively desirable position of doomed murderers voyaging in fetters and filth to Sydney, there unfailingly to be hanged, it was fashionable for frantic ruffians to knock out the brains of their next neighbour on the chain. Batches of such ill-starred wretches were periodically forwarded to Sydney. In the dock such a man has on more than one occasion protested that he bore to the comrade who fell under the blow of his pick or hammer no ill-will. The fatal stroke was justified as an act of kindness to the recipient, at the same time that its delivery equally ensured to the murderer release, only a little more tardy, from the unsupportable horrors of the chain-gang, and from an existence which had ceased to be alleviated even by hope.

But the determined temper of Logan found, happily, other avenues in which to expend itself besides imposing a merciless discipline upon the unhappy wretches subjected to his despotic authority. He was a vigorous explorer and an energetic founder. He kept everyone busy. Under his impulse, building, clearing, and cultivation progressed apace. A massive range of buildings for prisoners barracks originated, in its long facade, the alignment of what is now the principal street of Brisbane. That structure served in later years successively for the first houses of parliament and for the supreme court, and it is but a few years since the building was demolished and the site sold for business establishments. A windmill was reared on the abrupt and elevated knoll which dominates the town. It subsequently served as an observatory for watching, and still is utilised as a tower for signalling the approach of vessels. Extensive clearings were effected, and the beautiful but obstructive scrubs which clothed, the low alluvial tongue of land where government house now stands, and on the south side of the river facing -the settlement, disappeared before the axes of gangs of prisoners. Logan’s industrial projects were not, however, always directed -by a knowledge equal to his enterprise’. The overseers were allowed a money bonus for every acre -cleared, and, when out of the range of the commandant’s personal supervision, appear to have abused the privilege. It is alleged that they stripped poor thinly-timbered land of its shade in preference to clearing for cultivation richer but thickly-timbered soil. A story is also related of a ludicrous sowing of the prepared rice of commerce in expectation of a crop which, as one narrator observes, is just as though pearl barley had been planted.

Logan, despite these episodes, did much excellent work. The discovery of the river which now bears his name was one result of the expeditions he pushed in every direction into the intricate and native-haunted bush which surrounded the settlement. He it was also who voyaged up the Bremer Creek, the principal affluent of the Brisbane. Finding, at the highest point subject to the influence of the tide and accessible to boats, abundant outcrops of limestone rocks and almost equally plentiful indications of coal, he sent up an overseer and five convicts to construct a kiln. The aborigines immediately evinced so menacing a disposition that the pioneers were shortly followed by a corporal and three privates. Thus protected, the industry prospered, and quantities of lime were produced for use in the buildings at the main settlement, now the city of Brisbane, where the population had at one period of Logan’s rule risen to between one thousand and fifteen hundred. But these were bondsmen, with the exception of a century of soldiers and the civil staff. No free person was permitted to visit or settle without first procuring a special license.

Meanwhile, however, the happier future of the district was remotely approaching from an unthought –of direction. From the hill whereon stands the observatory —the old windmill —may be seen, well away to the westward, a range of lofty mountains breaking the sky-line. These lay far beyond the scope of Logan’s exploratory enterprise. Even imagination, wearied and satiated wit speculation respecting the untravelled country which intervened between the farthest point reached from the settlement and the base of that formidable hill-barrier, drooped before the problem of what lay beyond.

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