THE sea-borne voyager of old time —thrashing along from south to north in his bluff-bowed barque, skirting the eastern coast of New Holland by day, the better to pursue his mission of discovery, and hauling off or lying to by night to avert disaster —gave somewhat unwittingly to the land-marks which to-day distinguish the line of separation between New South Wales and Queensland, names of menacing import. When the later maritime explorer learned that the imposing mountain which, turbaned with cloud, rears its stately head far inland, is Mount Warning, and that the jutting cape to seaward of which a seething jumble of breakers tell of jagged submarine reefs, is Point Danger, so named by the ordinarily undaunted Cook, the idea that he was approaching a grim and forbidding region may have germinated in his mind. Portals with names so minatory and foreboding seemed to announce and presage a land

—Of antres vast and desarts idle,
Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose head touch heaven,

a land peopled by

—Cannibals that each other eat,
The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders.

And, indeed, the report and tradition derived from the earliest voyager cannot but have given particular applicability to such conceptions.

The view from seaward, at this, the commencement of the Queensland coast, is indeed somewhat savage and repelling. Point Danger is not of itself peculiarly alarming. Its real ferocity is disguised —its hungry, jagged teeth of rocks lie hidden under the foam which they churn. The bold forehead of the cape is generally placid and sunny. But inland the eye searches in vain for any sign of gentleness and invitation, and sees only a labyrinth of harsh, jumbled hills, dominated here and there by abrupt basaltic peaks, of which Mount Warning is but one. More remote, Mounts Lindsay and Barney can be distinguished, each rivalling Mount Warning in height, and each surpassing it in the abruptness of its scarped cliffs.

Sailing northward, the stately bluff, Burleigh Head, named after Elizabeth’s solemn councillor, next looms in view, more imposing in its majestic immobility than that of its sponsor, whose nod was so impressive. Next, a long stretch of yellow sand —a seven-mile galloping-ground, and then a gap in the coast line through which a glimpse may be caught of white houses and cottages. The gap is the southernmost entrance to Moreton Bay, where Nerang Creek has broken through the sandhills to the ocean and detached Stradbroke Island. The habitations are those of Southport, the most favoured seaside retreat for Brisbane citizens. Fifteen years ago the site of Southport was the selection of an amphibious settler who maintained there a little public-house, patronised by a few timber-getters, and who, with supplies for his own and other homesteads, navigated from Brisbane a ship’s long-boat, decked over, through the narrow and tortuous mangrove-skirted channel which, behind Stradbroke Island, constitutes the southern extremity of Moreton Bay. To-day the place is dotted with villas and cottages, one of the finest hotels in Queensland faces the beach, small steamers ply regularly to and from Brisbane, a railway is contemplated, and the capital value of the township probably approaches half a million sterling.

Proceeding north, the coast becomes a monotonous stretch of miserable sandhills, clothed with a vegetation of poor timber, till a deep embayment is reached. This is the entrance to Moreton Bay, between Stradbroke and Moreton Islands. It was exclusively used for access to the Bay until the wreck of the "Sovereign" in 1847, and Captain Wickham’s survey of the entrance at Cape Moreton, after which it was but occasionally used, and for years has been completely neglected. Quite recently, however, in 1887, Captain South, an experienced coastal navigator, explored and discovered a new and superior channel among the sandbanks of the south entrance. This, which is available in fine weather, appears destined to enjoy a revival of favour, as by passing through it, a distance of about sixty miles is saved in the voyage from Brisbane to the south.

Moreton Island presents no features distinguishing it from Stradbroke until Cape Moreton is reached. There, rocks protrude through the sandy soil, and constitute a headland of moderate elevation, crowned by a light-house of white stone and the cottages of the employés. To Moreton Bay there is no northern headland; the coast in that direction is low and wooded.

Considerable confusion of names assails the student who endeavours to connect the capes, indentations, and other features of the northeastern coast of Queensland, with the discoveries and observations of successive voyagers. By these the same places were not Unfrequently named independently, and some names were erroneously applied to places quite distinct, where the later voyager thought he recognised a spot previously described and mapped by one of his predecessors. Few persons, probably, have any conception of the amount of adventurous research bestowed upon these coasts long before the idea that they would become scenes of the industry of Europeans had arisen. Cook in 1770, laboriously outlined this seaboard. In 1789, the celebrated Bligh, in the course of the extraordinary boat-voyage already referred to in this work, consequent on the mutiny on board the "Bounty," skirted the northernmost moiety of this coast and amidst all the severe sufferings of his almost hopeless situation, had the courage and constancy` to keep a record of his observations. Flinders twice skirted these shores-once, in 1799, in the "Norfolk"; and again, in 1802, in the "Investigator.’ Lieutenant Jeffreys, R.N. passed up in the "Kangaroo" transport, bound to Ceylon, in the following year, and named many places. The " Porpoise," Lieutenant-Commander Fowler appears to have been on this coast in the same year; but such records as may have been made by that officer seem never to have been published, and are probably pigeon-holed at the Admiralty Office. Perhaps the chief place among the explorers of the Queensland eastern coast may be allotted to Captain, afterwards Admiral, Phillip Parker King, R.N. respecting whom some particulars may be here appropriately introduced.

Captain Phillip Parker King, named after Captain Phillip, the founder of the colony of New South Wales, was the only son of the third governor, Captain Philip Gidley King. He was born at Norfolk Island whilst his father was in charge of the settlement which had been formed there in 1788. At an early age he evinced an appreciation of the charms of exploration, and an aptitude for science and the surveying service, having received deep impressions of the usefulness of the honourable careers of Cook and Flinders.

In 1817, he was entrusted by the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty with the continuation of the surveys of the Australian coast; Captain Flinders’ charts had previously been seized by De Caen, the French governor at the Mauritius, in 1803. Captain King circumnavigated the continent of New Holland three times, and his work, superadded to Flinders’ charts, was long afterwards a by-word amongst mariners for its usefulness and correctness. Becoming intimately acquainted with the "inner route" through Torres Straits, he lost no opportunity in after years of advocating its importance as the safest way to get - beyond and through the dangers of the Great Barrier Reef on the east coast of Australia. On retiring from an important survey of the Straits of Magellan, he settled on his farm at Dunheved, on the South Creek, near Sydney, and devoted his remaining years to scientific pursuits and legislative duties. He was for many years the Commissioner of the Australian Agricultural Company-a post which had previously been filled by Sir Edward Parry, the circumpolar navigator, and by Colonel Dumaresq, who carried to his grave an unextracted bullet received in the battle of Waterloo. Captain King was raised to the rank of rear-admiral before his death, which occurred in 1856. Captain King’s eldest son, the Hon. Philip Gidley King, is a member of the Legislative Council of New South Wales.

King’s voyages were made in the "Bathurst" and in the "Mermaid," a cutter of 84 tons; and on one he was accompanied by Allan Cunningham, in the capacity of naturalist. Oxley, Wickham, Stokes, and Owen-Stanley succeeded King. The two former conducted their explorations in the "Beagle," one of the class of 10-gun brigs which were notorious for the disfavour with which they were regarded by the Navy; Captain Marryat has handed down their nickname of "floating coffins." The "Beagle" had a special history in one particular. She was the only man-of-war which ever ascended the Thames above London Bridge, she having been made to pass under the arch in order to take up a position to deliver a salute at the coronation of George IV. During one of her voyages, she carried as naturalist the afterwards celebrated Charles Darwin.

CHOSEN originally as a location for a penal establishment, the site of Brisbane cannot lay claim to any special advantages. The first lodgment was made on the flat crown of a ridge which dipped sharply and bluffly into the river, but sloped with a gentler declivity in the opposite direction. Roughly outlined, the space available for immediate settlement consisted of a tract shaped like a broad and barbed arrowhead. The river Brisbane defined the two faces of the shape, and the re-entering angle at the base was formed by an abrupt knoll which threw out spurs towards the lower ground, and projected, to right and left, long and elevated ridges which hemmed in the cape formed by the bend of the river. Had the settlement been made for a different purpose, and a score of years earlier, the knoll just mentioned would certainly have been crowned with a fort which would have served equally to protect and to dominate the inhabitants. But the long series of wars, which terminated with the fall of Napoleon, had been ‘or several years concluded. Colonial settlements, even where their value induced attack, were no longer exposed to this sort of danger. Hence, in lieu of a citadel, a windmill was constructed upon the apex of this commanding elevation and gave its present name to Windmill Hill. Standing at the foot, or preferentially upon the top of the old stone tower, which once was the body of the mill, and is not a signal station, the area of the original settlement, now become the business portion of the city lies displayed below. Looking towards the point of the imaginary arrowhead, on the right face the riverbank is high, on the left it is comparatively low. The point itself is of gently undulating land dipping towards the river, and is occupied by the grounds and paddocks of Government House and by the botanical gardens. Nearer the observer, the land is flat for some little distance, and then gently rises towards a long spur extending from the high river bank on the right to the point of the barb on the left, and dipping as it goes. Original minor inequalities of the surface have been modified as the city grew. The position and alignment of the streets of Brisbane have been influenced by the situations chosen for the earliest buildings of the penal establishment. Of these, the dwellings of the official staff were distributed along the high bank of the river facing the water, and sufficiently withdrawn to leave a wide space or esplanade. The line of what is now William Street and of the North Quay was thus fixed. At right angles to this line —and distant a few hundred yards along the ridge already described —leading, down to the other bend of the river, an extensive structure of stone was reared for the accommodation of the male prisoners. At the lower extremity of the same ridge, where a gentle knoll arose a little to the right, a brick building in the form of a hollow square was erected for the females. A small tidal creek laved the base of this knoll, heading from the ridges its brief course into the river. The ridges were forestland, and the lower ground a rich alluvial clad with tropical jungle, amidst which lofty pines reared their crests. One of the first tasks of the prisoners was to clear away this dense growth, and early in the history of the settlement the entire are a of alluvial was planted with maize. Beyond the little creek, the cottage of Mr. Petrie, overseer of works, was located, and his garden occupied the patch of alluvial bounded by the creek, the river, and the ridges, which here stretch down to its bank. A track wound round the face of the slope from the barracks for males to the fields, the direct course of what is now Queen Street being inconveniently steep. But the fa?ade of the first-mentioned building ultimately determined the course of the principal thoroughfare, and until within the last few years its long and hideous wall occupied nearly half of the frontage of One of the best blocks in Queen Street.

The extent of the original survey of the town may be easily learned by a glance at even the most recent map. Commencing, with William Street, a parallel series is observed, all bearing tames of kings or princes-George, Albert, and Edward succeed each other. At right angles, starting along the base of Windmill Hill, a female series is laid out, and Anne, Queen, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Mary, and Margaret Streets follow in that order. Alice Street, which runs across the cape from river bank to river bank, and which forms the boundary of the Government House grounds and botanical gardens, is in all likelihood a later addition, named subsequently to the birth of Queen Victoria’s second daughter.

Unfortunately, but naturally enough, the surveyor laid out merely a village, and moreover an English village. The streets, instead of being suited to climatic conditions —wide and admitting of rows of shade trees-were measured, by the ordinary rule of thumb, one chain wide. This was altered, before any sales were made, to about eighty feet, which is the maximum width of the principal streets of Brisbane. With streets thus restricted, and laid out, moreover, on the "gridiron" plan, it would be too much to expect any particular beauty in the business part of Brisbane; and, architecturally, there is even yet but a single street —Queen Street —of any pretensions. Even in this, the ordinary run of the business premises do not aspire higher than to two storeys, nor to more elegance than can be imparted to brick elevations by stucco ornamentation. Retrospective comparisons, however, serve to solace the minds of the citizens; and anticipations of splendours to come, and of which indications already are afforded, yield encouragement. It is not necessary to be a very old resident for one to be able to remember when the existing buildings replaced wooden one-storey structures of the most primitive bush-town description. A quarter of a century ago Queen Street was fringed with a straggling succession of weather-board huts with shingled roofs which have now all disappeared. And within the past half-dozen years, even the second stage of Australian town architecture has been, to some extent, supplanted by the third, which yet remains to be universally established. The more recent the building the more imposing is, as a rule, its style and dimensions. At the intersection of George Street, one corner is occupied ‘by an elegant building, shaded with verandahs and balconies, which years ago replaced the earlier quarters of the Bank of New South Wales. This faces the neatly- designed, but now somewhat insignificant office of the Registrar-General, shortly to be demolished to make room for a massive pile of government offices more worthy of a site which has frontages to four streets, and comprehends an entire square facing the river, and once the soldiers’ barrack -grounds. This will, when completed, constitute the most splendid public edifice in the Australian colonies. In this square the old military barracks still stand, utilised as office’s for the Colonial Treasurer and his staff —a rectangular, two-storey building of: brick, with dressed stone facings, with iron-barred windows, just as in the old times.

This too, is doomed to disappear. From this intersection, Queen Street slopes downwards, the steepness of the grade having, however, been reduced from its primitive declivity. Where the mean, wooden shanties which crouched beside the Town Hall, and served successively as post office, mines office, and museum, but lately disfigured the street, good substantial shops with plate-glass fronts now stand. Where the old prisoners’ barrack —used after the separation of the colony from New South Wales, first as Parliament Houses and subsequently as Supreme Court buildings —sprawl along the alignment, a similar range of retail establishments and insurance offices now extends and comprises some elevations equally graceful in design and imposing in appearance. At the first corner a very fine block of lofty buildings, worthy of any city, is occupied by various retail trades, and the present fronts are embellished with displays of goods not surpassed by any similar establishments in the older Australian capitals. Even the Town Hall itself, which displays, flush with the pavement, a cut stone façade of considerable pretensions, is not now regarded as worthy of its municipal dignities, and a new and grander building is projected for another site. The downward slope of Queen Street terminates at Edward Street, and a gentle contrary acclivity there commences, while the latter street follows at right angles the course of what has been apparently a cross gully or vale. At the intersection of the two streets, a huge block of buildings six storeys high occupies one corner. As we write, the builders are yet at work, but when complete the structure will be the most extensive in the city, and will accommodate, not merely the machinery and offices of the Brisbane Courier, the leading daily paper, but a multitude of other establishments. It will be the pioneer in providing the modern convenience of elevators to give access to the upper suites, and its dimensions would make it remarkable in any city in Australia. An opposite corner is occupied by a very fine building with a pillared front of beautifully white freestone —the premises of the Australian Mutual Provident Society. It is not many years since this site was taken up by a congeries of the meanest sort of tumbledown wooden stores, in the occupation of the humblest class of dealers. A certain degree of progress was, however, imparted to this corner when, on an extensive conflagration sweeping away some of the better-class stores up the street, the proprietors reopened in this quarter, which then took the name of Refuge Row. A little higher up, on the same side of the street, a new theatre is also in course of construction, and its stage front and seating accommodation will surpass any provided by the theatres of Sydney or Melbourne when these cities had been. in existence as long as Brisbane now has been. The Post and Telegraph Offices occupy the frontage, where the female convict factory used to face the street, and in the latter term of their existence served as a police court and station. The knoll on which the old building stood has been cut away, and the ground levelled for the foundations of the more recent structure. The latter is elegant rather than impressive. Over one thousand pounds per foot of frontage has been refused for property facing the Post Office. Somewhat lower down, and on the opposite side of the street, stands a magnificent building which at once arrests attention. This is the head office of the Queensland National Bank.

A couple of blocks farther on, the retail business portion of the street is at an end, and the street itself changes its direction and its name The bank of the river has been reached at a sharp bend where the ridges stretched to the water’s edge, and involved heavy cuttings before the road could be carried round their face and flank. On the right are wharves, and on the left, perched aloft on the brink of a formidable cutting, is the stone villa of the Hon. Dr. Hobbs, which was considered, at the time of the arrival of Sir George Bowen, the first governor of Queensland, the best house in the town, and was hired for his accommodation. The cutting at this place has peculiar interest above cuttings in general, inasmuch as in quarrying it several small reefs or veins of quartz were met with in the aluminous schist of which the ridges are composed, and those veins were auriferous. The stone, however, was not regarded as "payable," otherwise serious complications might have ensued, as, no Australian community could submit to have a gold mine inviting enterprise, and not respond to the invitation. As a matter of fact, the entire neighbourhood of Brisbane is of a formation which gives auriferous indications —that is to say, the schist rock is everywhere seamed with veins of quartz. Specimens containing gold are occasionally picked up, but the quartz is, as a rule, barren, or so miserably poor and intermittent in its metalliferous character as to be not worth working. At one time, however, the aspect of the country induced a good deal of "prospecting," which has been almost forgotten, and of which few traces now remain.

The streets running parallel with Queen Street are still strongly marked with the provincial aspect. Retail trade, wherever an overflow from Queen Street has occurred, has generally turned round corners and extended along cross avenues. The higher portions of the parallel streets are consequently occupied for the most part only by small residences, with the exception of Elizabeth Street, where a large livery establishment and the Theatre Royal —a building somewhat primitive alike as to construction and interior fittings —lead down to ranges of shops. For the rest, the buildings are heterogeneous, the modern brick structure standing cheek by jowl alongside of old-time, shingled cottages of wood, and vacant lots. Towards the wharves the case is different. The lower ends of these streets are fronted by blocks of substantial stores and merchants’ offices. Generally, the roadways are macadamised and well-kept, but the footpaths vary from primitive earth to stretches of asphalted concrete, fronting some store or factory of the better class. Part of the area traversed by these streets is "made ground." Originally, there was in the central space a swampy depression which early was endowed with the name of Frog’s Hollow, in consequence of the vocal efforts of the batrachians which made night hideous in its neighbourhood. All this was under maize during the penal occupation, and had been denuded of timber by the prisoners. But it is said that a few trees or stumps were left, to which the refractory or lazy were tied up to be flogged. These, however, must have been in a manner subsidiary or informal punishments, for the regular place of torment was the arched way entering the old factory or barrack in Queen Street. Generally, these streets are devoid of interest. Standing on what was a cultivated field, or on "made ground" of comparatively recent date, they neither claim attention by present development as parts of a modern city nor are they invested with interest by traditional associations.

The case is different in connection with some of the cross streets. William Street we have already stated to owe its alignment to the buildings of the earliest settlement, which were there located. Starting from Queen Street, and proceeding towards the point of our arrowhead, the old military barracks, already mentioned, are first passed. St. John’s Church and the incumbent’s cottage are the next buildings; the church, a temple entirely devoid of architectural adornment, being simply two large barn-like constructions built side by side, and without a dividing wall. At the rear is a peculiar wooden belfry which looks like a remnant of scaffolding, with a tool-house on top, left there by some contractor who had been afflicted by a nightmare of the pointed Gothic breed. Next to the church stands a building, partly new and partly very old —as antiquity goes in Brisbane.

The venerable portion of this building, which is occupied by the Colonial Secretary and his staff, was among the first buildings erected by Captain Logan. It was allotted as quarters to the commissariat officers. A shabby building, looking like a dissenter’s chapel run to seed, stands next, with its gable fronting the street. The history of this building does not belie its appearance. It was in fact the first Baptist chapel erected in Brisbane, sometime in the fifties. As the sect increased in numbers and wealth, they sold this, and it became the property of the government, and after some years of utility as the head telegraph office, is now a branch of the government printing office. The main building occupied by that department, a modern and not inelegant structure of brick, immediately adjoins, and occupies the site where stood the residence of the commandants. Some trees still remain in an adjoining lot which formerly stood in the commandant’s garden. At this point the historical interest ceases, as a few steps further brings one in front of Gardner’s lemonade factory, an extensive establishment of the most aggressively modern utilitarian style, and obviously fitted with all the most recent machinery.

As the saunterer turns to retrace his steps, he notices, on the opposite side of the road, a plain brick building —its façade of one storey, although it gains two additional ones by stretching down the steep bank towards the river, where stands a detached wharf. This is the Immigration Office, with barracks appended. The wharf is the Queen’s, where immigrants land, and used to be the King’s, in the twenties, where arrivals and departures of another class of people took place. Still retracing his steps, the stranger comes upon the Queensland museum, situated, like the Immigration Office, on the slope of the bank. A fine and chaste pillared front of cut freestone faces the street, while an unadorned brick back presents its naked hideousness to the river, and distresses with its obtrusive ugliness the population of South Brisbane across the stream.

Once clear of the museum, a good view is obtained of the Victoria Bridge which, on a prolongation of the line of Queen Street, spans the river and affords access to South Brisbane. The stream is at this point a quarter-mile in width, and is the north bank is considerably more elevated than the land along the river on the south side, the floor of the bridge is on a descending grade. This is not, however, to the eye. The bridge is of simple design; iron perceptible pillars, cylindrical from the bottom to a few feet above the water, from that height assume a slightly conical form. These support plain lattice girders. Footways for pedestrian passengers project beyond the girders on both sides.

Continuing along the riverbank, North Quay is reached. The road here follows the water-side more closely than at William Street, and extends, uninterrupted, a long distance, skirting the bend. This was, in fact, the only piece of "made road" which the free settlers of Brisbane owed to the bond predecessors who had retired to make place, for them. Whilst the roads leading inland had been totally neglected the officers who successively commanded at Brisbane had been careful to make, and to maintain along the beautiful bank of the noble river, this harming drive, which requires but widening, and perhaps increased foliage shade, to become one of the most delightful attached to an Australian capital. On the one hand glides the glimmering river, slightly veiled here and there by remnants of the scrub timber which once densely fringed its marge; on the other, a gentle ridge runs parallel with the road and river, and furnishes sites not all occupied, for villa residences and their grounds.

Before, however, the North Quay assumes a suburban aspect, several public buildings have to be passed. The most interesting of these are the shabby old premises which the new, convenient, and hideous Survey Office superciliously looks down upon. The old cottage was once the soldiers’ hospital, and adjoining, on the site now occupied by the spacious but joining far from beautiful Supreme Court buildings, stood the hospital for prisoners, subsequently, and till a few years ago, occupied as police barracks and superintendent’s quarters. The Supreme Court premises extend over an entire section having frontages, not only to William Street, but also to George Street. The latter presents all the anomalous features of a half-developed avenue in a colonial town. The buildings alternate between the handsome modern and the sordid early, and vacant spaces await filling. Three fine hotel buildings help to embellish George Street —opposite the Supreme Court is Lennon’s, adjoining that is the Imperial, and away on the opposite side, at the end of the street, and next to the botanical gardens, is the Bellevue, the situation of which justifies its name. Each of these hotels is of quite recent construction, commodious, airy, and adapted to the climate. Brisbane is, in fact, peculiarly well provided with hotels, surpassing in that respect, in proportion to its population and other developments, any other of the Australian capitals. Besides the three already named, others equally modern and of generous dimensions stud the city. In the vicinity of the wharves stands the Grand, a roomy house. On, the south side of the river, near the bridge, the Palace and the Bridge Hotels are both fine houses. Facing the railway terminus stands the Transcontinental, and more retired, in an elevated position, where every cooling breeze is felt, is Parishes’. There are other and older houses throughout the city, but it is the architectural development which strikes the eye, and interests by the evidence it affords of the material advancement and progress of the community.

cont...