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Can Brisbane Remain a Subtropical City?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2016

Peter Spearritt
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Extract

As the seasons change, public and private gardens become a riot of colour. Winter shows the scarlet flags of poinsettia – Brisbane's emblem, which, if really a Mexican beauty, has made itself very much at home. The lavender glow of jacaranda and the gold of laburnum, the green umbrella of poinciana crowned with gleaming scarlet, the massed magnificence of magenta bougainvillea, the creamy blossoms and heavy tropical scent of frangipani filling the air with sweetness, the glare of cannas, the pink and white of bauhinia, the old-gold feathers of silky oak and the red and green of hibiscus – these are but a few of the array of colours.

C. C. D. Brammall

Brisbane has been relentlessly cleared since the first British soldiers and convicts set up at Redcliffe and then moved to the site we know as Brisbane today. As in other Australian colonies the new settlers were keen to grow crops and to exploit the timber both as a building material and later as a rich source of export income. While early explorers and botanists recorded the richness of the vegetation most new settlers saw the landscape as a resource to be exploited, not a pristine environment to be treated with respect.

Type
Special Issue: TROPICAL PLEASURES: A Focus on Queensland Gardens. Papers of the 24th National Australian Garden History Society, Brisbane 11–13 July 2003.
Information
Queensland Review , Volume 10 , Issue 2: Special Issue: Tropical Pleasures: A Focus on Queensland Gardens. Papers of the 24th National Australian Garden History Society, Brisbane 11-13 July 2003. , November 2003 , pp. 25 - 35
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 

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References

Notes

1 Brammall, C. C. D., ‘Brisbane, the City of Go-As-You-Please’, Walkabout, Jul. (1937): 32.Google Scholar

2 Gum, K. Spearritt, P., The Greenspace Audit, (Brisbane: Brisbane Institute 2003). On the destruction of mangroves and river mouths by canal development see P. Hutchings and P. Saenger, Ecology of Mangroves, (St Lucia: UQP, 1987): 175, 305-6. On land speculation see J. Forbes and P. Spearritt, ‘The National Hobby of Property Speculation’ in Griffith Review, Summer (2003).Google Scholar

3 Quoted in Johnston, R., Brisbane, the First Thirty Years. (Boolarong Publications 1988): 19.Google Scholar

4 Op cit: 34.Google Scholar

5 Garran's Australasian Illustrated, (1888): 45-46, reprinted in Brisbane History Group, Brisbane by 1888: the public image, (Brisbane 1988).Google Scholar

6 Garran, op cit: 46-47, 36-39. See also G. Washington Power, in Cassell's Picturesque Australasia, (1887), reprinted in Brisbane by 1888.Google Scholar

7 Traill, W. H., ‘Historical Review of Queensland’ in Australasia Illustrated, (1888), reprinted in Brisbane by 1888: 109–p110.Google Scholar

8 Op cit: 101.Google Scholar

9 Willougby, H., ed. Australian Pictures, (London, Religious Tract Society 1886), reprinted in Brisbane by 1888.Google Scholar

10 Morris, E. E. ‘South Queensland’ in Cassell, op cit: 122.Google Scholar

11 Steele, J. G., The Brisbane River, (Adelaide: Rigby 1984): 49.Google Scholar

12 On Jenner see Fry, Gavin and Mahoney, Bronwyn, Issac Walter Jenner, (Sydney: Beagle Press 1994). The illustration is reproduced in Peter Spearritt ed., Seeing Brisbane 1881-2001, (Brisbane: Brisbane Institute 2002).Google Scholar

13 See Fisher, R. B., B. Crozier eds, The Queensland House, (Brisbane: Queensland Museum 1994); see also Ian Evans and the National Trust of Queensland, The Queensland House: history and conservation, (Mullumbimby: Flannel Flower Press 2001).Google Scholar

14 On Bustard and Trompf see Australian Dictionary of Biography. On the use of Aboriginal figures and imagery by European painters and graphic artists see Roman Black, Old and New in Aboriginal Art, (Sydney: Angus and Robertson 1964), Peter Spearritt: ‘Australian Iconography in Poster Art’ in All the Rage: The Poster in Victoria 1850-2000, (State Library of Victoria 2001): 25-32 and ‘Western Australia in text and image, 1920s to 1960s’ in New Norcia Studies 11 (2003): 12–17.Google Scholar

15 Queensland Journey: Official Guide of the Queensland Government Tourist Bureau, (Brisbane: Meehan 1939). Born in Townsville in 1917, Christensen wrote this landscape format 272 page illustrated guide in his early twenties. He went on to found Meanjin in Brisbane in 1940. The guide was published in two different formats, the other with 146 pages. Both had paid advertisements.Google Scholar

16 Lack, Clem, ‘Australia's third city celebrates’, Walkabout, June (1959): 16. The umbrella tree (Schefflera actinophylla), is the only native tree that was commonly planted in Brisbane.Google Scholar

17 Published by Oswald Zeigler for the Brisbane City Council.Google Scholar

18 See Royal Australian Institute of Architects, Qld chapter, Buildings of Queensland, (Jacaranda Press 1959). The increasingly popularity of building directly onto the concrete slab and the spread of the neo-Tuscans is well documented in residential property magazines including Queensland Homes, (1985 to the present) and the Saturday property supplement in The Courier Mail.Google Scholar

19 On the extent of private land holdings, population densities and land clearing in South East Queensland see SEQ 2021.qld.gov.au and updates.Google Scholar