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The Streets of Toowong Part 1

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Toowong and Districts Shire map, 1902

This is the first part in a series about street names in the Toowong District. This list shows the original estate featuring the state, alternative names for the street and where possible ideas about the origin of the street name. Researched and compiled by Philippa Stanford with many references to books published by TDHS committee members Leigh Chamberlain and Lee Bull.

Toowong and Districts Shire map, 1902

Ada St, Toowong – The New Guinea Estate –

Adsett St, Taringa – possible connection with Mr Adsett, a 70 year old man  who left Lang Farm and became lost in the bush for two days. He was finally found, exhausted, on the beach at Sandgate.

 Agnes St, Auchenflower – Named after the children of the former owner of Torwood, John Douglas  – Annie, John, Agnes

Aldridge St, Auchenflower – Dunmore Estate (Cribb’s Paddock 1899) – Named after one of the original  holders of a deed of grant in the area

Alpha St, Taringa – South Toowong, 1884 – Shown as Government Road on South Toowong Estate Map

Archer St, Toowong – Arley Estate Toowong – Shown on Arley Estate Map as New Road. Named after  Alexander Archer (1828-1890), manager of the Bank of New South Wales in Brisbane and a member of the Queensland pioneering Archer family.

Annie St, Auchenflower – Torwood Estate – Named after the children of the former owner of Torwood, John Douglas  – Annie, John, Agnes

Ascog Tce, Toowong – part of Ascog Estate

Aston St, Toowong – Eskmount Estate – Possibly named after George Peter Aston (1847- 1898) was a surveyor who worked briefly for Richard Gailey in 1877

Auchenflower Tce – Auchenflower Estate

Augustus St, Toowong – Moore’s Estate, 1889 – Named after the explorer and surveyor Sir Charles Augustus Gregory

Bangalla St – Rathdonnell Estate – Formerly Irving St c1911

Baroona Rd, Milton – Bayswater Estate – Shows as Government Road on Baywater Estate map

Bayliss St, Auchenflower – Formerly Isaac St. Was extended in 1938 past Croydon St and Bowling Lane. After the Sharp and Musgrave 1936 subdivision of the former Drysllwyn Estate the extended Isaac St was renamed Bayliss St

Bayswater St – Bayswater Estate

Beard St, Auchenflower – Formerly Mary St – Initially surveyed in 1911

Bennett St, Toowong – Curragh Bawn Estate, 1922 – Named after EJ Bennett, chief draughtsman in the Survey Office of Poplar House near current day Hale St.

Benson St, Toowong – Arley Estate Toowong – Previously known as Roberts Street as shown on Arley Estate map. The name was changed in 1940 probably after Dr John Robinson Benson  (about 1836- 1885) a prominent medical officer with no connection to Toowong.

Bent St, Toowong – Ivy Estate, Toowong, 1884 –

Birdwood Terrace, Auchenflower – Chermside Park, Auchenflower, 1921 Birdwood Park Estate, Upper Auchenflower 1926 Birdwood Park – Upper Auchenflower Estate – Was originally part of Heussler Terrace – Named after William Riddell Birdwood, General Birdwood

Boomerang St, Milton – named after the paddlesteamer SS Boomerang

Bowling Lane, Auchenflower/Toowong – Named in 1920 at the time of the foundation of the Auchenflower Bowling Club. Was the path from Drsllwyn to the bowling green

Brisbane St, Toowong/St. Lucia – named as the road to town c. 1877

Burns Rd, Toowong – Eskmount Estate, Toowong, 1936 – Previously the Indooroopilly Pocket Rd or Pocket Rd – possibly named after James Burns who purchased land in Lang Farm estate

Burt St, Auchenflower – Sharp and Musgrave subdivision  1936 – Named after the Burt family  who lived at the junction of McIlwraith st and Burt St – This street  was the only rear entrance for grand houses with frontage on Milton Rd including the Groom residence

Bywong St, Toowong – Used to be known as Grosvenor St which may have been named for Hugh Lupus Grosvenor, KG, PC, JP (1825-1899) , the first Duke of Westminster. Changed in the 1950s. Bywong means Big Hill

Cadell St, Auchenflower/Toowong – Earlier John St until 1938. Initially only from Croydon St to Bowling Lane

Camford St, Milton – Named after the Camford Milk Company  then Factory between Camford St and the Railway line from 1949

Camp St, Toowong – An old time resident claimed that Camp Street was used in earlier times as a camp by drovers taking cattle across the district

Carr St, St. Lucia –  possibly named after a member of the Carr family

Challinor St, Auchenflower – Dunmore Estate (Cribb’s Paddock 1899 – Named after Dr Henry  Challinor 1814-1882 a leader in medicine, civic affairs, the church and politics.

Chaseley St, Auchenflower – Dunmore Estate (Cribb’s Paddock 1899) – The Chaseley was one of three immigrant ships of Reverend Dunmore Lang’s emigration program of 1849

Clarence Rd, Taringa – Named after Ralph Fry Clarence who lived at Holmlee and Clarencewood

Coronation Drive – Fairholme Estate, Milton, 1913 & Arley Estate Toowong – Formerly Moggill Road, then River Road. It was renamed  Coronation Drive in 1937 to commemorate the coronation of King George VI

Cribb St – Fairholme Estate, Milton, 1913 -named after JG Cribb who lived at Fairholme House which was high on the hill overlooking Brisbane River above the entrance via Little Cribb

Cue St, Auchenflower – 1899 Maclean subdivision of the Dunmore Estate formerly Cribb’s Paddock – Originally Railway Lane

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Early Houses in Toowong Shire A-C

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Compiled by Philippa Stanford. Research by Leigh Chamberlain, Nick Feros and Genean Wildestein.

This is an ongoing piece of research and will be updated as we get more information and photos.

Abbotsbury Toowong (Cnr Milton road and Croydon street).

Constructed around 1876 the first occupant I can find was a Mr.C.S.Russell, the first secretary of the Queensland Club. Then came the Merrington’s and followed by Dr. Arthur Stanley Roe, the son of the 2nd and longest standing headmaster of Brisbane Grammar School.
This  house  was removed from Croydon street  in several pieces and relocated to Pullenvale. The  Status Quo apartments were built on the original Toowong location with Tusitala at 38 Croydon street  built on the tennis court of Abbotsbury.
Composite image from Qimagery and various real estate websites.
 

Airdrie on the corner of Coronation Drive and Landsborough Terrace (previously Paradise Ave) near the Regatta Hotel.

Courtesy Helen Benson whose great grandparents AS Barr and Family lived here

Family photo courtesy of Helen Benson

Mr Alexander Samson Barr and Mrs Annie Brown Barr lived at Airdrie, River Road, Toowong with their children in 1916.

 

Ardencraig Church St now Jephson St, Toowong.

“Ardencraig” was the residence of FDG Stanley (1838-1897), acclaimed 19th century Queensland architect, and was situated on Church (now Jephson) Street, Toowong. Fashionable Stanley followed the fashion of those who were notable in Brisbane Society by installing a telescope, in common with Toowong resident and architect Richard Gailey who had done likewise at “Glenolive” in Brisbane Street, Toowong.   There were two “Ardencraigs”, actually, as the house Stanley had built burnt down, and was replaced by a second residence.

Ardencraig was the original home of Churchie (Anglican Church Grammar School) in 1912 before it moved to East Brisbane. It was placed for sale in 1924 as part of the Ardencraig House and Grounds Estate. The home was later owned by the MacDonnell family.  Franic MacDonnell was a bookseller in Queen St. Their youngest son John Edward died in France in April 1918 and his name is on the Toowong memorial. Madeleine O’Hagan nee MacDonnell lived at Ardencraig until she married in 1919.

Later owned by Charles Elliott and Family. There was a fire in the mid 1960s which destroyed part of the house. The then owners sold the property and a unit block was built in its place.   The damaged house was removed and restored to its former glory in its new location outside of Brisbane.

 

Arley the Archer family residence in the 1880s.

Horse and carriage outside the Archer family residence, Arley, Toowong, ca. 1882. Image courtesy SLQ

Alexander and Minnie Archer lived in Toowong and gave their name to Archer Street. Alexander Archer (1828-1890), was the manager of the Bank of New South Wales in Brisbane and a member of the Queensland pioneering Archer family. Sadly the Archer family of Arley, in Archer Street, Toowong died on the RMS Quetta. On February 28th in 1890, the RMS Quetta hit an uncharted granite rock in the Adolphus Channel in Torres Strait at 9.14 pm on a clear night travelling towards Thursday Island from Cooktown. The damage to the hull was a gash 6ft wide by 175 ft. long from the bow to the engine room amidships. She plunged to the bottom in less than three minutes and of the 292 persons on board, 152 were lost and 139 saved.

Arlington/Endrim – c. 1905/1906. 28 Woodstock Rd, Toowong. Home of Badger

Arlington, 1906. Photographed by Frederick Munro Hull and courtesy of Genevieve Kennett

Arlington, 1906. Photographed by Frederick Munro Hull and courtesy of Genevieve Kennett

Courtesy real estate image

Real Estate image

Joseph Stillman Badger, General Manager of the Brisbane Tramways Company (BTC) moved to Arlington (as it was then known) around 1904. This was when work commenced upon the extension of the tramline from the gates of Brisbane General Cemetery, down Dean Street, and into Woodstock Road to terminate at the (Toowong) Tram Terminus situated just near his front gate.

For more information about Arlington see here

Auchenflower House – built in 1876 for the ironmonger John Ward. situated on the crest of a hill between the railway line and Milton Road, and Ridley and Dixon Streets.

Auchenflower House, 1969, courtesy TROVE

built in 1876 for the ironmonger John Ward. situated on the crest of a hill between the railway line and Milton Road, and Ridley and Dixon Streets. The property known as Auchenflower was purchased by Mr John Warde who built the original Auchenflower House. The property was then purchased by Sir Thomas McIlwraith in 1880 who extended it and christened it Auchenflower giving the suburb its name. For the ten years between 1880-1980  Auchenflower was a centre of social life for the political leaders and those who aspired to politics.  After McIlwraith’s death in 1900 it was sold to the family of  Sir Arthur Palmer. Later purchased by Mrs. TJ Ryan widow of a Queensland premier. Became a Carmelite Monastery in 1927. When the site was cleared for a church in 1967 auchenflower House’s ballroom and billiard room were rebuilt at Norman Park as the centrepiece of ‘Early Street Historical Village’. The rooms today can be found at Tamborine Estate Winery, in the Beaudesert Shire south-west of Brisbane, where they were moved in the 1990s.

For more information see here 

 

Braelands at Bellevue Parade and Ellerslie Crescent, Taringa (previously South Toowong)

Braelands, 1949

The residence of Helen and James Forsythe and later their niece Miss Helen ‘Ivy’ Philp, daughter of Sir Robert Philp. Braelands was commandeered from Miss Helen ‘Ivy’ Bannister Philip for the use General George H Brett during WWII. Miss Philp went to stay with her sister at Mallow in Toowong. Later Miss Ivy Philp sold the land to a group of men who bought it for Albert Street Methodist Church and it was used as a residential hostel for students at UQ.

For more information about Braelands during the war see here

Clayton House – standing on the back of the hill at the end of Patrick Lane

Image courtesy Nick Feros

Standing on the back of the hill at the end of Patrick Lane, Toowong  was Clayton House which was built in 1863. It was previously owned by A. M. G. Patrick who was an officer in the Police Force, but he sold and became the family home of the Dixons ca. 1865. It was the home of Dr   Graham Patrick Dixon (1873-1947) who had a distinguished career as a medical officer in WW1 (Gallipoli and middle east) and, in peace time, as a Brisbane surgeon.   It was also the home of  Dr Dixon’s mother, Louisa Jane Dixon, who died in October 1938 aged 91. The Dixons also operated a boarding house out of Clayton.  JB Fewings boarded here at Clayton before he purchased his property Karslake.

Chatswood on 7 Augustus Street, Toowong.

Chatswood, nd

Three Weatherlale sisters doing needlework on the verandah of their Toowong home, ca. 1918. SLQ image

Chatswood was the home of the Wetherlakes family, George and Elsie Weatherslake and their   daughters, Mavis, Ruth, Marion and Joyce. Marion married the 2nd son of Mr & Mrs Biggs of Dunmore Tce. Biggs was a former councillor for Toowong. The Weatherlakes were the maternal grandparents of Dr Bruce Bigge who had the Fiveways Surgery. The house later became the home of one of the Patterson family.

Curragh Bawn – home of William Landsborough? Curragh Bawn on the hill behind the Current Regatta Hotel

Curragh Bawn, nd

 

 

 

 

 

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Lang Ships Commemoration

Toowong and District Historical Society Inc (TDHS) held a morning tea on 14 Sept 2019 to commemorate 170 years since the arrival of Rev John Dunmore Lang’s ships in Moreton Bay. About 35 TDHS members and descendants of Fortitude immigrants, Robert Cribb, Benjamin Cribb, Charles Trundle and John Voysey attended the gathering.

The event was held at “The Dell”, the home of TDHS president Ruth Sapsford. The Dell, situated in Glen Road, Toowong, was built on land that was once owned by immigrant Robert Cribb and later his brother Benjamin. Beth Johnson, biographer and great, great granddaughter of Robert Cribb, produced a commemorative booklet for the occasion, titled ‘Robert Cribb A Short Biography.’ Beth generously donated a copy of this to those who attended.

 

Guests at the commemoration relaxing and chatting beside the Brisbane River bank at ‘’The Dell’’, Glen Road, Toowong

(Photograph provided by TDHS volunteer photographer John Carter)

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Raymond Dart: Toowong-born world renowned palaeontologist

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Raymond Dart

Researched and written by Peter McNally

Raymond Dart (1893- 1988) was an anthropologist and palaeontologist who realized that a fossilized skull he was examining in 1924 was the earliest example of primordial bipedal man ever found to date, thus proving beyond doubt that human ancestors evolved out of Africa. Dart named the species Australopithecus africanus, the ‘southern ape from Africa’.

Robert Broom (a Scottish doctor who became a professional palaeontologist in 1933 at 67, and who was a long-time supporter of Dart) paid this tribute to Dart:

Raymond A. Dart’s discovery and analysis in 1924 was one of the most important in world history.

Early Years

Raymond Dart was born in Queensland, Australia in the inner western suburb of Brisbane on 4 February 1893. He almost didn’t make it as he, his mother, and her midwife had to be rowed to safety after he was born from the family grocery store in Sylvan Road, Toowong during one the Brisbane River floods of that year. He was the fifth born of nine children of Samuel Dart, a Queensland-born storekeeper, and his wife Eliza Ann, née Brimblecombe, who was born in New South Wales. He had seven brothers and a sister.

Despite being born in Toowong, Dart was raised mainly on a dairy farm near Laidley. His early education was at Toowong State School, which was then located in Aston Street, Toowong. He also attended Blenheim State and Ipswich Grammar schools. He later attended newly established The University of Queensland where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science on 17 April 1914 and a Master of Science, First Class Honours (in Biology), 10 May 1916. He later spent four years at the University of Sydney, studying medicine. All these qualifications were achieved before his 25th birthday.

After graduating, Dart left Australia and served in the medical corps as a captain and medic in the Australian Army in England and France during the last year of World War I. In 1920 Dart was appointed as a senior demonstrator at the University College, London at the direction of Grafton Elliot Smith. A famed anatomist and anthropologist, Smith was regarded as THE eminent anatomist in Britain. Interestingly, Grafton Elliot Smith, who was also a fellow Australian, had moved from Grafton (as in his name), New South Wales, to take up a position in London.

Dart then travelled to Washington University, St Louis, Missouri on a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, and then returned to his position at the University College, London,

In 1922, Dart left Britain to take up the position of Chair of Anatomy at South Africa’s newly established University of Witwatersrand’s fledgling Faculty of Medicine (sometimes called ‘Wit’s’ University). He was reluctant to do so, but agreed after encouragement from Elliot Smith and Scottish anatomist and anthropologist Sir Arthur Keith FRS, who was professor of physiology at the Royal Institution of Great Britain from 1918 to 1923 at the time. Dart was just 31 years of age.

Raymond Dart

Archival photograph of Raymond Dart holding the Taung skull [Courtesy of WITS University Archives]

Taung Child

In 1924, one of Raymond’s students brought him some quarry rubble containing a skull. After Dart painstakingly cleared away non-essential debris around the skull, he declared : In my opinion it is not a young chimpanzee, as many scientists have suggested. I believe it is a crossover between an ape, and a human, possibly a human ancestor.

Raymond named his skull the ‘Taung Child’ after where it was discovered. Dart then presented his findings to the scientific journal Nature, who published his report on 7 February 1925.

Eventually, the skull turned out to be the earliest example of primordial, bipedal man ever found. It also proved beyond doubt that human ancestors evolved out of Africa.

Back in 1925 Raymond claimed that this genus of hominid would have had a posture and teeth similar to modern humans. It also had a small ape-sized brain. Most importantly, Dart, being an anatomist, knew that the position where the vertebrae entered the skull meant it was bipedal.

Dart’s conclusions were met with hostility from other many anthropologists. It must have been disappointing for Raymond to be challenged by Grafton Elliot Smith, his own professor and mentor, who stated, ‘The Taung skull was more likely to have been a chimpanzee, not a human ancestor’. After a number of years, a disenchanted Raymond gave up searching for fossils, and went back to teaching.

Piltdown Man

Dart had accepted the science of the time, that the earliest human ancestor was indicated by the discovery of Piltdown Man’s skull. It was found in 1912 by amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson in Pleistocene gravel beds near the town of Piltdown in Sussex, Britain, and was regarded as the earliest known record of a pre-human fossil. This proved that human ancestors evolved out of Europe. Grafton Elliot Smith, one of the anthropologists that Dart had observed and admired while working in London, was later called to the town of Piltdown to help reconstruct pieces of the skull that had been found there.

The Piltdown Man was later exposed to have been a hoax, one of the biggest frauds in anthropological science history. The general public were horrified to find out that the hoax had taken place, and even more concerning, that it took 31 years for the deception to be discovered. Today, after much investigation, the fraudster has not been named.

After witnessing the Dart experience following the discovery of the ‘Taung Child’, Robert Broom, a doctor and anthropologist, became interested in the search for human ancestors. He explored dolomite caves in South Africa, particularly Sterkfontein Cave (now part of the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site). Twelve years later, while continuing his exploratory digs, Robert Broom, found an adult female skull of the ‘Taung Child’s’ genus among other fossils in 1936.

Robert Broom’s discoveries of further Australopithecines (as well as Wilfrid Le Gros Clark’s support) eventually vindicated Dart, so much so that in 1947, Sir Arthur Keith, who had publicly disputed Raymond’s claims, in 1947 made the statement: ‘…I was wrong and Raymond Dart was right!’

Dart, who recalled that back in 1871 Charles Darwin had stated, ‘It was more probable than not, human ancestors evolved out of the African continent’, had the historical sense to remind the world of Darwin’s words. Thus Raymond Dart’s second distinction after realising the significance of the ‘Taung Child’, was that he had turned Darwin’s ‘Probable’ into a ‘Definite!’

Another major contribution by Dart was that he established Witwatersrand University as the epicentre of human evolution science, research and achievement. The Institute for the Study of Mankind in Africa was founded in his honour.

Others who have followed in his footsteps have been Professor Phillip V. Tobias, Dart’s long-time collaborator, successor and biographer. Tobias died in 2012 aged 86. Currently, Professor Lee Berger is a major contributor to ‘Wit’s’ research. In 2013, he and his large team discovered the biggest primitive hominin assemblage in history. Another is Professor Ron Clark, the man who found an almost complete skeleton of a 3.67 million year old human ancestor. It was named ‘Littlefoot’. Berger and Clark, as well as many others, are continuing the tradition of Raymond A. Dart’s work.

Raymond A. Dart died in South Africa on 22 November 1988, aged 95. This year 2018 commemorates 30 years since his passing.

UPDATE:

2025 marked the centenary of Raymond Dart’s remarkable discovery of Australopithecus africanus (Taung child) and the publication of details of this discovery in the prestigious Nature magazine. Wit’s University in South Africa, at which Dart was employed, commemorated his contributions with year-long celebrations. They wrote and published many stories and held seminars details his discovery and its significance. Similar celebrations took place globally, of course including the city of Dart’s birth, here in Brisbane.

Read more about the 100 year commemoration of Dart’s discovery:

How Africa became the birthplace of human evolution

The discovery that Africa is the birthplace of human evolution

One of science’s greatest scandals, a century on

Peter McNally, the author of this article, was born in Adelaide, South Australia in 1940. In 1975, Peter, his wife Judy, and their three sons moved to Queensland and over the past 25 years have lived in Brisbane, within 15 kilometres of where Raymond was born.

In recent years Peter has become very interested in researching the evolution of the Earth, and in particular, the evolutionary history of Australia, and human evolution within Australia. Peter further explains: ‘Australian’s evolutionary history goes back approximately 3.4 billion years ago to the Pilbara region of Western Australia. It’s one of the earliest places on earth where microscopic, biological, organism evidence has been discovered, making it one of the earliest places on earth, where life began.’

Thank you to Peter for sharing his research with the Toowong and District Historical Society Inc., and for giving permission for his article to be published.

References:

Encyclopaedia Britannica Volume 2, 1985, p. 436hNational Geographic, Volume 168, No. 5 November 1985.
Also the following webpages:
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/dart-raymond-arthur-12402
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_Link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Dart
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Dart#cite_note-6
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taung_Child
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Raymond-A-Dart
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/rdart.html
South African History online at http://www.sahistory.za   

 

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