The Buildings of Convict Brisbane

Few people living in Brisbane today appreciate the city's origins as an infamous prison settlement. The Brisbane of today is a modern, global city, and its renown and reputation is only looking to rise with its hosting of the Olympic Games in 2032. It is easy to forget that when Brisbane was founded less than 200 years ago, it was intended as a remote place of punishment, a name to strike fear into the hearts of convicts across the country.

From 1824 to 1842, Brisbane Town was little more than a frontier prison. While the sordid days of the convict settlement are long behind us, and very few of the structures of this period have survived to the modern day, they are inextricably tied to modern Brisbane, and laid the foundations of this now prosperous city. An exploration of the Brisbane convict settlement and its structures shows the importance of the convict period in the city’s development and provides some of the story of how Brisbane went from a prison on the Australian frontier to a city on the world stage.

Convict transportation, or sending people convicted of crimes to remote penal colonies in Australia, had been long favoured in Britain as an effective method of punishment. It was seen as a potent and efficient way to punish criminals, and had the added benefit of bolstering British territorial claims by populating strategic areas.

By the 1820s, however, convict transportation had lost a lot of its fear factor. Settlements in New South Wales had grown from a remote, hostile outposts into a relatively prosperous colony. It was viewed by convicts in Britain as a land of opportunity, and, as figures like Lord Liverpool complained, transportation was no longer provoking ‘the terror of death’ it used to. This period also saw a change in the British Colonial Office’s stance on New South Wales, as the development of a free society modelled after Britain became a long-term goal for the colony – a goal that would require sending criminals somewhere else.

Attempts at penal settlements in areas such as Newcastle and Port Macquarie proved ineffective as they were too close to settled lands, encouraging convicts to escape. This issue was substantial enough that when Brisbane was founded it was intended by Governor Thomas Brisbane as primarily “a place of security and subsistence for runaways from Port Macquarie.” By the 1820s, authorities in Britain and Australia wanted a new penal settlement, one that would be remote enough to keep convicted criminals out of free Australian society, isolated enough to give convicts no prospect of escape, and brutal enough to bring the terror back to transportation. Brisbane came into being as this settlement.

Why the central Brisbane of today was chosen as the site of this penal colony is not entirely clear. It’s likely nobody on the ground really knew at the time. What ended up as the nucleus of modern Brisbane wasn’t anyone’s first choice of location, and it was most likely not a choice anybody had considered until it was suddenly settled.

In 1822, three major sites along the Queensland coast were under consideration by the Governor-appointed official Thomas Bigge as potential convict settlements: Port Bowen, Port Curtis, and Moreton Bay. Bigge imagined all three of these sites would be set up as colonies, but in his mind Port Bowen would be the ‘model settlement’ and the main focus of expansion. Moreton Bay, the site of modern Brisbane, was imagined as a far less important outpost than either of its peers. According to historian W. Ross Johnston, this suggests that Bigge considered it the least favourable option. However, John Oxley, the Surveyor-General put in charge of investigating these sites, was thoroughly unimpressed by Port Curtis, and didn’t investigate Port Bowen at all due to bad weather. Suddenly, Moreton Bay went from Bigge’s distant third choice to the only acceptable one.

The specific location of the settlement within Moreton Bay also ended up as a peculiar third choice. The first attempt at settlement took place at what is now Redcliffe, but this site was too hard to maintain even as a way of punishing convicts, owing to its lack of quality soil, building resources, or even drinkable water, alongside attacks by local Aboriginal peoples. After eight months of turmoil at Redcliffe, a new site at Breakfast Creek was selected by Oxley with the personal approval of Governor Brisbane. However, when Lieutenant Henry Miller, the settlement’s first Commandant, made the move away from Redcliffe, he inexplicably decided to disobey his orders and moved the settlement further up the river. Miller’s decision turned out to be final – perhaps simply because it was easier than moving again – and his chosen location transformed into the centre of Brisbane, now the CBD.

As suggested by the confused, improvised establishment of the settlement, Brisbane was not a particular focus of British or Australian authorities. This is reflected in the buildings of the city’s convict period, which were for the most part constructed wherever was convenient at the time and intended to be purely practical. Exploring the important buildings of the convict settlement can give us an idea of what life there was like, and show us how, despite their unassuming and purely practical nature, these buildings and plans moulded Brisbane into what it is today.

It’s not feasible to look at every construction undertaken in this era. Some buildings haven’t left much of a historical record, and some are not hugely important on a large scale: the settlement’s barnyard, as far as we’re aware, was mostly just used as a barnyard. But by looking at the buildings that dominated everyday life, the buildings that allowed for the colony’s survival, and the buildings that were somewhat unique to Brisbane, we can gain a deeper understanding of the early developent of this now thriving city.

The first building constructed in the newly settled Brisbane was a residence for the Commandant. It took the most prominent position in the settlement, overlooking the river and on a rise away from the convicts. Lieutenant Miller’s old prefabricated residence used at Redcliffe was set up nearby as the engineer’s quarters, with the Commandant instead arranging himself a shaded wooden bungalow with its own kitchen and servants’ quarters. If anyone had a comfortable life in the Brisbane penal colony, it was the Commandant.

The Commandant was the main authority in Brisbane, and was consequently responsible for much of the settlement’s development. While they technically answered to government officials in Sydney, the delays and lack of scrutiny caused by these officials being over 900 kilometres away saw Commandants often bypass them completely when making plans for the settlement. It was behind the government’s back that the construction of permanent buildings began in Brisbane, first planned by Commandant Peter Bishop but expanded upon and put into action by his successor, Patrick Logan. 

Logan’s drive to develop the settlement was only overshadowed by his evil reputation. A proponent of strict discipline, he was viewed by convicts and in posterity as a brutal tyrant. According to a memoir by former convict William Ross, Logan’s brutality was “so notoriously known” to the public at large “that it is almost needless to mention any more of his tyrannical proceedings.” When Logan was found dead in 1830, the settlement’s convicts allegedly “manifested insane joy at the news […] and sang and hoorayed all night.” Logan’s awful reputation was likely the only thing preventing him from being recognised as the true founder of Brisbane. His time as Commandant was characterised by constant construction, and in doing so he transformed Brisbane from a hastily assembled camp into a real settlement with real buildings – mostly without permission from Sydney. Without Commandants like Logan taking initiative in construction, Brisbane might have stayed a glorified campsite until it was eventually abandoned.

The Commandant’s residence was demolished in 1861, and its location used as the site of the now heritage-listed Government Printing Office.  An outline of its foundations is visible in the Printing Office’s courtyard.  

The largest building in the settlement was the convict barracks, completed in 1828 to replace the temporary slab huts the prisoners had lived in. A massive, imposing structure of bricks and stone, described by later settler Tom Dowse as “that repulsive looking pile of building,” the barracks housed and confined between 200 and 1000 convicts. After a long day of forced labour in the hot Brisbane weather, convicts were sent back here to recuperate, a task which was made more difficult by its general unpleasantness. William Ross recalled the sleeping conditions for convicts, saying “they have no beds, and but few blankets, and therefore they merely stretch themselves on the floor, with nothing to cover them; such is their deplorable way of sleeping.” The barracks was also used as a site of floggings, where disobedient prisoners were tied down and given up to 250 lashes. Performing these floggings publicly in the convicts’ own barracks lent a theatrical element to the punishment, ensuring observers were just as intimidated into behaving as the victim. Flogging was also the only real punishment available in the early years of the settlement: no gaol or other structure for punishment existed, and the alternative punishment of extra work wasn’t effective when refusal to work was often what was being punished. 

After the convict barracks came a military barracks for the soldiers assigned to the penal colony. Built in 1831 to replace the rough slab huts they had previously been set up in, the stone-and-shingle building could house 100 soldiers. While they were certainly higher up in the settlement’s hierarchy, the soldiers probably didn’t enjoy their time in Brisbane much more than the convicts did. Penal settlements were well-known in the army as a difficult and thankless post, and common soldiers posted there were often demoralised and apathetic. Under military law, soldiers were subject to floggings for a greater range of offences than the convicts, although in practice the soldiers weren’t flogged due to fears of undermining discipline. Some soldiers tried intentionally injuring themselves to avoid duties, while others decided the convicts were better off than they were and committed petty crimes to get themselves into the other barracks. Evidently, neither soldier nor convict had a comfortable life in their respective barracks.

While the geographical positions of the two barracks might look somewhat arbitrary, their relative positions were very deliberately chosen. The prevailing thought in British penal colonies was that the convicts had to be segregated from the soldiers and officials. Since the Commandant’s residence had already been set up along the river, the military barracks followed suit, while the convict barracks were positioned inland, away from the river’s edge. As the settlement was exclusively geared towards dealing with convicts, the track between the convict barracks and the river quickly became its main thoroughfare. This track has survived and kept its status in modern Brisbane – locals and visitors are sure to know it as Queen Street. 

After Brisbane was opened to free settlement in 1842, the convict barracks were used (ironically enough) as a courthouse and as Queensland’s first Parliament, before being demolished in 1880. The area it used to occupy is now taken up by businesses along Queen Street. The military barracks was similarly demolished, and its site is now Brisbane’s prestigious Treasury Building. 

At the intersection between the convict and military sectors of the settlement, where the soldiers had lived in ramshackle huts before the completion of the new military barracks, Logan ordered the construction of a new compound that became known as the Lumber Yard. Described by Tom Dowse as a “hive of human industry”, the Lumber Yard was – literally and metaphorically – the centre of the Brisbane penal settlement. On one hand it was important as a literal lumberyard: timber was in constant demand, and the Lumber Yard was the primary means of processing and stockpiling it.

On the other hand the Lumber Yard was where skilled convicts worked their trade, producing items necessary for maintaining the colony. While unskilled prisoners were made to toil as labourers, working in construction, agriculture, or timber-felling, convicts with knowledge of a useful trade were allowed to practice it in the Lumber Yard’s workshops. They were still treated as regular convicts, overseen by guards and mustered up at the end of the day, but these skilled workers provided the colony with items crucial to its self-sufficiency. Tom Petrie recalled the large number of responsibilities entrusted to these convicts:

"They made their own clothes, caps and boots, and kept the chain gang supplied with these also; then they made the nails and iron bolts, etc., required for buildings; they tanned leather, and made all the soap and candles needed for the settlement. Also there were blacksmiths, carpenters, cabinet makers, coopers, wheelwrights, barbers, etc."

As the centre for timber production and metal work, as well as the location in which clothes, boots, and work tools were produced, the Lumber Yard became a near necessity for continuing development and work in Brisbane. Without the presence of these skilled convicts, Brisbane would have been entirely dependent on imports for even basic goods.

Following the end of the convict period, the Lumber Yard was purchased and turned into a ‘Boot and Shoe Enterprise.’ It seems the old convict building had value in the early days of Brisbane’s free settlement due to the amount of reusable materials it provided. The former convict buildings were a major boon to Brisbane’s development immediately after the convict period, giving free settlers, shopkeepers and tradesmen a strong foundation to build upon. The site of the Lumber Yard is now Brisbane Square, the connecting point between Queen Street, North Quay, and South Brisbane, so arguably the Lumber Yard remains the centre of Brisbane to this day. 

The settlement’s windmill, now the oldest surviving building in Queensland, is one of the very few convict buildings to have survived into the present day. The windmill was used to grind down the settlement’s supplies of maize into rations for the convicts. The settlement was largely dependent on maize as a food source: it grew abundantly in Brisbane’s climate, unlike the much-preferred wheat, which was abandoned as a wide-scale crop and used only to feed high-ranking individuals. Mamie O’Keeffe claims the convicts detested being fed with maize, but William Ross, who tended to accentuate the negatives of life in Brisbane, spoke of the “great abundance” and “excellent quality” of the settlement’s corn. 

The windmill wasn’t only used for grinding maize, however – it had a far grimmer purpose in the colony. This new function came about because the windmill was not very well-constructed. It constantly malfunctioned and needed repair, and despite many varied attempts to have the mill harness the wind, the settlement’s authorities could not get its arms to reliably spin. Logan’s solution was to install a treadmill. This addition had two benefits: it allowed the windmill to continue to grind wheat when there was no wind or when it invariably malfunctioned, and, perhaps more importantly, it provided a novel means to punish convicts. Disobedient prisoners could be sentenced to the treadmill for up to fourteen hours at a time, trudging forward with heavy leg irons in the hot weather. A full day on the treadmill was an especially brutal and dangerous punishment: many former convicts wrote of men collapsing or even dying from exhaustion, and at least one prisoner was killed when he became entangled in the apparatus. Even after the windmill was thoroughly repaired, the treadmill remained as a punishment until the end of the convict period. 

The windmill remained in use during the first years of free settlement but ceased operating in 1845 due to a crop failure around Brisbane and access to imported wheat flour. It was saved from demolition due to its appeal as a picturesque Brisbane landmark and was later used as a telegraph tower and observatory. The windmill still stands, now on Wickham Terrace, one of only two buildings from the convict period that remain intact within Brisbane. 

Brisbane was a dangerous place to live in the convict period – it had a higher death rate than any other penal settlement in Australia. Diseases such as dysentery and malaria ran rampant throughout the colony, and the convicts’ diet of mostly meat and maize resulted in many cases of malnutrition. The rate of convicts needing treatment were only exacerbated by the colony’s punishments: at least one convict died from flogging after his wound was infected. Medical expertise was direly needed, and a doctor was sent to the colony in 1825 – but he had nowhere to work. 

The hospital was Logan’s top priority for construction, and the first building completed under his tenure. Logan’s predecessor Bishop had prepared plans for a hospital as he could not wait for Sydney to act, showing how urgently the building was needed. The hospital was extremely active throughout the convict period; its register had reached eight volumes by 1842. At the same time, it was much too small: there were cases even after the convict period where people in desperate need of treatment died because there was no space for them. This was compounded upon by the hospital being used for other purposes. At different times it was used as accommodation and grain storage due to a lack of other buildings. However the hospital was ultimately quite effective at reducing deaths in the colony: of the 220 convicts that died there, only twelve did so after 1832. 

The convict hospital continued to serve quite inadequately as Brisbane’s only hospital even after Queensland became self-governing in 1859, until a larger hospital was finally built in 1867. The hospital buildings were then used as the Police Barracks until 1875, when they were demolished to make way for the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court was relocated in 2012, and the hospital’s site is now a commercial development.

As evidenced by grain being stored in the already too-small hospital, Brisbane was in desperate need of storage space. The colony’s storehouse, constructed in 1825 and known as the Commissariat Store, was little more than a barn, and was likely less equipped than the hospital for grain storage. To remedy this, a new Commissariat Store was completed by 1829, to store grain, construction materials, tools, and anything created in the lumber yard. In addition to expanded storage space, the new Store was also heavily protected from potential break-in attempts: it was built with 60cm-thick stone walls and every door was reinforced with iron. It was also located in a more convenient position in front of Brisbane’s small wharf, the distribution point for the entire settlement. The Commissariat Store controlled and maintained the supply and distribution of every material in the settlement, a responsibility that effectively made its Officer the colony’s second-in-command. The presence of a large, secure and coordinated storehouse freed up space in other buildings and facilitated the maintenance and expansion of the colony, greatly assisting Brisbane as a whole.

The new Commissariat Store is the only other convict-era building remaining in modern Brisbane. It currently serves as the headquarters of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland and is also the site of the Society's museum showcasing the state’s history. 

Brisbane was unique among Australian penal colonies because it had facilities for housing convict women. After its construction in 1829, this took the form of the Female Factory, an ominous, fenced-off building positioned much further along the convict track than the male prisoners’ barracks. It was here that female prisoners were sequestered, and where many of them performed their labour. Some female convicts were employed as servants or in needlework, but most were relegated to monotonous chores such as husking corn or picking oakum. Unlike their male counterparts, convict women were not flogged or sent to the treadmill, however they could be chained in irons and sent to solitary confinement.

The women were also fiercely segregated from the male population. When Henry Cowper, the settlement’s doctor from 1825, made an impromptu visit to the Female Factory alongside some friends and a bottle of rum, he was immediately dismissed from his post, despite the necessity of his work, and pleas from the Sydney Medical Department. The Factory’s fence was later replaced with a high stone wall, but soldiers scaled the wall with a makeshift ladder in order to see, as clergyman Thomas Atkins put it, “their lady loves.” The eventual solution the penal authorities decided upon for this security problem was to send the women from Brisbane proper to the agricultural establishment at Eagle Farm. 

The site of the Female Factory later became home to Brisbane’s historic General Post Office. The convict site at Eagle Farm is now heritage-listed, but no buildings from the convict period have survived.

Eagle Farm, about eight kilometres away from Brisbane overland, was established as an agricultural centre to support the penal settlement. The establishment was largely successful in providing for the colony in the early 1830s, and when crops failed in Brisbane in 1831 Eagle Farm provided more than expected. Following their removal from the Female Factory, women were performing much of the fieldwork. Crop failures and a reduced number of convicts did damage Eagle Farm’s agricultural contributions, but in the later 1830s it, along with other outstations around Brisbane, found new success with livestock. Pastoral pursuits were astoundingly successful around Brisbane, with Commandant Foster Fyans marvelling at how herds were “fed for almost nothing” thanks to local vegetation. According to Ross Johnston, though the number of convicts had greatly reduced in the late 1830s, Brisbane would soon emerge as “the centre of a pastoral empire.” 

Both women convicts and pastoral success were instrumental in the survival of Brisbane as a settlement in the most direct way possible: they made it difficult to abandon. Government interests in the 1830s had seen the possibility of abandoning Brisbane altogether, but doing so was complicated by the presence of both female convicts and livestock. There were no other penal settlements in Australia with facilities for convict women, meaning they couldn’t be sent anywhere other than Brisbane without a lot of planning and a lot of expenses. In addition, the booming livestock population of nearly 1500 animals was all official government property, and would be very difficult to move. As a result, the colonial government was reluctantly forced to hold on to Brisbane until it was opened to free settlers in 1842.

The Brisbane penal establishment officially ended on the 10th of February 1842, when the Moreton Bay district was proclaimed open for free settlement. These free settlers and speculators would be directly benefiting from the works of the convict era. As contemporary surveyor Richard Dixon advertised, allotments in the former penal settlement had "been cleared, stumped, and in cultivation," and would "merely require fencing in" by settlers. Convict buildings provided immediate benefits to new settlers, either as a source for building materials or as makeshift venues for business, and the simple convict-era roads provided the framework for further expansion of the settlement. The end of the convict period also marked the end of major government involvement in Brisbane's planning. The free settlement was instead faced with government neglect, with the buildings retained by the government falling into disrepair. The buildings and plans of the penal settlement were instrumental in establishing the settlement's lasting framework – but in the period after 1842, the future of Brisbane was mainly in the hands of free settlers.

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