For fifty years the bayside governed itself, more or less, through a succession of boards and councils with steadily grander names and steadily larger problems. This is how Wynnum and Manly were run between the 1870s and the day the Town of Wynnum ceased to exist.
Boards and boundaries
The name Wynnum once covered most of the land from the south bank of the Brisbane River to Tingalpa Creek and about five kilometres inland, so Manly’s growth cannot be separated from it. Manly can claim to be slightly older than the rest: its streets and terraces were surveyed in 1882, three years before Wynnum’s.
Expansion began in 1872 under the Bulimba Electorate, which covered 282 square miles from Norman Creek across to the Pacific Highway, down to the north bank of the Logan, out to the bay, taking in Russell, Stradbroke and Moreton Islands, and round to the mouth of the Brisbane River.
The Bulimba Divisional Board followed in 1879 and proved too large to administer. In 1888 it was split into three: Coorparoo, Balmoral and Kianawah. It was the Kianawah Divisional Board that took in Wynnum, Manly, Lytton, part of Lindum, and Lota through to Tingalpa Creek and upstream to the Capalaba bridge.
Its six members were Matthew Adams, an ironmonger from South Brisbane; David D. Arnold, a grazier from Manly Beach; Robert Jarvis of Capalaba and Edward McCarron of Lytton, both farmers; Emanuel Stanton, a butcher from Tingalpa; and Joel Wilde, listed simply as a gentleman, of South Brisbane. They met in King Street, Wynnum — now Glenora Street.
In March 1890 the division was split into three wards: Lytton to Wynnum Creek, Wynnum Creek to Darling Point, and Darling Point to Tingalpa Creek, with three members each.
1888
The new board put its emphasis on roads and tracks connecting the district to Brisbane. It also passed by-laws prohibiting mixed bathing, in the interests of public decency.
1889
The single-track railway to Cleveland via Wynnum opened on 1 November. The original stations were Logan Road, Coorparoo, Morningside, Mooraree (now Murarrie), Hemmant, Wynnum, Manly, Waterloo, Birkdale, Wellington, Ormiston and Cleveland.
The community also fought off a government plan to sell Wynnum’s only water and cemetery reserve. A public petition appears to have worked; the land stayed, and was later used when Lytton School was relocated and renamed Wynnum North Primary.
1890
Material stripped from King Street was spread over flood-prone reserve land, and a wooden wall built back from the creek mouth — creating what became Greene’s Park and the fish markets site.
Mr Gibb was given permission to build a private bathing house at the bottom of Mary Street, below his hotel the Waterloo; Mrs M.L. Harris was allowed a bathing box at the bottom of Cardigan Parade. A public bathing house at Jetty No. 1 was considered and rejected as too expensive.
The district’s first police station opened on 1 December, in rented premises at 39 Waterloo Esplanade.
1891
Fox Street came into being, on Mr Fox’s motion that a road one chain wide be resumed from King Street across the reserve to the new footbridge over Wynnum Creek. The first public bathing house was built at Jetty No. 1 by Dart and Greene.
1892
The Kianawah Divisional Board renamed itself the Wynnum Divisional Board on 5 November.
1895
Johnston Smyth was employed to look after the shade trees along the beachfront — the esplanade already being understood as central to the place.
1898
Heavy rain flooded both banks of Wynnum Creek and left the footbridge impassable. Ratepayers in division one wanted a traffic bridge; ratepayers in the other two divisions objected to the cost and the siting. Division one set out to fund it privately. In the end the board built it at its own expense, as the Fox Street Bridge.
1899
Records from this year and from 1908 confirm the existence of a Manly Dam. The Assistant Queensland Government Engineer, Mr Williams, inspected it after the board sought a government loan to enlarge it. The 1908 reference is a complaint that the dam overflowed in every heavy downpour and damaged the lower end of Cambridge Parade.
1902
The Wynnum Divisional Board became the Wynnum Shire Council, with Mr F. Gibson as chairman. Over the next decade the council concentrated on the land west of the railway line.
1908
The council asked the Commissioner of Railways to duplicate the line, which was no longer coping with weekend holiday traffic and daily commuters. The second track was finished in 1913.
The sale of 110 lots on Monday 9 November, the King’s Birthday, shows how fast land was moving.
1912 and 1913
The shire was declared a municipality, and Wynnum and Manly together became the Town of Wynnum.
The first election was held on 4 February 1913. Only property owners could vote; 2,471 votes were cast across the three wards. Ward 1 returned C.H.B. McKay, W.J. McFadden and Johnston Smyth; Ward 2 returned G. Heymer, E. McNaught and S. Greene; Ward 3 returned Alf E. Chave, E.B. Port and Joseph Curtis.
Sam Greene, third-placed in Ward 2, was chosen at the council’s first meeting as the first Mayor of Wynnum. He owned and ran the Star Theatre, which was full every Saturday night until television arrived.
The same year the carbide street lamps were retired in favour of a seven-year lighting agreement with the Infant Gas Company, and the council began looking at a water main from Mt Crosby.
1914 to 1916
An order in council extended the town’s boundaries to take in part of eastern Balmoral Shire, allowing a fourth ward. Its first election, on 23 January 1915, returned John Hargreaves, Charles Marsh and Harry Randall.
Randall was chosen as mayor in 1916. Streets including Fisher, Oceana Terrace, Wellington and Carlton Terrace were formed and gravelled. A public meeting on conscription, called by the mayor, passed a motion in favour by a large majority, over the objections of a few.
1917: the council falls apart
Mayor Randall’s conduct lost him the confidence of his aldermen, and the dispute ended in what the record describes as a physical attack on one of them.
An application was made to the Supreme Court of Queensland to remove him. It succeeded, and for a period Wynnum had neither mayor nor council. The court ordered a fresh election for February 1918, which produced a new mayor. The ousted one returned as a ward alderman.
1919
The wooden Fox Street Bridge was replaced in concrete, and the council bought a tar boiling plant — bitumen roads were coming.
The Wynnum Town Hall nearly burned down when painters stripping old paint with a blowlamp set it alight. Residents put the fire out with water carried from the creek and from neighbours’ tanks.
The Wynnum Ambulance Brigade began the same year, its garage built by volunteers. Until then, the sick and injured waited for bearers to bring a stretcher out from Brisbane and carry them back by train. Keeping a stretcher at Wynnum Central State School had helped a little. The brigade helped considerably more.
1921
Every adult on the state roll could now vote in local elections. Until then it had been landowners only.
The Wynnum Fire Brigade Board was constituted under the Fire Brigades Act 1920 and first met in the town hall on 25 August. It bought land in Mountjoy Terrace and Haylock Street, built the chief’s residence on the latter and a temporary station with watchtower and bell on the former, and appointed a chief, a deputy and six auxiliaries. When Greater Brisbane absorbed the district in 1925 the board was dissolved into the Brisbane Metropolitan Fire Brigades Board.
1922
The council reached agreement with the Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board to run mains through the principal streets, with extensions to follow.
The first electric light pole went up near the town hall in Tingal Road, and later that year the council resolved to bring electricity to residents for lighting, heating and power.
The Wynnum division of the Salvation Army opened on 25 February. Its officers ran jumble sales and relief work from the start, mounted an extensive response to the 1934 floods, and during the Second World War organised knitting and comforts for the troops.
1923
With motor vehicles displacing horses, the council set a speed limit of 10mph along the Esplanade and 12mph elsewhere in town.
The Wynnum Post Office was built, housing the first manned telephone exchange. By 1935 telephonists worked from 7am to 10pm, with a night operator through the small hours.
1924: the Town of Wynnum ends
Every local authority around Brisbane was amalgamated into the new Greater Brisbane City Council, and the Town of Wynnum became simply the suburbs of Wynnum and Manly.
The mayors had met beforehand to argue about the size of the proposed city. Some wanted a ten-mile radius from the Brisbane GPO; the meeting voted for five. Mayor Greene said plainly that he did not want Wynnum included. He was ignored, and the government brought in the outlying districts, Sandgate and Wynnum among them.
1926
The Manly Baths opened, filled with seawater pumped in each week at high tide. The pool hosted swimming carnivals and drew weekend crowds, and the diving tower at the eastern end was a particular attraction. The plans had been drawn by the Wynnum Town Council, and construction was far enough advanced when Greater Brisbane took over that the new council simply carried on with it.
The 1930s: relief work
The Depression hit the bayside as it hit everywhere. Those still in work helped those who were not, and the council used the state relief work scheme — the State paying wages, the local authority supplying tools and materials — to put men to work.
The projects from those years are still in use: the stone sea wall along the waterfront, the Wynnum wading pool, the conversion of St Helena Island to public use after the prison closed, and the Falcon Street retaining wall.
The men on relief work came from every trade and none, and some of them could carve. One of those on the Falcon Street wall worked figures into the stone itself — boomerangs, kangaroos, goannas, human heads, and the head of the district engineer running the job.
Sources
- Armstrong, H.W. (1971) The History and Development of the Wynnum District, Brisbane
- Beitz, M.N. (1982) Mangroves to Moorings: The Past 100 Years of Manly, Queensland, Manly Centenary Committee, Brisbane