James Cook sailed up this coast in 1770 and missed the mouth of the Brisbane River. He also took Stradbroke, Moreton and Bribie to be part of the mainland rather than islands. That error in the charts meant another thirty years passed before anyone looked again.
In 1799 Lieutenant Matthew Flinders entered Moreton Bay in the naval sloop Norfolk. He sailed along a shoreline that was probably Wynnum, Manly and Lota — some argue Cleveland — and he missed the river too. Flinders turned north between Moreton and Bribie and carried on with the circumnavigation he would complete in 1802.
After two experienced navigators had failed, the river was found by accident.
Pamphlett, Parsons and Finnegan
In 1823, three timber-getters — Pamphlett, Parsons and Finnegan — were blown off course south of Sydney while looking for cedar in the Illawarra. They drifted north and were wrecked on Moreton Island. Finding it was an island rather than the mainland, they crossed to Stradbroke and then to the mainland, probably landing near Wellington Point.
They became the first Europeans to see the Brisbane River. They survived because Ngugi people on Bribie Island took them in, and they were still living there when Lieutenant John Oxley sailed into the bay later that year. Pamphlett and Finnegan showed Oxley the river. He explored its length and named it after Governor Thomas Brisbane.
Free settlers were permitted into the Moreton Bay district from 1842.
Settlement comes to the bayside
Settlement reached Wynnum and Manly late. Queensland had already separated from New South Wales and become a colony in its own right before anyone took up land here.
Wynnum was originally called Oyster Point. It was renamed in 1859, the year the waterfront from Lytton to Lota was surveyed. The first land sales followed in 1860, to Thomas Jones and William Duckett-White, covering ground roughly bounded by what is now Gordon Parade, Whites Road and Lota Creek.
Jones built a mansion on the heights above Waterloo Bay, with views out to the bay and the islands. He called it Wyvernleigh, later renaming it Tingalpa House.
Who did the work
The Wyvernleigh plantation used South Sea Islander labour, in the house and in the fields. The local histories this page draws on describe these workers as “Kanaka servants” — a term now understood as derogatory, and a description that considerably softens what the arrangement was.
Between the 1860s and 1904, tens of thousands of people were brought to Queensland from the Pacific islands to work in the sugar industry. Some came under contract. Many were deceived or taken by force, in a trade known as blackbirding. Most were sent away again under the White Australia legislation that followed Federation, including people who had lived here for decades.
Sugar cane was the district’s principal crop, with fields running from Hemmant through Wynnum and Manly into the Redlands, and mills scattered across the area. That industry and that labour are the same story.
Cane, mills and the Walrus
Among the mills was the Walrus, a stern-wheel paddle steamer that worked the banks of Bulimba Creek and the Brisbane River, crushing cane for local farmers. She was built at Cleveland as a 64-tonne schooner by Captain Taylor Winship. When sugar here declined in the late 1880s against more productive fields further north, the Walrus was converted to a distillery, and Walrus Rum was well known in its day.
In the early years the bay, its creeks and its rivers were the most reliable roads. Boats and barges carried stores, building materials and passengers to landings built along the creeks running into Moreton Bay.
The railway changes everything
Closer settlement began in the 1880s, with developers subdividing large blocks east of a railway line that had not yet been built. When it opened in 1889, running from Brisbane through Wynnum and Manly to Cleveland, it transformed the district.
It also made day trips easy. The bayside filled with campers at Christmas and Easter, and extra weekend services brought crowds from as far as Ipswich. Before the sea wall went up, sandy beach ran along much of the foreshore, and people swam in the open water or in the tidal baths at the end of the Wynnum and Manly jetties.
Growing up here
Children rode out into the bushland behind Manly to hunt possums and koalas. A local cricket team of boys travelled to Wellington Point, Hemmant and the Lytton Reformatory, where they played against the boys held there. A minstrel show run by Harry Jarman raised funds for the cricket team — a form of entertainment that was commonplace then and would not be staged now.
Sailing took hold quickly. Among the pioneer clubs was the Wynnum and Manly Sailing Squad, which later became the Darling Point Sailing Squadron. It prospered from its founding in 1909, and in 1915 began an ambitious plan to build a pleasure resort on Green Island. Volunteers built gardens, bathing boxes, shelter sheds and a jetty. Time and vandalism finished it off.
Buses
In August 1925 the Pioneer Bus Service, run by Mr W.S. Argaet, began running three return trips a day into Brisbane. The journey took about an hour and a half.
In March 1926 the Black and White service started from Lota, running through Manly and on to North Quay via Wondall Road. Both were later absorbed into the Bayside Bus Company.
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