Goodna Township

As early as 1841, there was a sheep run called "Woogaroo Station," owned by the Grenier family of South Brisbane. This name referred to a waterhole in the creek, and was superseded from 1856 onwards by Goodna, an Indigenous word meaning "dung'. An unfortunate linguistic misunderstanding appears to be responsible for this name.

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Before time

The broad river snaked its way through the bush as always since the Dreamtime, nourishing the people and animals who came to its banks. The rhythm of life and the movement of people accompanied the unfolding pattern of the seasons. Women and children spent their days gathering plants and small creatures while the men hunted larger animals, birds and fish. The dreaming stories were celebrated in dance, song, art, and word in the camp along the creek, where neighbouring clans gathered, and the Yaggera people met the Turrbal in corroboree. Tools and blades were fashioned from stone and traded. The males of many clans gathered at the Bora Ring to teach the boys how to become warriors, and the elders guided them through the secret steps to manhood. Ceremonies marked the passage from child to adult, and the mysteries of initiation passed down from the ancestors were shared. 

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Europeans' arrival

In December 1823, the incursion began. Two rowboats came up the river, crewed by alien men from another continent.

John Oxley and Allan Cunningham, with an officer and their boat crews, began their exploration. On 3 December 1823, Oxley landed at Prior’s Pocket on the northern bank of the river and, leaving his men to rest, he crossed the river, climbing a low hill and then walking to Dingo Hill from where he could see much of the surrounding landscape. Others followed, and in 1827, a small party of convicts and their guards passed by on their way to a spot upstream, beyond where two rivers joined together, where a deposit of white limestone had been recognised. Here, at the future site of Ipswich, limestone could be hewn and burnt to make cement. When the ghostly strangers arrived, they were terrifying in their violation of the land and its creatures, and of each other. They brought with them their alien animals, and in their cruelty and savagery, they broke all the laws that had existed since time immemorial, bending the country to their will and somehow escaping the fate of those who transgress against the spirit of the land. Against their violence and their diseases, the original people had little defence. The convicts left in 1839, and free settlement was allowed. The Aboriginal people were driven to the margins as the white men took over the land, careless of their gathering places and sacred sites, and excluding them from their hunting grounds. The men of Woogaroo Station and their horses drove their sheep across the land, crushing underfoot a way of life that had existed for thousands of years.

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Woogaroo

The river became a highway for the steamboats of the white man, and the dusty track beside it became a pathway for bullock drays and carts. At this spot, a village known as Woogaroo grew up on the river flats as a landing developed and innkeepers set up hostelries for thirsty workers and travellers by land and by water. A store was established in 1857. By 1859, a thousand bales of Darling Downs wool made their way down the river to Brisbane each month. Settlers attempted to cultivate sugar and cotton with early success. Bullock teams heaved prized logs of hoop pine and red cedar to the wharf for use in Brisbane. Coal was discovered, and primitive mines were developed as men imagined the fortunes they could make selling the valuable fuel for use in steamships, foundries and workshops. Situated between the two most important towns in the Moreton Bay district, the growing settlement welcomed the establishment of the new Colony of Queensland in 1859, the same year that O’Possum Creek cattle station was established, and a cemetery was opened. As a self-respecting part of the British Empire, Queensland needed all the latest facilities. This included an ‘asylum’ where the unfortunates of society could be housed away from the public eye. In those days, such a place was not only for the mentally ill but also for many of those with disabilities. The Woogaroo Lunatic Asylum received its first inmates in 1865 when seven warders (two of them female) and ten police constables escorted 57 male and two female lunatics from Brisbane Gaol to the new Asylum. The place has changed its name many times: the Goodna Asylum, the Goodna Hospital for the Insane, the Brisbane Mental Hospital, the Brisbane Special Hospital, Wolston Park Hospital, and now simply ‘The Park’.

As the number of inmates increased, so did the number of warders living nearby. So too did the number of farmers, as the government divided the land into farms, and the number of mouths to feed steadily grew. The establishment of the new Colony necessitated the construction of a Government House and a Parliament building. The sandstone for these buildings came from a quarry established at Woogaroo near what Stuart Street is now. The stone was quarried, dressed, and transported by cart to the river for barge transport to Brisbane. Construction of the Government House at Gardens Point in Brisbane began in 1860, and of the nearby Parliament House in 1865.

Another requirement of the new Colony was a railway. River transport sufficed from Brisbane to Ipswich, but beyond, a line to the rich Darling Downs with its grazing properties was needed. All the rails, workshop equipment, locomotives, carriages and wagons needed for the pioneer line came up the river on barges hauled by steamboat to North Ipswich, from where the line commenced in 1865

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Woogaroo becomes Goodna

In 1865, the settlement’s name was changed from Woogaroo to Goodna.

By now, it had been delivered by mail to a post office and to a Congregational church. The Royal Mail Hotel had opened by 1866.

The wealthy entrepreneur Robert Towns opened a coal mine, with production beginning in 1867, thereby creating additional jobs.

The loaded coal wagons, about 7000 tons a year, were hauled by horses down to the river wharf on a narrow-gauge tramway using timber rails. A police station was established, and in 1870, a blacksmith set up shop. 1870 also saw the opening of a State School. As Brisbane and Ipswich grew, farming shifted to maize (for animal feed) and root vegetables, with a strong local market for these products. By the early 1870s, the development of transport and industry had led to passenger transport options between Goodna and Brisbane and Ipswich, with two steamboat services per day in each direction. Three-horse coach services each way, two of them run by Cobb and Co. The steamboat called at Oxley and Goodna, while the intermediate coach stops were at Rocklea, Oxley and Goodna. The Brisbane Road of that time corresponds to the Brisbane Terrace of today. When it was decided to extend the railway from Ipswich to Brisbane, the first sod turning took place at Goodna on 30 January 1873. Two thousand people travelled from Brisbane and Ipswich, most by river, to see the Governor, the Marquis of Normanby, perform the ceremony using a silver spade and wheelbarrow. The Ipswich Volunteer Artillery fired off two cannons as a salute. It took more than three years to complete the line, making Goodna an essential station for travellers between Brisbane and Toowoomba, Dalby, and Warwick. From Goodna, travel to Ipswich by train was only about half an hour and to Brisbane about an hour: the river steamers and coaches plied their trade no more. The coming of the railway line encouraged further development.

For example, a sawmill had opened by 1884, allowing sawn timber to be taken as building supplies not only to Brisbane but as far west as Roma. Dairying, butchery, market gardening and even honey production grew as a result of the improved transport links. At the same time, a chemical factory was established close to the river, and a brickworks was opened. By 1888, the population of Goodna was 500. The open country in the area was used for a variety of purposes. For example, in 1886, the Queensland Defence Force’s volunteer soldiers used the area for training their horses to haul artillery guns in preparation for any foreign attack upon the colony. A few years later, the Goodna area was a favourite gathering place for the Brisbane Hunt Club, which perpetuated the British traditions associated with fox hunting. The riders brought their horses from Brisbane by special train, and the pack of hounds came on foot from their kennels at Rocklea. Following lunch at a local hostelry or private residence, the ‘hunt’ would take place with the hounds followed not a fox but a pre-laid scent trail across the country, and there was much jumping of fences and other obstacles on the part of the riders.

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The 1893 flood

Flooding of the Brisbane River was a frequent problem at Goodna, and a rowboat was kept available to allow staff of the Mental Hospital to travel to and from work. The 1890 flood caused extensive damage, with many people displaced from their homes and sheltered in the Catholic church. In 1893, the most significant flood on record occurred. At Goodna, the water level rose to 22 metres (5 metres higher than in 1974 and 6 metres higher than in 2011), flooding the Catholic church. The flood destroyed many more of the buildings in the settlement north of the railway line. Even the Railway Station building was partially swept away. Although some buildings were rebuilt on the river flats along the old Brisbane Road, development turned to the higher ground above the railway line. There were seven hills in the area: Hospital Hill, Dingo Hill, Holmes Hill, Brickfield Hill, Meaney’s Hill, School Hill, and Bradley’s Hill. ‘School Hill’, ‘Brickfield Hill’ and ‘Holmes Hill’ were all common Goodna addresses in the 1930s

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