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| ISBN-13: | 9780702262203 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Queensland Press |
| Publication date: | 09/03/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 248 |
| File size: | 12 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
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CHAPTER 1
Encountering the Floodplain
Brisbane is Turrbal country, with land stretching from the mouth of the river to Moggill, north to North Pine and south to Logan. The language group in Ipswich and the Lockyer and Fassifern valleys is Jagera or Yuggera. The Turrbal and Jagera people have a symbiotic relationship with rivers and land; for them, the river is the giver of life and needs care in return. Different Dreamtime stories tell how the Brisbane River was created. One tells how Moodagurra, the rainbow serpent, became stuck as she made her way up a dry creek. Moodagurra called on Yara (the rain) and Ngalan (the cloud) to help. As the storm thundered and rain flowed into the creek, the water seeped under Moodagurra's belly, allowing her to wriggle from side to side. This movement formed the sinuous river called Maiwar. Now Moodagurra decides when the big rains come and brings the floods, and Maiwar provides sustenance and recreational activities. In Turrbal and Jagera culture, floods are appreciated as an essential part of the river's life cycle that shape the country, create floodplains and sustain all life in the river's catchment.
The Turrbal and Jagera people are fishing people. For over 60,000 years, the rivers and streams provided them with a bountiful source of water and food – mullet, flounder, crabs, shellfish, turtles, eels and water birds among the seasonal foods on offer. Attuned to the environment, the Turrbal and Jagera people moved with the seasons, relocating before exhausting food sources. As Jagera man Neville Bonner explained in 1995, 'We rotated around allowing nature to provide and crops to rejuvenate.'
Aboriginal camps were located near water crossings, including present-day Enoggera, Breakfast Creek, Kurilpa Point (South Brisbane), West End, Toowong, Oxley Creek, and upstream near Ipswich at Colleges Crossing and Kholo Flats. Prior to colonial dredging, the river depth varied greatly, offering both deep waterholes for fishing and swimming, and shallow crossing points. A large waterhole near the present-day City Botanic Gardens was used for swimming, fishing and catching dugong, while Hamilton's large sand islands and low water offered a favoured crossing point. At low tide the river at Kurilpa Point was waist deep. The Turrbal and Jagera people used the river as a transportation route, traversing it in rafts and canoes, or swimming using logs for flotation when fatigued. Reminiscing in 1909 about South Brisbane in the 1840s, settler William Clark recalled Turrbal people crossing the river on rafts, or up to 60 people swimming across at a time, holding spears above their heads and rotating them in a motion like sculling a boat.
The Turrbal and Jagera people were well aware of floods. They built camps near water under trees to provide shade, but they built these camps 14 metres above watercourses to prevent flood damage. As early as 1842, Aborigines warned the McConnel family, new settlers in the Brisbane River valley, that an inundation had occurred the previous year. After a flood in 1890, the Cooyar people of the upper Brisbane River told journalist Archibald Meston of a large flood on Magenjie, 'Big Flowing Water' or 'Big River', an alternative name for the Brisbane River. Meteorologist Inigo Jones wrote in 1929 that Aboriginal oral tradition described how Brisbane floods could originate in the Stanley River, a fact validated by his own hydrological analysis. The Turrbal people also recalled a flood that broke the river's banks at North Quay, flowing through the present-day Brisbane City Hall site (Adelaide Street) and into Creek Street, an old river tributary.
The recollections of Thomas Petrie, who from 1837 grew up among Aboriginal children and learned their language and customs, provide a rare insight into Indigenous culture in the early years of the colony. Petrie reveals the climatic adaptations and agricultural practices of Aboriginal people in the area as they responded to the changing environment. In drought, Aboriginal people dug wells in swampy areas for water and constructed weirs across the river or tributaries to regulate the water flow. Aboriginal men would build dams of stone or brush and make traps to block streams to catch eels or fish. They piled wood on the water's edge to rot and attract cobra or kambi (Nausitora queenslandica), a long white worm, for harvesting. The Turrbal and Jagera people had learned to live with the river, using it for food and transportation, but also allowing it to replenish the lands through flooding. They tried to warn the colonists of the changing nature of the land alongside the river, but these warnings went unheeded.
A 'Magnificent River'
The first British record of floods in the Brisbane River area is from botanist Joseph Banks on board the Endeavour in May 1770. Travelling as part of Lieutenant James Cook's expedition, he observed a 'dirty clay colour' in Moreton Bay waters, suggesting a flood from a large river. However, the river remained hidden to the British until explorer John Oxley was charged with finding a site for a new penal colony for the New South Wales (NSW) Government in 1823. He encountered escaped convicts John Finnegan, Thomas Pamphlet and Richard Parsons at Bribie Island who alerted him to the existence of a river.
Despite fighting exhaustion from the environmental challenges of a 'vertical sun', mosquitoes and sandflies, Oxley's expedition located the river. His crew shared his enthusiasm for this 'magnificent river'. Expedition member John Uniacke noted the banks of 'rich black loam' forming 'rich flat country, clothed with large timber', which he expected would prove 'a valuable acquisition to the colony'. The expedition, Uniacke pronounced, was 'successful beyond our expectations'. Oxley's field notes on 3 December 1823 record that he had found an eligible place for settlement, served admirably by a navigable river. He said that the river 'promises to be of the utmost importance to the colony from the very fertile country it passes through, affording the means of water communication with the sea to a vast extent of country, the greater portion of which is capable of producing the richest productions of the tropics'. Reflecting the priorities and worldview of the British Empire, Oxley recognised the river's maritime potential and the economic value of its contiguous fertile land. Colonisation soon followed – a transformative event in the relationship between the river and its human neighbours.
Oxley charted the river's course upstream to present-day Goodna, assigning British names to pockets of land and topographical features, and honouring the NSW Governor, Sir Thomas Brisbane, by bestowing his name on the river. Historian Peter Read describes how explorers and cartographers inscribed maps 'as if the rivers flowed waiting for a European to name them'. By charting the river and its surrounding landscape, Oxley supplanted Aboriginal history. Cultural anthropologist Veronica Strang notes the symbolic importance of naming places as it 'humanises the landscape' and imbeds the identity of the new settlers on the land, 'bringing it into their perceived sphere of control'. With its naming, the Brisbane River became part of the British Colonial Empire.
Initially, Oxley misunderstood what he saw. He erroneously believed the Brisbane River to be the largest river in New South Wales, its source the 'Interior Waters' (the much-desired inland sea that many imagined lay at the heart of the continent). Regardless of this error, Oxley had fulfilled his brief, finding a river necessary for settlement and a potentially economically advantageous outpost. Ignoring the conspicuous presence of Aboriginal people and the assistance they provided to explorers, the British regarded the country as terra nullius, empty and ripe for the taking. Oxley's glowing accounts prompted Governor Brisbane to establish a penal settlement at Redcliffe, on the shores of Moreton Bay, in 1824.
Oxley's second voyage in 1824 charted more colonial land and rivers upstream with the assistance of Allan Cunningham, the King's Botanist. Cunningham, who was more attuned to the environment, saw beyond the area's economic advantages. His journal records species of flora and fauna, geology and navigational obstacles, providing an early account of the river prior to settler alterations. He also dispelled the myth of an inland water source, suggesting the nearby ranges as the river's origin. Oxley and Cunningham described the riverbed as mostly sand and shingle. At the bar of the river the depth was 1.5 metres at low water, with a tidal rise of 2 metres. Upstream between the bars at Luggage Point and the rocks at Lytton the river reached a desirable depth for navigation. After the flats at Eagle Farm and the Pinkenba-Colmslie area the river remained clear and deep to Seventeen Mile Rocks, 27 kilometres from the mouth. Shoals were recorded upstream as far as the confluence of the Brisbane and Bremer rivers, beyond which the shallow Brisbane River was unnavigable. The Bremer River, with its snags and rocks, provided a shallow channel only as far as the future site of Ipswich.
While the Turrbal and Jagera people had respected and worked with the rhythms of floods and drought, the British colonists, with their notions of human superiority over nature, regarded the environment as existing for the British Empire to exploit by creating agrarian and urban settlements. The settlers, with little understanding of subtropical floods, ignored both Indigenous and their own fledgling knowledge of floods in South East Queensland and built to the water's edge, sowing the seeds for future flood hazard. Floods were ignored by colonial administrators who were preoccupied with establishing a colony, navigational improvements and providing potable water in a drought-prone settlement.
Newspaper and explorer accounts promoting the new colony fixated on the beauty and economic potential of the rivers and their banks, viewing the world 'through the fiscal lens of revenue needs'. Accompanying Governor Brisbane on a visit to Moreton Bay in 1824, a journalist marvelled at the 'truly picturesque' scenery, with one bank 'high open forest land', the opposite 'comparatively low country covered with close vegetation'. The banks abounded with 'promising' pines, some '8 to 10 feet in circumference' (2.5 to 3 metres) and '90 to 100 feet' (27 to 30 metres) in height. As well as noting the vegetation for potential timber trade, in 1828 Colonial Botanist Charles Fraser recorded the elevated and rocky riverbanks in Brisbane – the distinctive ignimbrite cliffs at Kangaroo Point, and the limestone and abundant coal seams near Ipswich – as bounty for the Imperial treasury. While enthusing about the magnificence of the vegetation, the product of a fertile floodplain, how aware were these explorers of evidence of flood?
Although in 1823 Oxley found 'no appearance of the River being even occasionally flooded', on his second voyage he noted that the bank near Kholo Creek had been 'at some period washed by an inundation: a flood would be too weak an expression to use for a collection of water rising to the height (full 50 feet), which the appearance of the shore here renders probable'. This flood height may well have exceeded his previous experience, causing him to declare the term 'flood' an inadequate description. Cunningham also observed evidence of past flooding, meticulously recording evidence of 'water-borne debris well above the banks'. The noted sand and gravel banks 'over which the River in great floods impetuously sweeps, its marks on the Outer Bar furnishing us with the proofs of its being at those periods 500 yards wide' offered evidence of large floods. Later, when exploring the river in flood in September 1825, Major Edmund Lockyer noted upstream from Fernvale near Lockyer Creek discoloured water rising 'a foot in less than an hour'. He recorded earlier floodmarks 'upwards of one hundred feet', further commenting that 'tremendous floods' had at times occurred in the Brisbane River.
Explorers also recorded evidence of the region's susceptibility to drought. Dry weather in the nine months between Oxley's expeditions had reduced Brisbane River heights and increased the salinity further upstream. Pondweeds covered the surface. Rocks and sandbars, exposed in low water, impeded navigation. Although the cycle of floods and drought had been duly noted by Oxley, Cunningham and Lockyer, and could have raised concerns for future settlement, this did not dim the dominant narrative. Diaries and official reports of explorers and penal colony administrators expose a colonial preoccupation with the navigational potential of the river and its banks' economic value as a source of free timber and fertile, alluvial farmland. The riverbanks presented an untapped potential for settlement. With their Eurocentric understanding of the environment and their utilitarian mindset, the British colonised the floodplains of the Brisbane River.
Creating a Colony
The penal colony first settled at Redcliffe in 1824 until problems of poor water, mosquitoes and an unsuitable port forced its abandonment the following year. Commandant Henry Miller chose the new site of Brisbane, 27 kilometres up river, ignoring John Oxley and the Governor's endorsement of Breakfast Creek. Reasons for this choice are unclear, but perhaps the elevated ridge above the river, waterholes on the north bank, fertile land on the south and building stone in the nearby riverside cliffs offered incentives. The original overseers of Brisbane Town exploited the topography and chose a site surrounded on three sides by the Brisbane River and bounded to the north by a ridge (now Wickham Terrace). Its self-contained character made an ideal prison. Buildings were constructed on the high ground along the ridge of William and George streets and on the spur (now Queen Street). The Brisbane River provided the ingress and egress to the town, primarily via the wharf behind the Commissariat Store in William Street, and settlement was restricted to the north side of the river. In a rare newspaper insight into the flood hazard created by settling on a floodplain, The Brisbane Courier remarked in 1893 that the convict settlement had been located with 'sublime disregard of fluvial footprints'. By leaving little open space for floodwaters, town planners created a permanent environmental risk.
Despite the potential for flooding, riverside land helped address the pressing need for food, prompting dramatic changes to the landscape. Settlers cleared the lush vegetation the explorers had enthused about. Land in South Brisbane opposite the main settlement, described in 1930 by a former convict as a 'tangled mass of trees, vines, flowering creepers, staghorns, elkhorns, towering scrub palms, giant ferns, beautiful and rare orchids and the wild passion flower', was cleared for agriculture. In 1828, the Government Gardens (now the City Botanic Gardens) were laid out beside the river and planted with vegetables and arrowroot. Captain Bishop, Commandant of Moreton Bay, reported in 1826 that 34.5 hectares of arable land had been cleared for tobacco, sugar cane and maize. The development of 404 hectares at Eagle Farm made further incursions into both riverside and Turrbal and Jagera lands. Redbank Plains, 53 kilometres upstream from Brisbane, provided grazing land for cattle after 1832. Farther upstream, lime was mined at Limestone (renamed Ipswich in 1843) for building construction.
The penal settlement closed in 1839. In preparation for free settlement, Andrew Petrie, Superintendent of Public Works, and military engineer Major George Barney made the first attempt to regulate land development, surveying Brisbane in 1838 to accommodate the existing riverside settlement. Surveyor Robert Dixon's town survey, completed by March 1840, created a grid pattern of square blocks with 66 foot (20 metre) wide streets. He imposed the accepted rectilinear street pattern already used in America and other Australian cities, a system that offered a 'cheap and rapid' method of surveying a town, and provided homogeneity, administrative order and control. The standard plan's application afforded the landscape minimal attention, as it was merely rotated to cater for a meander in the river with streets terminating at its edge. Early plans for a wide riverside esplanade were abandoned, removing an opportunity to create a small flood buffer between river and settlement. Sir George Gipps, appointed Governor of New South Wales (including Moreton Bay) in 1837, dismissed the idea. Grandiose boulevards were not required in a town that he believed had little future beyond 'an ordinary provincial settlement' or 'a paltry village'. With the town already restricted in size to half a square mile by the Spring Hill scarp and the river, authorities did not intend to constrict development any further. Little effort was made to preserve the river frontages for public use or keep structures off the floodplain. Writing with hindsight in 1866, Andrew Petrie expressed his regret at Brisbane's poor planning:
[A]ny citizen who is interested in the progress of the City must feel touched with regret to see that every bit of river frontage is, as likely to be, locked up in private hands. Were Brisbane, as it ought to have been, planned after the model of the best seaport towns at home, the whole of the river front would have been reserved as public property, with sufficient breadth of ground, for wharves, sheds, and streets.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "A River with a City Problem"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Margaret Cook.
Excerpted by permission of University of Queensland Press.
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Table of Contents
Introduction: A Meandering River,
The Brisbane River Catchment: Map and Facts,
1: Encountering the Floodplain,
2: Mighty Outbreak of Nature's Forces: The 1893 Floods,
3: Taming the River,
4: Encroaching on the Floodplain,
5: The River Prevails: The 1974 Flood,
6: Dam Dependency,
7: The Untameable Torrent: The 2011 Flood,
8: Flood Management with Hindsight,
Conclusion: Floods Will Come Again,
Acknowledgements,
Notes on Sources,
Notes,
Index,