QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

German connections with the Brisbane River

More than half a million tons of stone had been quarried from the Kangaroo Point cliffs and used to build retaining walls as the lower reaches of the river were re-engineered. “This massive programme of clearing channels, sculpting the jutting points of land and confining the River to a carefully regulated course between rock walls, helped to create a modern port receptive to the large steamers which brought manufactured goods to Brisbane and carried the products of its hinterland all over the world.” Below: The ungainly form of the hard-working Hercules which was finally retired in 1917; her remains can still be seen today, as an oyster hulk on the mudbanks of The One Mile anchorage on the Moreton Bay side of North Stradbroke Island. Image 1-10164 courtesy of Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW

From 1859, Queensland’s first colonial government inherited a capital sited about 15 miles (24km) – as measured along the waterway – upstream from a river mouth rendered unnavigable to ocean going ships by an inner and outer bar of sand and mudbanks. The wharves at South and North Brisbane could be reached only by coastal shipping and lighters, wending their way up shallow, serpentine channels. A second, rocky bar upstream from Lytton (see map) and wide expanses of gravelly shallows at the Eagle Farm flats were further impediments. An attempt to build an accessible jetty below the Flats was in vain: “Eagle Farm was almost useless as a port facility because a sandbank between it and deep water had not been noticed when the jetty was built.” This was another challenge vigorously addressed as an impediment to trade and growth. The new colonial government set aside £10,000 in the 1861 estimates for the acquisition of a steam dredge – the Lytton , built in Sydney – and a handful of smaller vessels. Between August 1862 and July 1864 the first bar cutting was dredged out to the north of Luggage Point. In 1867 a channel was cut through the Pelican Shoal in the lower reach to allow vessels drawing up to 17 feet (5.2m) to proceed at least as far as Eagle Farm. Sailing ships generally had to be towed upriver, and the earliest steamers were still forced to anchor off the mouth and unload into lighters. Port charges were high and there was growing criticism compared with the accessibility of Sydney and Melbourne. Further dredging in 1871 allowed larger vessels to at last reach the town wharves along Petrie Bight, the City Reach and South Brisbane. Along the river’s lower reaches, dredging continued to deepen and straighten channels, and the dredge spoil was used to fill in reclaimed swampy land at Lytton and Hamilton. Regular flooding of the river and buildup of sediment caused ongoing challenges but, after the ‘Great Floods’ of 1893, the channel had been recovered to a depth of 16 feet (4.9m) and a width of 300 feet (91m) by June 1895, increasing to 26 feet (8m) and 400 feet, (122m), respectively, by the early 1900s. Rocky shoals at Lytton and Hemmant were removed, and the points of Kangaroo Point and Bulimba were cut away to free up turning room for big ships. A corner of New Farm was shaved a few years later, making a total of about 50 acres (20 hectares) of land and more than four million tons of soil removed.

Newer equipment was needed to replace the early conveyor-belt ‘bucket dredges’ such as the Scottish-built Hercules and its smaller counterpart Maryborough , one of many dredges, barges and other vessels built in the Wide Bay town. Starting from 1909, this pair had dredged the new entrance channnel we know today at the river mouth, at last fully opening up the riverine port of Brisbane to ocean-going shipping. Even before the completion of the new cutting in 1912, Queensland was already looking to German shipyards and dredging technology and, that year, the newly-ordered Remora set out from Danzig in Prussia (now Gdansk in Poland) bound for Moreton Bay. Some sense of the anticipation of her arrival is reported on the following pages. Extracts this page from Helen Gregory’s ‘The Brisbane River Story’ pp 38–50

Below: Hercules (right) alongside its hopper barge Curlew in the Brisbane River. Image courtesy State Records of NSW

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