Historical Landmarks
Hambeluna
Integrated landscape artwork located in Strand Park, in collaboration with WSA Landscape Architects, Townsville.
Hambeluna: Spirit Rising is an artwork honouring the spirit of place and the unique topography of this site. Embodied also are themes of cultural memory, how we orientate ourselves in the world, how we give purpose and meaning to our lives, and how we are formed by and from our environment.
This work reinscribes the former lagoon Hambeluna, also known as Comerford's Lagoon, back into the landscape from which it disappeared in the 1930s. A symbolic image which involves and integrates both early European and Aboriginal histories, the lagoon is taken from the Surveyor General's first map of Townsville. This map shows the lagoon, its flood path and the water reserve fence. The lagoon was the first campsite of the advanced party of John Melton Black and became the water supply for the first white settlement. The first log hut was built from the paper bark trees that grew beside the lagoon which is now filled in. The absent lagoon is redrawn as a series of contour lines of porphyry stone. A variety of grasses differentiate the lagoon from the flood path and the old water reserve. A grid of lights set into a carpet of tufted zoysia grass redefines the lagoon and melaleucas are replanted. At night the lagoon becomes a luminous invocation of its past presence.
According to local legend, Hambeluna was the home of Yaminda, the Rainbow Serpent. The mound that snakes across the back of the park suggests a serpent shape. For many cultures, the serpent symbolises healing and regeneration as well as wisdom. Fissures dissect the earths mounds. On the Street side they open out onto the path through wedge shaped folds. Each one has a particular orientation to a focal feature of the park. The major fissure acts as a viewing channel to the central insignia of Strand Park and beyond to the jetty's sails. At night, light illuminates the fissures rising out of the earth. Ancient theologies believed that cracks in the earth brought to the surface the influences of the earth spirit. Fissures in the earth were perceived as gateways to the lower kingdom, passages for spirits descending into the underworld and rising again.
The head serpent, a small earth mound, provides an overview of the artwork, the Strand, and its surrounds. A ramp rises toward a small platform, which is on the axis of the jetty, the lagoon and the central fissure. This is the major focal point where the relationships and alignments between the various elements of the artwork momentarily fall into place.
Lyndall Milani has produced a series of environments since 1984, of which Hambeluna: Spirit Rising is the tenth. The earlier landscapes were ephemeral in nature and associated with contemporary art exhibitions. The recent works are collaborations with architects and or landscape architects and are permanent works sited in the public realm, which seek to retain the values and concerns of the ephemeral works.
St Patrick's Precinct
The first Catholic Church in Townsville was erected on The Strand in 1872 near the corner of Fryer Street. After a number of additions it was the main Catholic Church in the city for 20 years. In 1892, a stream that ran along Fryer Street flooded following a tropical deluge. The church foundations gave way and the old timber church collapsed and was not immediately replaced. The Sacred Heart Church (now Cathedral) opened in 1902 in Stanley Street and became the focus of Catholicism in Townsville. In 1923 the present concrete St Joseph's church was built in a Romanesque style designed by prominent Townsville architects Lynch and Hunt.
In 1873 St Joseph's School and St Patrick's Convent were opened by the Sisters of St Joseph. The Sisters also provided a home for orphans. In 1877 the convent was extended to provide accommodation for boarders and it is now the oldest boarding school in Townsville. The Sisters of Mercy took over the complex in 1879.
Beside the modern chapel stands the central part of the convent, the oldest structure on the site. It was built in 1883 and is the oldest remaining major timber building in Townsville. In 1900 wings were added at each end to create the convent we see today. The central brick building replaced a timber building erected in 1918 featuring cast iron balustrading.
The complex was requisitioned during World War II as accommodation for members of the Women's Australian Auxiliary Air Force and the students were evacuated to Ravenswood.
Attractive gardens that bordered the beach in the 1930s disappeared during World War II when a mess hall and barracks for servicemen were built opposite the convent.
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Sister Kenny Memorial
Elizabeth Kenny (1880 - 1952) was an Australian nursing sister who became world famous for her revolutionary treatment of infantile paralysis or poliomyelitis (polio). This treatment involved the application of hot packs, and the exercising of the children's limbs, at first passively and then with graduated active movements.
Her theories were developed while working as a bush nurse and during her service as a nurse in World War I. She earned a reputation for helping patients that doctors considered hopeless cases. In 1933 she opened a clinic in a suburban backyard of Townsville and parents carried out treatment under her guidance.
Doctors from Townsville Hospital noticed improvement in her patients and arranged for a scientific study of her work, which was inconclusive. Parents of affected children continued to seek her help. The Sister Kenny Experimental Muscle Re-education Clinic was established in Townsville in March 1934 in rooms at the rear of the Queens Hotel (now Ten Television Studios). By 1936 Kenny Clinics were established in Brisbane, Toowoomba, and Sydney.
In 1938 the Australian Medical establishment subjected her work to a medical Royal Commission whose findings condemned her unorthodox procedures as 'dangerous', 'damaging', 'costly', and 'cruel'. Undeterred, Sister Kenny went to the United States of America in 1939 with Queensland Government assistance and formal experiments conducted there proved her treatment resulted in a much higher recovery rate than any other method. Sister Elizabeth Kenny Institutes were then established throughout the United States. Many innovations in rehabilitative medical treatments were developed in these institutions.
Sister Kenny never forgot the support she received from the people of Townsville. At the opening of the children's playground in 1949 she commented, "The people of this city have harboured a little candle which has spread its light throughout the world."
The Seaview
The Seaview Hotel was famous during World War II as an Australian Officers' Mess. The oldest part of the present building was designed by Townsville architect Joe Rooney in 1929, and it is one of very few remaining masonry hotels that were built in Townsville in the first half of the 20th century. It replaced the old timber hotel, built by Joe Rooney's ancestors in 1889, which was destroyed by fire.
In the 19th century it was fashionable to build villa residences overlooking the sea along this part of the Strand. None of them survived, but the name of one, 'Seaview House', probably inspired the naming of the hotel.
Seaview Baths, situated opposite Gregory Street, was a unique recreational facility. Opened in 1921 as a seawater bathing enclosure, it was extended in 1930 when a dance pavilion was added, fronting the Strand and extending over the water on timber piers. Electric light illuminated the water, and a local dance band supplied music. Music was also broadcast over loudspeakers so that bathers could enjoy music while swimming. It was probably Townsville's first piped music. With the additional facilities of changing rooms and a cafe, the Seaview Baths was a popular venue until its destruction in a cyclone in the 1940s.
Interestingly, in 1870 the wooden paddle steamer Black became an early victim of a tropical cyclone near this spot when the storm caused it to founder. Fortunately passengers and crew survived.
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Tobruk Pool
This part of the Strand has always been popular with bathers. It was known as the Rocks because a rocky spur of Melton Hill extended into the sea. From the 1880s the spur was quarried, creating the cliffs opposite the pool. The stone was used to construct the eastern breakwater of Townsville Port. In the early days of settlement, men swam here in open water and risked encounters with sharks, stingers, and crocodiles. Victorian ladies were excluded from swimming until 1875 when bathing machines were installed. For a rental charge of 6 pence (5 cents) the ladies could preserve their modesty - but the machines were not popular.
Public demand for a safe swimming enclosure led to the opening of Townsville Baths (or Corporation Baths) in 1890. The baths were enclosed with wire mesh, and dressing rooms were elevated on piers over the water.
In 1910 the concrete City Baths replaced the old Townsville Baths, but they were not popular. A simple swimming enclosure protected by wire mesh was then provided. Several other swimming enclosures were built along the Strand and in Rowes Bay during the 1920s and 1930s.
City Council decided to build a new modern pool complex in 1940, naming it Tobruk Memorial Baths to honour the Australian victory at Tobruk in North Africa in 1941. It was not completed until 1951, because the government halted all work when the war in the Pacific intensified in 1942.
In 1956 and 1960 it was the training venue for the Australian Olympic Swimming Team, of which Dawn Fraser was a member. Famous Australian swimming coach Laurie Lawrence was also associated with the pool for a time when his father was the owner/operator of the pool.
Kissing Point
Despite its romantic name, Kissing Point was probably named after a feature in Sydney Harbour.
The area has a long associated with the military and social history of Townsville. Kissing Point Fort, on the point, was designed by Major Edward Druitt of the Royal Engineers. Completed in 1891 to defend the harbour from the threat of foreign attack (at that time by the Russians). It was manned by One Battery Garrison and the Kennedy Regiment, composed mainly of volunteers. They held annual encampments at Norman Park, the area behind the point, now known as Jezzine Barracks. The name Jezzine commemorates the victory of the Australian 7th Division over Vichy French forces in Syria in 1941.
During World War II Kissing Point was the headquarters of the 265th Australian Infantry Battalion, and landing ship tanks used the beach near the point to embark and disembark men and supplies.
Kissing Point also has a long association with recreation. In the first decades of the 20th century, the city's first golf course stretched from Eyre Street to Warburton Street and occupied part of Jezzine Barracks.
In 1929 holiday huts for the Country Women's Association (CWA) were constructed on the site that is occupied by the present CWA Homes. In 1933 the CWA was responsible for the construction of the first baths on the site, named in honour of a member, Ethel Crowther. They were restored many times, before they were replaced by the Rock Pool in 1968.
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