The A-Z of Old Brisbane – Chermside and Clayfield.

Chermside

Chermside, in Brisbane’s north, grew into a suburb because of it’s location on Gympie Road. Gympie Road was the main road to the gold diggings, and gradually became the main road out of town for those heading up to the Sunshine Coast and beyond. Today, Chermside is best known for an enormous and historical shopping centre, which was the first of its kind in Queensland.

Slideshow: Early Chermside men enjoyed leaning on things – at Hamilton’s Blacksmith’s, a second blacksmith’s, TA Hamilton’s Fuel Depot, and Ida Grantham’s Shop. (State Library of Queensland – SLQ).

c 1892 – Mrs James Hamilton, Postmistress of Chermside. One did not dare mess with Mrs Hamilton, one suspects. (SLQ).

View of the suburb of Chermside, 1904. (SLQ)

One of many images of the extensive World War 1 military training area at Chermside. (SLQ).

A housing estate on Rode Road, Chermside 1960s. (For non-locals, that’s pronounced Road-y Road.) (Brisbane City Council Images – BCC).

Recent Chermside: A drive-in shopping centre was quite the novelty (Wikipedia, unattributed). The Chermside Hills Nature Reserve (Must Do Brisbane Website).

Clayfield

Clayfield was possibly named after the clay deposits for the bricks manufactured in neighbouring Hendra. Clayfield’s lofty but central location made it ideal for showpiece houses in the late 1800s and beyond.

1907: Ashton Hall, on exclusive Bonny Avenue, is decorated for a fete. There may be pinafores, boaters and nannies, but children still caused chaos. (SLQ).
The electric tram at Clayfield in 1909. (SLQ.)
One of the rare occasions when children were seen and heard.
c 1905: The Clayfield residence of Mr Isles (of Finney, Isles & Co). (SLQ.)

Left: The imposing exterior of Stanley Hall. Right: The daunting interior of Stanley Hall. Navigating all of that bric-a-brac would have been quite a test of skill and sobriety. (SLQ.)

Left: Generations of the Heindorff family at Clayfield. Right: A man and a boy climb a cliff-face at Hutton Street. (SLQ).

Forty years on, the Clayfield Electric Tram was still in demand. (BCC, 1949). Commuters were certainly rather more fastidious in their dress standards in those days.
1962: A symphony of colour and symmetry in this Courier-Mail Garden Contest finalist’s entry. I imagine that Mrs W Harvey spent a lot of time watching from those immaculately clean front windows, lest anyone dare trample her footpath blossoms. (BCC).

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