Wellington Point

Wellington Point is a residential locality in the City of Redland, Queensland, Australia.

Wellington Point is a residential locality in the City of Redland, Queensland, Australia. In the 2016 census, Wellington Point had a population of 12,350 people. The suburb is a popular seaside destination within the Brisbane metropolitan area and is notable for a popular walk along a sandbar to King Island which emerges at low tide.

The people of the Quandamooka lived in the Redlands long before white settlement. Food was plentiful and skillfully hunted, fished and collected. Tribes of the Yuggera language group inhabited the whole area, with the tribe inhabiting the mainland coastal strip stretching from Redland Bay to the mouth of the Brisbane River being called the Koobenpul.It is considered that the first Europeans to travel through Wellington Point were three shipwrecked timber getters, Pamphlett, Finnegan and Parsons in 1823.

Wellington Point was named by surveyors Robert Dixon and James Warner in 1842 after the Duke of Wellington who led the army of the United Kingdom in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. The bay formed in part by Wellington Point was named Waterloo Bay. The first European settlers arrived in Wellington Point in the mid-1860s after the first land sales of 1864 at which one of the big purchasers was Thomas Lodge Murray-Prior. Another purchaser was Captain Louis Hope, who built Ormiston House and established a major sugar plantation and milling operation in Ormiston.Around 1869, Gilbert Burnett come to the district, taking overCaptain Louis Hope's sugar mill before purchasing land at Wellington Point, where he grew sugarcane and erected a sugar mill. In 1889 he built the two-storey house Fernbourne in Fernbourne Road (the third house he built by this name in the district).Early industries included growing sugar cane, timber cutting, fruit and vegetable farming and fishing. (Of these the only surviving industry of any significance is fruit and vegetable farming though rapidly increasing urbanisation has reduced this industry to very low levels.)

In the 1889 a railway line from Brisbane, Queensland was built to Cleveland, Queensland passing through Wellington Point. This led to greater travel to Wellington Point and the opening up of yet more land. The line was closed in 1960 due to lack of use. In 1988 the railway station was re-opened and the rail link to Brisbane was re-established. The Wellington Point reserve, opened in the 1880s was closed in 1974.

In 1887 Gilbert Burnett subdivided more of his Wellington Point holdings, especially around the railway station. Edith, Alice and Matilda Streets were laid out and named after three of Burnett’s daughters.

Wellington Point State School opened on 9 May 1887.

The first Methodist church was established in 1888, as was the original Wellington Point Hotel which was demolished in 1972 but has since been rebuilt. Another house called Fernbourne was constructed in 1889, but was renamed Whepstead Manor in 1900.

By 1893 the population of the area was 260 most involved in the primary sector and the service sector and by 1897 the end of Wellington Point was set aside as a recreation reserve.

The Point’s popularity continued to grow with special fruit trains run to the area in 1906 to sample the strawberries and to visit the gardens and vineyards and by 1911 retirees and commuters began to move into the area and more housing blocks were set aside.

Banyan figs were planted at the point in 1924, by 1925 the first kiosk at the point was established and in 1927 the Moreton Bay Figs were planted giving the point many of its most iconic features.

Whilst the great depression in the late 20s and 30s was a personal tragedy for many, it was also a time of work creation and the development of infrastructure. An interesting development at the point was the drilling for oil which began in 1931. The drilling was commercially unsuccessful, but it did attract the interest of the Prime Minister and the Catholic Church. 1931 was also the year that town electricity was first provided in the area and the Wellington Point jetty was completed in 1937.

The Second World War had a significant effect on Wellington Point and arguably the most obvious consequence was the US camp during 1943 and 1944 when 1500 US forces camped there and conducted shooting and bombing practice.After the war the pace of life slowed but change was coming. In 1959 a chemist, doctor’s surgery, butcher, garage and fish shop were set up and with the arrival of reticulated water in 1969, farmland began to be sub-divided for house blocks.

In 1983 the Redland Cricketers Club was opened.

Wellington Point State High School opened on 25 January 1988.Redlands College was established on 1 February 1988 by an association of members of the Churches of Christ in Australia.On 4 September 2012, the historic Fernbourne House was destroyed by fire. It was a two-storey building built in 1889 by pioneer Gilbert Burnett. It was the third house he had built with that name; the first being on the site of the present Whepstead Manor.