South-East Advertiser - Migrant Decendants Sought / South-East Advertiser - Don't Sell Landmark! / Promises Are History / Smart State 1, Developer 0. / Yungabonanza for Developer / Is history Repeating Itself? / Brisbane Times Article / STATELINE Queensland - Broadcast / Record of Proceedings - Parliament / Sunday Mail Article / The Independent / South East Advertiser Article 1 / South East Advertiser Article 2 / Courier Mail Article
Media Coverage
1/12/07 - Yungaba Action Group
www.yungaba.org.au
President Delene Cuddihy
Mobile : 040 259 7 259
041 104 1 209
YUNGABA 120 th BIRTHDAY PARTY - PHOTO OPPORTUNITY:
WHAT: Commemoration Ceremony to honour 120 years of the opening of the Kangaroo Point Immigration Depot, later known as Yungaba
WHEN: 2.00 to 2.30 Historical Display, Guided Tours
2.30 to 2.45 Special Guest Speaker
2.45 to 3.00 Commemoration Ceremony
3.00 to 3.30 Afternoon Tea
WHERE: Front lawn, Yungaba, 120 Main Street , Kangaroo Point, Brisbane
WHAT HAPPENED: On 6 December 1887 , the migrant ship “Duke of Buccleuch” landed the first migrants at Yungaba (Kangaroo Point Immigration Depot). Since then, hundreds of thousands of migrants, refugees and evacuees have been welcomed to Queensland within this gracious building and grounds. Yungaba also has national significance as it was the site of the deportation for thousands of South Sea Islanders under the White Australia Policy. During WW1 it was transformed into the 6 th Australian General Hospital where thousands of wounded Queensland ANZACS were welcomed home.
INVITED GUESTS : Descendents of the First Migrants, First People representatives, Medical Personnel from WW1 Military Hospital, South Sea Islander representatives, Story Bridge Design and Construction workers, WW2 Evacuees from Hong Kong , and South East Asia , Migrants, Refugees, Former Staff, Former Tenants, Former Apprentices from rural Queensland, Community Members, Supporters of Yungaba Action Group
DEVELOPMENT APPLICATION UPDATE: The BCC decision on the new Development Application (DA) to turn historic Yungaba into 10 luxury apartments inside a gated community is still pending.
The deadline for submissions on the DA closed in July and YAG along with many others put in a submission objecting strongly to the proposed development. Nearly all of the 70 submissions opposed the DA, with 40 directly mentioning the alternative usage of Yungaba proposed by YAG.
For details of the link to the development application and our alternative proposal for Yungaba, see our website: http://www.yungaba.org.au
YAG ACTIONS
Supporters have been sent an exemplar letter for them to write to Minister Robert Schwarten requesting the removing of the Yungaba main building from Australand’s development proposal and seeking a feasibility study for a tourist development.
Title: Migrant Decendants Sought
Date: 30th AUGUST 2007
Newspaper: South-East Advertiser
The Yungaba Action Group (YAG) would like to find the descendants of the first migrants to QLD who came ashore at the historic Yungaba Immigration on December 6 1887. YAG is organising a series of activities to celebrate 120 years of migrants being welcomed to QLD at Yungaba.
Click here to sign our online petition
NOTE: On April 13 the handover of the 860 signed petitions sparked more news coverage on TV - Channel 10 and on Radio on 4QR, ABC Local Radio.
Despite public opposition the State Government has all but signed off on the sale of herritage-listed former immigration centre Yungaba at Kangaroo Point. |
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Title: Promises Are History! |
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Title: Smart State 1, Developer 0
Date: 18th APRIL 2007
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Title: Yungabonanza for developer
Date: 18th APRIL 2007
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Title: Is History Repeating Itself?
Date: 3rd APRIL 2007
Newspaper: South-East Advertiser
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Historic Brisbane home lost to development
Georgina Robinson | April 14, 2007 - 11:50AM
Article from: Brisbane Times
One of Brisbane's most historic homes - influential to the early development of the city - is set to be turned into luxury apartments.
But community opposition to the private development of Kangaroo Point's historic Yungaba building is gathering force, with a 600-signature petition yesterday handed to Deputy Premier Anna Bligh.
Yungaba was a migrant depot in the late 1800s, when Queensland was the most popular destination for immigrants to Australia.
The state government owns the building, at the southern approach to the Story Bridge, but is selling it to developer Australand.
Australand's proposal would convert it into luxury residential apartments, preserving the building in its current form and opening it to the public twice a year.
But Yungaba Action Group president Delene Cuddihy said the building should remain in public hands because of its historical significance to the community.
Handing over a petition with more than 650 signatures, Ms Cuddihy told Anna Bligh the building was too important to become anyone's private property.
Ms Bligh said she understood community opposition and concern, but the government believed it was too expensive to convert it to a public facility like a museum.
"It is not a building in our view that at public expense can be turned in to a museum successfully, but I understand that's not everyone's view," she said.
"But we are also instructing the developer to construct a three-storey new building that will be a home for the multicultural community of Brisbane that will include a performance and theatre area."
A development application was approved last year but Brisbane City Council is now considering a second, revised application from the developer, which was submitted in January.
A spokesperson for deputy mayor David Hinchliffe said it was an impact assessable application and therefore required public notification and comment.
Immigration to Queensland reached a record 35,000 in the early 1880s, prompting Yungaba's construction as an "immigration depot", where "immigrants would get a favourable impression in pleasant surroundings".
It was designed by the Colonial Architect John James Clark and constructed by 1887.
In its most recent form it has been used as function and seminar and community workshop spaces.
Courier Mail
Monday, April 2
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STATELINE QUEENSLAND
YUNGABA
Broadcast: 30/3/2007
Reporter: KATHY MCLEISH
JOHN TAYLOR: Part of the history of immigration to this state is about to be sold off to private developers. In the 1880's Queensland was the most popular destination for immigrants to Australia. They all came through a migrant depot in Brisbane, called Yungaba. But as Kathy McLeish reports its pending sale has prompted calls for the preservation of this important piece of our history.
KEN GORHAM, IMMKGRANT: Very exciting for me I left England at 21 years of age with my family left back there and all I wanted to do was go and enjoy myself best 10 pounds I’d ever spent.
KATHY McLEISH: Ken Gorham migrated to Queensland from Liverpool in 1961.
KEN GORHAM: About three days after I was here I went down to the Gold Coast and I thought to myself this is me I'll stay in this place. I'm 67 now so that’s 46 years in the most wonderful place. The only regret I've really got is that I missed out on the first 21 years.
KATHY McLEISH: Like thousands of others, his welcome to Queensland was here, at the immigration depot 'Yungaba.'
(FOOTAGE OF YUNGABA)
KEN GORHAM: We came here to the front lawn which was all trestles and cakes and teas and lots and lots of volunteers to make us welcome and everything else. It was a very good start into a place like Queensland.
KATHY McLEISH: Now the government is selling the iconic building to private developers. It'll be turned into 10 luxury units.
THOM BLAKE, QUEENSLAND HISTORIAN: Unfortunately the question wasn’t asked about Yungaba you know is it one of those really special buildings in Queensland’s history part of our heritage that really should have always remained as a public building.
KATHY McLEISH: Thom Blake is a Queensland historian who specialises in iconic buildings. He says Yungaba was built at a time when Queensland was Australia's boom town for immigration. In the 1880's around 200 people a week were arriving in the state. And they all came through Yungaba.
THOM BLAKE: It was built as the front door to Queensland, Queensland’s front door. So it was meant very much to impress it really makes a statement and it sort of says to migrants you know this is the right place to come you don’t have to turn round and go somewhere else.
KATHY McLEISH: He says the same should apply to Yungaba and it should stay in public hands.
THOM BLAKE: It really is one of those special buildings that says something that I think if it becomes privately owned really loses some of that sense of what it’s about of being a really integral part of the Queensland story so to speak.
DELENE CUDDIHY, YUNGABA ACTION GROUP: There wasn't sufficient community consultation we believe in the sale of the building and an awareness of the role that this building has played in Queensland's history.
KATHY McLEISH: Delene Cuddihy is with the Yungaba Action Group. She says the community wasn't consulted on the development of Yungaba, and people should be told what the building means to the state.
DELENE CUDDIHY: This building was built to welcome ordinary people and some people came with very little money or with no money at all they were received into a virtual mansion and this was the promise that they were given that they too could have a life like this in Queensland.
(FOOTAGE OF ELLIS ISLAND MUSEUM)
KATHY McLEISH: The group wants the building to be preserved as an immigration museum similar to New York's Ellis Island, which is America's most visited museum.
DELENE CUDDIHY: Every other state in Australia has an immigration museum or something to celebrate the immigration experience to that state. Yet no other state actually built an immigration depot Queensland was the only state that did that.
THOM BLAKE: You know the concept of an immigration museum is a really worthwhile concept that would help us understand more fully the diversity of Queenslanders. There’s an extraordinary range of people that have come to Queensland in extraordinary circumstances as well and have made invaluable contributions.
ROBERT SCHWARTEN, PUBLIC WORKS MINISTER: It would have been great to turn it into a museum or some other such public building but it just doesn’t stack up. There is just no way that you can convert that building into some form of museum and meet all the disability access all the other things that are demanded of public buildings and maintain the structure of its historic façade and all the rest of it, it just doesn’t work.
KATHY McLEISH: Public Works Minister Robert Schwarten says the government looked long and hard at options to retain Yungaba, but keeping the heritage building as an immigration museum would cost the state millions of dollars a year. He says the compromise is a public walkway along the river so people can see it, and the grounds and foyer will be open to the public twice a year.
(KATHY McLEISH TALKING TO ROBERT SCHWARTEN)
KATHY McLEISH: Would you call it a commercial decision?
ROBERT SCHWARTEN: Ah yes. No I’d call it actually a sensible decision. At the end of the day we use tax payers' money for these things. I think the taxpayer gets to have its cake and eat it too. It gets to keep the building at no cost to the taxpayer bearing in mind that it would be up for millions and millions of dollars to maintain a building like that. The reality is the tax payer gets to keep this building as apart of the skyline of Brisbane. People still get to see it and get to spend the money on the other necessities that taxpayers want us to spend it on like health, education water, whatever the case may be.
KATHY McLEISH: But for some, that argument doesn't stack up.
KEN GORHAM: We should have something here permanently to allow the people and future generations to see where their parents and grandparents came from. And so it should be for Australia so that later on we can say that’s where we came from.
THOM BLAKE: The net community benefit okay how do you measure that? We spend $300M on a football stadium you know very small price to pay.
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RECORD OF PROCEEDINGS - FIRST SESSION OF THE FIFTY-SECOND PARLIAMENT
13 Mar 2007 - Legislative Assembly 859 (PROOF) Hansard
Home Page: http://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/hansard/
E-mail: hansard@parliament.qld.gov.au Phone: (07) 3406 7314 Fax: (07) 3210 0182
FIRST SESSION OF THE FIFTY-SECOND PARLIAMENT - 13 Mar 2007 Legislative Assembly 859
TUESDAY, 13 MARCH 2007
Yungaba
Mrs MENKENS (Burdekin—NPA) ( 10.01 pm ): I rise to speak about a magnificent publicly owned
historic building, Yungaba, at Kangaroo Point, that is currently subject to a development approval that may see this building transformed into privately owned luxury apartments for 10 owners.
In 1884 the Queensland government acquired land at Kangaroo Point to create a facility where
immigrants could be housed as they came in from overseas. In 1887, the current building named
Yungaba was completed. It was a very stylish Italianate building and a magnificent example of the architecture of that era.
Yungaba has had a variety of uses over the years ranging from housing immigrants on their arrival to Queensland , an employment agency, a refuge for the destitute, a reception centre for troops returning from the Boer War and a military hospital during the First and Second World Wars. A particularly historic time was during the Depression in the 1930s when it became the headquarters for the project team that built the Jubilee Bridge , which of course we now know as the 13 Mar 2007 Adjournment 961 Story Bridge. It has served various purposes and was well known for its concerts and parties showcasing Queensland ’s culture.
This 120-year-old building has been and still is a significant public place, as well as being heritage listed in 1988. It has a magnificent history which I would encourage all members to read on the Yungaba Action Group’s website. This splendid building stands in a large, well-kept lawn and garden, one of the few untouched green areas left in Kangaroo Point. There is an enormous tide of public opinion and support to preserve this building in its present state for the benefit of the Queensland public and these concerned citizens are led by the untiring efforts of the Yungaba Action Group.
The Yungaba Action Group opposes the sale of this building and the surrounding land to private
developers as it contravenes two cabinet decisions in 1997 and 2000 that endorsed the redevelopment of Yungaba as a multicultural centre and immigration museum. The action group is lobbying government to stop the sale process that is underway, to raise public awareness of what is occurring and to rally public support for the redevelopment that was previously agreed upon. This has been a public facility for 120 years and has an enormous historic value and meaning in many people’s families, and I certainly fully support the actions of these good people.
Yungaba is subject to a development approval and the preferred developers are Australand.
Questions are being asked about the suitability of this particular development group and the
appropriateness of this group with respect to allegations of corrupt connections with disgraced West Australian Premier Brian Burke.
Yungaba is a magnificent historic precinct, and I call on the Premier and the Minister for
Environment and Multiculturalism to heed the calls of the Yungaba Action Group to preserve this
building as a publicly owned facility and preserve it with its historic tapestry for future generations.
The current proposal to sell this off and redevelop this whole area for financial gain is simply another sleazy Beattie government grab for money.
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A NEW LIFE BEGINS
By Neil Wiseman
February 24, 2007 11:00pm
Article from : Sunday Mail
KEN Gorham remembered the Brisbane migrant hostel Yungaba from his days as a new chum who arrived from Britain in the early 1960s: "Welcomed by the Big Brother movement . . . and also by political dignitaries with a garden lunch on the afternoon of our arrival.
"Many families were disappointed with the conditions and sought to be returned home at Government expense.
"Cockroaches as big as birds – well, as big as some English birds.
"Light salads and grills became part of our menu rather than typically heavy English meals.
"Introduction to daily showers.
"A surprising number of volunteers who welcomed all new arrivals into their homes.
"I stayed for two weeks for, as soon as I had a job, my rent went up. Nevertheless, by being encouraged to leave I was taking my first step to assimilate into Australian society . . ."
Mr Gorham arrived in Brisbane at Bretts Wharf on the Fairsea in April 1961, aged 19. His story is among those about the migrant experience being collated by the Yungaba Action Group.
The handsome old building at Kangaroo Point is part of a development site but will be preserved. However, the action group objects to it falling into private hands and wants it kept for public access as a nationally significant site. One suggestion is a migration museum.
The picture, from The Sunday Mail archives, is of the women's dormitory in 1951.
Yungaba is an Italianate mansion with Queensland verandas, purpose-built in 1887, when it was sometimes called a "migrant barracks".
A teenage Danish farmhand recalled his arrival in 1900 on the Adelaide after a Europe-Sydney voyage on the Ortovia: "We landed at the Adelaide Street wharf just above the Customs House and were taken over to the immigration depot. Our supper that night was bread and butter and tea. Next morning for breakfast we had porridge and some kind of meat, and for dinner – my first Christmas dinner in Queensland – there was some boiled fresh meat and a thin soup with potatoes floating in it. It tasted good to me, however, as I was young and had a healthy appetite."
Yungaba's role changed only a few of times between the late 1880s and the early 1990s. Most occasions were times of crisis.
With the nation in depression in the 1890s, it was an employment agency and temporary refuge for the destitute.
During the world wars, it was a military hospital and demobilisation centre. The Australiana author Jim Burke, who grew up in Kangaroo Point, wrote: "As a brat I can remember the wounded men returning from maulings by the Prussians."
In the Great Depression, it was a centre for distribution of food and clothing to jobless families from 1929 to 1932.
In the 1930s, it housed the project team engineering the Story Bridge (at first the Jubilee Bridge) and later the blokes who built it.
Another migrant family, the Xaviers from Dublin, who arrived in 1987, were at Yungaba for only a few days before heading to jobs in north Queensland.
But in that short time, "we realised . . . it was a haven to those who did not have any known faces in this foreign city to commence their Aussie life".
"Yungaba was a symbol of multiculturalism where people from the East and the West were seen mingling together."
The action group website is www.yungaba.org.au.
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RARE, HISTORIC YUNGABA MUST BE PRESERVED
Email / Article By : Margaret TialnenFebruary 7, 2007
Article from : The Independent
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South East Advertiser - Feb 7th
YUNGABA FIGHT DOWN TO THE WIRE
January 24, 2007
Article from : The Independant
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2. MIGRANTS PROTEST YUNGABA DEVELOPMENTJANUARY 31: While hundreds of new Australians were welcomed in ceremonies across the country on Australia Day, a residents group protested to save a building designed to welcome newcomers.
The State Government, which purpose-built Yungaba at Kangaroo Point 120 years ago to entice migrants, is in the process of selling it to developers to be converted into units only the wealthy will enjoy.
Members of the Yungaba Action Group (YAG) stood outside the heritage-listed building's locked gates last week in their bid to reclaim the historic building for the people.
The redevelopment project was first mooted in January 2003 when Premier Peter Beattie announced Australand would be the preferred developer for the 2.2ha site beside the Story Bridge.
Site plans include the 1887 Yungaba immigration building being turned into upmarket units with multiple units being built on multi-storey blocks on surrounding land.
YAG spokeswoman Delene Cuddihy said Yungaba was a place of dreams for people arriving in a new country.
``Immigration is still a major factor in Queensland society,'' she said.
She said with its wealth of history it should be converted into an immigration museum similar to one in Ellis Island in the US which has become one of the country's most popular museums.
Ms Cuddihy said the group had requested a meeting with Mr Beattie and Public Works Minister Robert Schwarten following the state election but were still waiting on a date.
A spokesman for Mr Schwarten said the minister would meet with the group soon.
He said the sale of the State Government-owned site had not been finalised and a development application was before council.
Australand general manager Nigel Edgar said in the application the existing building would be retained and converted into residential apartments.
Other apartments and a separate community arts centre to house the groups now occupying Yungaba would also be built within the grounds, he said.
About 40 residents from various ethnic groups with links to the building attended the protest meeting on Australia Day.
Annelies Zeissink, the president of the The Dutch Australian Community Action Federation, said Yungaba remained an important place for Dutch migrants.
She said a Dutch phone helpline, mostly for elderly people, still operated from Yungaba.
Yvonne Poloskey was brought to Yungaba when she migrated to Australia.
She said later in life it became her role as a volunteer to organise events in the grounds such as ceremonies on Australia Day and parties for refugee children.
Ms Poloskey said Yungaba served as a connection between migrants and refugees and the Brisbane community.
``That was a bridge we don't have now in Brisbane,'' she said.
Wimal Kannangara, part of the Sri Lankan community, said many Sri Lankan migrants had special memories of Yungaba.
He believed the historic building should be retained.
Yungaba Action Group meets on the first Monday of each month from 5.30-6.30pm at the Brisbane City Council library's ground floor meeting room, George St, City.
Visit www.yungaba.org.au.
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Inside one of Yungaba's many rooms.
