What we would like you to do, please…

Come to our party at Yungaba on Saturday December 8 th at 2pm (see programme below.

Write to Minister Robert Schwarten requesting excision of the main building and grounds (cut and paste from exemplar letter below).

Send this newsletter to friends and acquaintances – we need all the help you can bring!

EXEMPLAR LETTER – CUT AND PASTE

Hon Robert Schwarten, MP
Minister for Public Works, Housing and Information and Communication Technology of Queensland
Level 7, 80 George Street, BRISBANE QLD 4000
GPO Box 2457, BRISBANE QLD 4001

pwh@ministerial.qld.gov.au

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Dear Minister Robert Schwarten,

I am writing to you to request that you excise the heritage Yungaba building and gardens from the sale of public land at Kangaroo Point and that you conduct a feasibility study into a self-sustaining tourist development that restores the main building and grounds to their former glory.

You may not be aware what an act of vandalism the alienation of this historic building is. Any local historian will tell you how significant this building has been in developing our State’s identity. Many ordinary Queenslanders vehemently oppose your proposed sale of this historic building, undertaken without any public consultation and in secrecy.

Almost all of the 70 submissions to Brisbane City Council rejected outright the development application submitted by the developer and want it retained in public hands. Over 40 of the submissions were in favour of an Immigration World alternative proposed by Yungaba Action Group.

Yungaba Action Group has submitted a petition with the names and addresses of over 860 individuals who have requested you to discontinue the ongoing attempt to sell Yungaba. Many of these have written their reasons and these have been made available to you and the Queensland Parliament. That is 86 persons against each of the ten 2-person residences, an overwhelming opposition.

Yungaba is an emblem for many immigrant Queenslanders. Its generous design for immigrant reception symbolises the welcome in Queensland for people who have given up everything except their dignity. To remove it from public access is an insult to dignity, a rejection of immigrants’ sacrifices. Replacing it with a new multicultural building in the carpark is an insult to immigrants and their descendents by degrading their welcome here.

For 120 years Yungaba has welcomed immigrants and when they were few it has served other groups in the Queensland community, for example as a military hospital during WW1. Always it has been preserved and passed down from generation to generation. The government has a sacred trust to pass it on intact and uncompromised by private ownership.

 

Yours truly

 

Copy: The Premier, Hon Anna Bligh, MP

Member for South Brisbane
100 George Street, BRISBANE QLD 4000
PO Box 15185, CITY EAST QLD 4002
premier@ministerial.qld.gov.au

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OUR VISION FOR YUNGABA

We want the Yungaba main building and grounds to be accessible to the public. A cornerstone of our fight for Yungaba is our prefeasibility study of our Immigration World proposal for a major educational and tourist development at Yungaba

This would restore Yungaba inside and out and open it as a museum with dramatised tours. Visitors would also follow the immigration experience through multimedia museum displays, with genealogy resources and participation in a memorial exhibit. Charges for the day’s entertainment would compete with theme parks and there would be reduced rates for the museum only and for school children.

We expect that sufficient visitors could be attracted by a contractor for self-sustaining operation. Ownership and overall control would be retained by government.

MORE YUNGABA HISTORY REVEALED

JJ Bradfield spoke of migrant significance at inauguration of Story Bridge

JJ Bradfield returned to Brisbane after completing the Sydney Harbour Bridge to design and supervise the construction of the Story Bridge from offices based in the Yungaba building in 1935. At the turning of the sod ceremony he spoke of the significance of the location: “The ceremony today has a big personal interest for me. Nearly 80 years ago my father, after serving in the Crimean War, came with my mother and three young sons to [then] New South Wales and came ashore at the point in the river which is to be spanned by the bridge.”

MULTICULTURAL CENTRE

The Government believes that the building of a so-called “multicultural centre” with a performance space, in the carpark of Yungaba, completely locked away from the historic Yungaba is the best way to preserve the community significance of the site.

YAG believes that the most appropriate location for a Multicultural Centre on this site is within the historic Yungaba Immigration Depot. In late 2001 the Department of Public Works completed an internal feasibility study which recommended that the building be developed as a multicultural centre.

A multicultural centre in a building which was the centre of immigration to Queensland for 120 years would be far more meaningful.

As well as space for performing arts, a multicultural centre within a revitalized Yungaba could include a visual arts space for displays both historical and contemporary, performances and historical re-enactments, conference rooms for ethnic community associations to meet, an immigration museum, etc.