Immigration Depot's Sale Angers Heritage Officers

Immigration Depot's Sale Angers Heritage Officers

Sun Herald

Sunday December 7, 2008

By TONY MOORE

HERITAGE experts say the State Government should consult them over the sale of historically significant sites, after it was revealed the Queensland Heritage Council had no say in the sale of the Yungaba immigration depot in Brisbane - the No.1 property on its heritage register.

Developer Australand will use the Kangaroo Point site for 10 luxury residential units following Brisbane City Council and State Government approval. The approval has sparked outrage in local protest groups that fought for the 121-year-old site and surrounds to be preserved.

Queensland Heritage Council chairman David Eades said he accepted the move but the heritage council should have been involved in the process.

"What we would like to see is consultation with the Heritage Council before government goes to the marketplace on a range of preferred uses on heritage-listed sites," he said.

"Look, it [the Yungaba development] is an outcome which I think the marketplace is saying is acceptable."

He said the question always was whether such a site would be "left there to decay and fall into disrepair" or be turned to an alternative use. "[But] if the place is heritage-listed, the Heritage Council is charged under its legislation to understand the importance of the place ... so one would think that, if you followed logic, they would consult and say, 'What are the criteria that we should take to the marketplace?' "

Yungaba, directly under the Story Bridge and facing New Farm, was built in 1887.

The depot welcomed hundreds of thousands of migrants to Queensland until the mid-1990s. It was the first site on Queensland's Heritage Register in 1992, under legislation that the controversial 1982 demolition of Cloudland Ballroom inspired.

Mr Eades said consultation with heritage experts about the development had not taken place until after plans were approved. "The change of use to residential was already fixed by the time the Heritage Council became involved," he said.

"However, we were able to get major improvements to the design from a heritage perspective during three alterations of the plan with the developers. It was a less than ideal starting point, but the developer ... has nevertheless met all conditions the Heritage Council set to ensure Yungaba is not lost to Queensland."

Yungaba Action Group said the historical immigration centre, Yungaba House, would be inside a gated community. "This was the perfect opportunity for the Government to set up an institution and a tourist facility that would tell the story of Queensland," group spokeswoman and conservationist Del Cuddihy (pictured) said.

She said a big fig tree that had fallen on small buildings during storms last week was symbolic of the lack of interest in the value of Yungaba.

"There is a Celtic saying that the spirit of the land will rise up if people aren't looking after the land, or caring for it," she said. "It is almost as if the land at Yungaba has risen up with this tree falling down to protest at what has happened here."

Deputy Premier and Planning Minister Paul Lucas, who gave the green light to the project last week after earlier "calling it in", said he had no authority to make major changes to the plan because Brisbane City Council had approved it in June.

A spokesman said Mr Lucas could have rejected the development application but Australand could have gone ahead with it anyway. The spokesman understood "there was an existing approved development on site, which the developer had a legal right to act upon" if Mr Lucas had rejected the plan.

Australand residential properties general manager Nigel Edgar said a rehashed design put fewer buildings on the site to "open up Yungaba House" for "a better relationship" with the foreshore and landscaped areas. He confirmed no museum would feature; the building would be adapted for residential use.

ABOUT THE 'PLACE OF SUNSHINE'

ITS name means "place of sunshine" but Yungaba has hosted asylum inmates, soldiers with venereal disease and a government department.

Designed in 1885 by colonial architect John James Clark, it is hailed as Australia's only purpose-built immigration depot that still stands and is possibly the only building to be described as "Italianate", "Queensland" and "institutional" in style. Construction finished in 1887. The government built the depot as a "pleasant place" for newly arrived immigrants to live.

As well as housing new arrivals, which it continued to do until the 1990s, the depot was used for isolating scarlet fever patients in 1889; as temporary accommodation for inmates of the Dunwich Benevolent Asylum in 1900; and as housing for South Sea Islanders waiting to be repatriated between 1904 and 1906.

Workers building the Story Bridge lived at the depot in the 1930s. During both world wars, it became a military hospital and was used for soldiers with venereal disease in 1942. It became Yungaba State Immigration Office and Reception Centre in 1940s, named after the word for "place of sunshine" in the language of the Maroochy's Gubbi Gubbi people. In 1993, Yungaba was refitted as offices for the Family Services Department.

Sources: Environmental Protection Agency andYungaba Action Group