Bus Shelter

Due to its close proximity to the fruit and wine-producing Nudgee District, Nudgee Beach became popular as a holiday camping ground even though it was on private land. Unofficially, it was called ‘Brisbane’s Super Sands’. On 16 July 1907, the controlling local government authority, the Toombul Shire Council declared a public space, the Nudgee Beach Reserve along the foreshore. One of the first structures on the Reserve was a small shop building that opened as a Kiosk and meeting room in 1915. In 1916, the Catholic Church partitioned the St Vincent’s Orphanage land so that the area closest to the Reserve was subdivided into an estate comprising private blocks of land that were then put up for auction. 

To retain its links to the Catholic Church, the small housing estate’s main street was named O’Quinn Street to honour the Bishop (died 1881) who had helped establish St Vincent’s Orphanage. Nudgee Beach developed into a small holiday and fishing village that held its own annual Sand Gardens Competition. A number of compact, nineteenth century cottages were relocated from other parts of Brisbane and transported by horse teams or truck onto the blocks that had been sold. 

Enough residents had settled at Nudgee Beach that by 1922, they formed the Nudgee Beach Progress Association (NBPA) in November of that year. As a result, a number of community facilities were erected along the foreshore by the NBPA. A beach picnic shelter, a changing rooms shed, a First Aid & Ambulance building and a small Concert Hall were the first to be built.  The NBPA undertook to have a second road access the Reserve. It was named Fortitude Street. This street and its two adjoining streets (Chasely and Lima) were named after the three immigrant ships that brought free settlers to the Moreton Bay settlement in 1849. A cricket pitch was also laid by NBPA and in 1926 the Association had the Nudgee Beach School of Arts constructed. It served as the suburb’s first school until 1947, when it was replaced by a new school in Chasley Street. In 1930, the new Nudgee Beach Kiosk opened, replacing a small, relocated shop building that had previously served the local community as a kiosk.  The Brisbane City Council added a brick toilet block to the Reserve in the 1930s. In 1942, during the Second World War, an Australian Army searchlight emplacement operated by members of the Australian Women’s Army Service (AWAS) was dug into the Nudgee Beach Reserve. 

After the war, due to the severe shortage of both housing and building materials, isolated public buildings or structures were sometimes vandalised and stripped of anything useful. This fate befell the NBPA’s changing rooms shed, First Aid & Ambulance building and Concert Hall. The Nudgee Beach Kiosk burnt-down in the 1960s. The Nudgee Beach School of Arts fell into disrepair, was condemned as unsafe and demolished in 1970. The Council toilet block was replaced in 2010.    

There are two timber bus shelters located in Nudgee Beach. Both bus shelters are located in O’Quinn Street. While the design of the bus shelters can be traced to the Interwar period (1919-39), neither shelter was placed at Nudgee Beach prior to World War Two. Neither can be seen in the 1946 aerial photograph of Nudgee Beach.  It is presumed that both shelters were placed in their present positions in the late 1950s when a Council bus route was extended to Nudgee Beach. 

The small, skillion roof shelter located at the corner of Chasely and O’Quinn Streets is a Council-built shelter that has been relocated to Nudgee Beach from elsewhere in Brisbane. It is of an interwar Brisbane City Council design attributed to City Architect Frank Costello. This is a rare style of bus shelter, as there are few of these types of timber shelters left in Brisbane. 

The larger, bus shelter located near the intersection of O’Quinn and Fortitude Streets is even more rare than the skillion roof shelter. It is not of a recognised, standard Brisbane City Council design. It is reminiscent of the style of school bus shelters found throughout rural Queensland. The shelter’s interior features an old, steel framed and meshed public seat, which may indicate that this was the first bus shelter in Nudgee Beach. Its origins remain unknown.

Both bus shelters were identified in the 2002 Brisbane City Council, City Assets Study – Tram and Bus Shelters. The two structures comprise the entire stock of bus shelters for the suburb of Nudgee Beach. They continue to provide an important service to the local community, given that bus is the only form of public transport accessing Nudgee Beach.

1. BANGEE Festival Committee, Banyo-Nudgee Heritage Trail, (Brisbane: BANGEE Festival Committee, 2000)

2. Brisbane City Council, aerial photographs 1946 & 2001

3. Brisbane City Council, City Assets Study – Nudgee Beach Reserve, (Brisbane: Brisbane City Council, April, 2002)

4. Brisbane City Council, Heritage Unit citation: St. Vincent’s Orphanage, 131 Queens Rd, Nudgee

5. Tremayne, Jean and Pechey, Sue, Pioneers, Picnics and Pineapples, (Brisbane: A.E.B.I.S., 1994)