26 Tarling Street, Sunnybank Hills

The land on which the cottage in Tarling Street stands was once part of a parcel of over 71 acres bounded to the north by Beenleigh Road, purchased in 1879 by a James Rankine. The whole of the land was transferred to Andrew Rankine in 1883. In 1893, 38 acres of this property was transferred to Christian Morrison Rankine, ‘wife of James Rankine’.  Presumably, the James Rankine who originally bought this land was Christian’s father-in-law as she and her husband were yet to arrive in Brisbane. James Rankine Snr. eventually divided his farm at Sunnybank between his three sons, James ‘the Younger’, John and Andrew.  Post Office Directories for the 1890s identify James and Andrew Rankine as dairymen. 

According to family lore, the two-storey brick house built on the property was constructed from sand bricks which Andrew Rankine transported by dray to Sunnybank.  The bricks allegedly came from a demolished house at Red Hill. Les Rankine states that the brick cottage was on the property when his eldest brother, James Albert Rankine was born in 1901 and believes the construction of the cottage on this site could have occurred around the 1880s. 

In 1917, over 19 acres of the property passed to ‘James Rankine the Younger’, of Sunnybank, whose occupation is given on the Certificate of Title as ‘Storeman’. His son, Les, remembers that his father was employed by Burrell and Fenton, feed merchants, at the Municipal Markets in Turbot Street. A dairy was established on the property with a herd of some 100 cows.  The dairy operated from a room in the ground floor of the cottage. An underground tank fed by rainwater was located in the dairy floor and supplied the family, and sometimes neighbours, with a cool water supply throughout the year. Disaster struck the family in the early 1900s when the dairy herd was lost to a disease known as ‘redwater’. At some point during the early decades of the 20th century, James Rankine Snr, his two older sons and his daughters, Jean, Mary and Christina, resettled near Moola, (Qld) where they established another dairy farm, Ringing Plains. The younger James Rankine remained at Sunnybank on the family land. Andrew Rankine, who owned some of the northern portion of the original 71 acre property, eventually moved from Red Hill to the family property at Sunnybank where he lived in a hut located near what is now Laurieston Street. After his death in 1916, the hut was dismantled and sent to the family at Moola. James Rankine and his wife, Christian, both died at Moola in the 1920s.

During the 1920s and 1930s, Sunnybank was still a rural district, with fruits such as paw paw amongst the more common crops. Local children usually attended the state school at Runcorn. The Rankine’s property was known to local residents as ‘Rankine’s flat’ and their paddocks were occasionally the site of Sunday School picnics. It was not until the post-World War II period that the paddocks of Sunnybank were subdivided and the area was transformed into suburbia.

After the death of James Rankine (the Younger) in 1948, the property was inherited by James Albert Rankine and Les Rankine who sold the family property in 1957. In the early 1960s, the land was subdivided for closer residential development, leaving the Rankine’s house aligned at an odd angle to Tarling Street.  The Rankine family named three of the streets constructed on their former property in honour of their Scottish heritage: Laurieston Street after a village near Falkirk, Callendar Street for the estate where their family had worked for generations, and Stirling Street for their home county in Scotland.

Along with nearby Ryhill Cottage, another 19th century brick residence, the Rankine’s house provides valuable evidence of the rural way of life that existed at Sunnybank during the late 19th century.

A separate skillion verandah roof is supported by four timber posts and decorated by verandah brackets on the top level with timber top rails with cast iron balusters. French doors open onto the top-level verandah and tall vertical windows are located along the right sidewall. Four brick piers support the bottom verandah with a decorative valance at the entrance.

1. Brisbane City Council City of Brisbane Land Use Maps 1951

2. Grinley, Merle, Margaret A. Belcher. Yesteryear Links. Queensland Record Series A: Transmission     of Real Estate by Death Index. Vols for 1915-1919, 1920-1924, 1925-29, 1930-34. Brisbane: 1995, 1996

3. Certificates of Title, Department of Natural Resources and Water

4. Queensland Government Gazettes. July 1918, November 1921, July 1927

5. Queensland Post Office Directories

6. Refidex Directory Maps: Greater Brisbane Area. (c1926-27)

7. Reminscences of Mr Les Rankine, Family history folder M-R, Sunnybank and Districts Historical Society local history collection, Sunnybank Hills Library

8. Telephone interview with Mr Les Rankine, 8 Nov 1999

9. Information kindly provided by Mr Ron Rankine