Murphy's Dairy Residence

The suburb’s name came from a property belonging to the McDowall family, who owned more than 250 acres in the area. The family settled locally and established a vineyard, but offered the ‘Everton Park Estate’ for sale in the 1880s. They retained a forty-seven acre site, Portions 55 and 56, which John McDowall had purchased in 1863. The site had frontage to a main thoroughfare, later called South Pine Road. Its southern boundary was Kedron Brook, which divided the district from Enoggera. This property was known as ‘Everton’.

Portions 52, 53 and 54, across South Pine Road from the McDowalls’ vineyard, were granted to George Harris in 1863. Harris left the land undeveloped aside from a two-rail fence and his 72 acre ‘paddock at Kedron Brook’ was offered for sale in 1882. It was purchased by John Quigley, who erected a residence on the site around 1891. Quigley left the district in the early 1900s and his residence does not seem to have survived.

The opening of a railway line from Mayne Junction to Enoggera in 1899 induced development in the area. Although it remained primarily agricultural, farms were subdivided and offered for sale for residential development from around the turn of the twentieth century. The first post office and store together with Joseph Poultney’s Sawmill opened in 1910. A small community of Chinese market gardeners also took up residence in the area.

As Everton Park grew, the properties around Kedron Brook were again offered for sale. Portions 53 and 54 were purchased by Richard Trout in 1911. Trout was a master butcher who had established his first store in Red Hill in the 1870s. The Trout butchery had become a chain, with inner-city stores set up and run by Trout’s sons. From the 1880s Trout had purchased large amounts of land Everton Park, as well as other outer-lying areas of northern Brisbane. The swathes of available land in Everton Park were more accommodating for cattle than the allotments at Red Hill and Petrie Terrace. Trout also established a slaughtering yard on South Pine Road in the early 1900s, and Trouts Road, off Stafford Road, is named for the family. Trout’s grandson Sir Leon Trout had a residence called ‘Everton House’ built in the suburb in the 1950s, cementing the family’s long connection to the area. 

Whether Trout intended to use his new site for slaughter or grazing is unclear, but two years after Trout’s purchase his son Richard Trout junior moved to Everton Park. It is likely that the Murphy’s Dairy Residence was built around 1913 as the home of Richard Trout junior, though the Trout family’s extensive landholdings and the lack of precise records make it difficult to be certain. Everton Park was still a remote suburb at that time and was not well known in Brisbane. Post Office Directory listings for Everton Park include the suburb as part of Enoggera and do not record individual streets. Trout was listed in electoral rolls as residing at ‘Bunya Road, Nundah’, Bunya Road being an older name for South Pine Road and Nundah being the local divisional board. He did, however, work as a butcher in the ‘small settlement’ of Everton Park until the early 1920s, and his house was later described as being on ‘South Pine Road’, suggesting that this was the site of his house.

On the site opposite Trout’s residence, the remnants of the McDowall family’s ‘magnificent property’ (Portions 55 and 56) were offered for sale in 1917. The forty-seven acre site was ‘fenced and partly cleared, and part cultivated’, though it was also oddly described as being ‘at Alderley'1. The site was purchased by Norah Murphy and her son Patrick, operators of Murphy’s Windsor Road dairy in Red Hill. The dairy was established around 1903 by Norah and her husband James, and was carried on by Norah and her children after James’s death in 1912. The Red Hill dairy continued to operate into the early 1920s but closed, possibly due to the introduction of stringent legislation regulating the dairy industry. Norah Murphy continued to reside in Red Hill, while Patrick moved to Everton Park to establish a new dairy. 

By 1923, Trout’s and Murphy’s residences faced one another across South Pine Road, with Murphy’s dairy on one side and Trout’s land on the other. Their co-occupation at Everton Park was brief. Trout moved to Hendra in 1925 and his ‘very nice residence’ was advertised for rent1.  The entire site was transferred to the Trout family company R. Trout and Sons in 1929. In 1932, Murphy signed a lease with the company, adding Portions 53 and 54 to his original holdings and allowing his cattle to graze across an immense site. He purchased the land outright in 1936, at which time the Murphy family appears to have moved into Trout’s old house on this site.

‘Paddy Murphy’s paddock’ became a well-known location in Everton Park, and the dairy farm was a local employer as well as supplier. Local residents recalled collecting milk from the dairy, while others worked there, having to milk ‘about 40 cows each day by hand’. In 1932 Murphy was listed as one of the ‘leading dairymen’ from whom it was possible to obtain raw warm milk. In the 1940s army drills were reportedly carried out in the paddock. As residential development began to encroach on the paddock after World War II, residents built wire fences around their new houses ‘to prevent the cattle in Murphy’s paddock from rubbing up against it until the mortar set'1. A bridge on the Kedron Brook bikeway, originally part of Portion 54, is known as ‘Murphy’s Crossing’, recognising the family’s connection to the area.

The dairy continued operating into the 1970s and was one of the last surviving dairy farms in Brisbane. However, by this time it had been reduced in size. In the 1950s Murphy began subdividing and selling his property when Everton Park became an increasingly popular residential area, particularly for young families. The area also proved popular for commercial development. In 1957 nineteen acres adjoining the Murphy residence was sold to a supermarket retailer and a Woolworths bulk store was built there. The family sold the remainder of its South Pine Road holding to Everton Developments in 1971, but retained a block of land on the opposite side of the road, including a section fronting Ashmore Street. In 1998 the house was moved from its original location to the land fronting Ashmore Street. 

In 2016 the house stands on its new location, a comparatively small remainder of the original large dairy farm land, but still a reminder of the area’s rural origins. 

The house is a timber-framed and -clad structure high-set on stumps. The fabric of the understorey and the stairs are recent and not of heritage significance. The hipped roof has a front gable projection and is clad with corrugated metal sheets. A verandah wraps the north western corner and is accessed by French doors from the house.

1. Brisbane Courier, 2 June 1917 p8

2. Brisbane Courier, 10 December 1925 p19

3. From Bunyaville to beyond: celebrating the history of Everton Park & the 75th anniversary of Everton Park State School [Everton Park, Qld]: Everton Park State School P&C Association, 2009

4. Brisbane City Council aerial photographs, 1946, 2012

5. Brisbane City Council Archives, Brisbane Images

6. Brisbane City Council Building Registers

7. Brisbane City Council, City Architecture & Heritage Team, heritage citations

8. Brisbane City Council local history files: Everton Park

9. Brisbane City Council, Properties on the Web, Building Cards

10. Centre for the Government of Queensland, Queensland Places: Everton Park (website)

11. Department of Natural Resources and Mines, Queensland Certificates of Title

12. Judy Gale Rechner, Brisbane House Styles 1880 to 1940: a guide to the affordable house, Brisbane: Brisbane History Group Studies No. 2, 1998

13. National Library of Australia, Trove digitised newspapers, Telegraph, Daily Mail, The Week, Brisbane Courier, Courier Mail, Daily Standard, Worker

14. Pugh’s Almanac

15. Queensland Historic Births Deaths and Marriages

16. Queensland Electoral Rolls

17. Queensland Post Office Directories

18. State Library of Queensland, John Oxley Library, Estate Maps