Child's Vineyard Residence

The district had received a major boost when, on 11 May 1882, the Nudgee Railway Station and Goods Shed opened. The station ensured a regular transport service for the local residents, most of who were small farmers. Their crops of oats, corn, grapes and pineapples could now be more quickly gotten to markets and the station also ensured a better mail service for the district. Already, James Robinson had subdivided part of his farm and sold them off as 16 and 20 perch housing blocks. Robinson’s land sale was aimed at “Mechanics, Working Men and persons of limited means” who were asked to place a deposit of ₤2 and pay monthly instalments of ₤1.1 Robinson’s housing estate created three unnamed roads that were the first streets of the new Nudgee Township. These would later be named Hayden, Oakmere and St Achs Streets. As a result, Atthow found that his land fronted the eastern side of Hayden Street. He sold the land to Johann Gottfried Sarrow on 17 October 1882.

But that same day, Sarrow sold the land onto David Joseph Childs. Childs’s parents Thomas and Mary Childs had been among the group of first free setters to Queensland. Dr John Dunmore Lang in England had recruited these settlers, including James Robinson. In 1849, they arrived in Brisbane aboard three ships, with the Childs disembarking from the Fortitude whose name would be commemorated in the suburb of Fortitude Valley. They moved out to Nudgee in 1866 and established a vineyard at their farm “Childstone”. Grapevines were obtained from the new “Romavilla” winery at Roma, in Western Queensland and Thomas Childs soon found that these vines thrived in Nudgee’s rich friable loam and clay soil. The Childs winery was given the name “Toombul Vineyards” and under this label their wines were entered into the Franco-British and the Earls Court wine exhibitions, where the Childs won four gold medals and many silver and bronze medals. When Thomas Childs died in 1881, his youngest son David took control of the family business. David had married Lucy Jane Deagon in 1879 and they would raise seven daughters and two sons. David strengthened the family business and his success allowed the Childs family to expand their land holdings. Thus David Childs was able to obtain Portion 233 in 1882.

Following Robinson’s example, David Childs subdivided Portion 233 into smaller residential blocks, selling off the first block on 20 November 1882. On 15 December 1882, subdivision 6 containing part of the site of 15 Hayden Street was sold to Thomas Mills. Mills also bought subdivisions 5, 73, 74 and 129 for a total site purchase of 2 roods and 2 acres of land. Ann Childs retained ownership of subdivision 7, which is the other component of 15 Hayden Street. She was issued with a new title for subdivision 7 on 1 December 1883. 

While Thomas Mills retained ownership of subdivision 6 until 1906, Ann Childs mortgaged subdivision 7 on 17 February 1885 and then disposed of the block ten years later. On 14 February 1895, Ann Ridler bought subdivision 7. Ann was the wife of John Rowe Ridler, a Sandgate farmer. They held the 17 perch block of land as an investment property while continuing to live at their residence in Eagle Terrace, Sandgate. When Ann Ridler died on 15 October 1898, subdivision 7 passed to her husband. 

The property at 15 Hayden Street began to return to the ownership of the Childs family when, on 9 August 1903, Thomas Mills transferred all of his land to Lucy Jane Childs. Lucy was David Childs’s wife and, on 19 April 1906, she obtained subdivision 7 from John Ridler. Using funds obtained from the family’s wine business, David and Lucy built a large, new home at 15 Hayden Street in 1906. Their new home was not very far away from their winery and vineyards that covered land that is now occupied by the Nudgee Golf Club and the Gateway Arterial Road.

The house at 15 Hayden Street became the new headquarters for “Toombul Vineyards” though wine tastings were still conducted down at the winery that was situated at the end of Childs Road. The new home was the first Nudgee residence to have a telephone, which was connected to the Sandgate Telephone Exchange. A telephone was essential for not only was David Childs a successful businessman but also he was a Nudgee community leader. He had become a Justice of the Peace and a local magistrate in 1878. He was a member of the Nundah Divisional Board of local government for seven years and he was elected Worshipful Master and then life member of the Freemasons in 1884. David and Lucy’s decision to build a new home on that part of their land holdings that were closest to Nudgee Railway Station was a reflection their need to be close to the fastest transport into Brisbane city. 

David Childs died in November 1918 and Lucy did not survive him for long as she passed away in March 1919. Their home passed to two of their children William Lionel Childs and Lucy Victoria Childs. William took control of “Toombul Vineyards” and he continued to successfully operate the vineyard established by his grandfather. Nudgee was a farming district but neither the Banyo nor the Nudgee townships had a hotel. So on Saturday afternoons, the “Toombul Vineyards” winery became the local “drinking hole” for the district farmers.1

When William Childs died at the vineyard in March 1935, the family business passed to his eldest son Lionel. Lionel decided to sell-off the Hayden Street family home and its surrounding land and concentrate instead upon running the winery from the old house at Childs Road. Thus a widow, Violet Fountain, bought the house and land at 15 Hayden Street, together with the adjacent subdivisions 2, 73 and 74 on 9 April 1935. She held the title until 1946, when, on 8 October, she sold it to John Thomas Butler and his wife Ella May Butler.

With the post-war housing boom in Brisbane, residential subdivisions in the outer suburbs such as Nudgee rose in value. Thus on the day of their purchase, the Butlers immediately disposed of the two vacant blocks, that now comprise 9 Somers Street, to Frederick Hart. The Harts held onto subdivision 5 (now 9 Hayden Street) until 18 October 1955, when they sold the block to Sarah Milverton.  On 29 April 1964, 15 Hayden Street was sold as an investment property to three partners Neville and Marie Henry and a widow, Cora Higginson. The Henrys bought out Cora Higginson’s share of the property on 14 March 1969. They sold it to Michael Dalrymple Higginson on 24 July 1992. The underneath the Childs home was converted into a flat but it has been restored to a single residence after Gemma Mary Wolstenholme and John Urbon purchased it on 12 October 2001. 

Lionel Childs sold off 200 acres of the vineyards to the Nudgee Golf Club in the 1930s. Later he sold “Toombul Vineyards” to his brother, Stephen. Due to changes to the Queensland Liquor Act in 1965, the family business was no longer viable and “Toombul Vineyards” closed one year before its centenary. The Main Roads Department, during the construction of the Gateway arterial Road in the 1980s, resumed the remaining 5 acres of vineyards, the winery and the original family home. The house at 15 Hayden Street is the only surviving link to the Childs family and their “Toombul Vineyards”.

1. John Oxley Library, Estate Maps – Nudgee

2. Tremayne, Jean and Pechey, Sue, Pioneers, Picnics and Pineapples, (Brisbane: A.E.B.I.S., 1994), p.66

3. Brisbane City Council, Properties on the Web, website, post-1946 building cards

4. Brisbane City Council, 1946 aerial photographs.

5. Department of Natural Resources, Queensland Certificates of title and other records.

6. John Oxley Library, Suburban clippings file - Nudgee

7. Queensland Post Office Directories, 1868-1949

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