Nudgee Beach Reserve

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 (Chaseley and Lima) were named after the three immigrant ships that had 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 was placed to the right of the picnic shelter. It served as the suburb’s first school until 1947when 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 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 and was it condemned as unsafe and demolished in 1970. The Council toilet block has either been demolished or been severely altered in the course of renovations. Only the NBPA beach picnic shelter survived intact.    

While numerous picnic shelters were constructed at Sandgate, Nudgee Beach, Cribb Island, Wynnum and Manly areas during the interwar period (1919-39), most have been demolished or destroyed. The Nudgee Beach Picnic Shelter is one of the few surviving examples of this particular structure to be found in Brisbane.

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)