Tulloona

William Pagan was a railway engineer, appointed Resident Engineer for the Central Division from January 1882. Pagan had a posting at Toowoomba for a short time, but by 1894 moved to Brisbane. Hoggan was probably Pagan’s brother-in-law. Pagan married Sarah Hampton Hoggan, and a daughter was born in 1886. Andrew Hoggan and wife Catherine had a daughter in 1887, making it probable that Sarah and Andrew were of the same generation. Andrew Hoggan was a railways engineer, appointed Assistant Engineer in the Southern and Central Division in 1886.

Pagan built this house around 1894 when he returned to work in Brisbane. McKellar’s map published in 1895 names the ten-acre block “Tulloona”, and Pagan is recorded as living here on Franz Road (later renamed Alexandra Road) from 1897-99. The Post Office Directory of 1900 lists the house as “Tulloona”.

From 1894 Pagan was listed in the Post Office Directories as a Railway Department District Engineer. He was steadily promoted within the Railways, was appointed Chief Engineer of Railways in March 1902, twenty years after he began employment there. He still served in that capacity in 1910, but retired to Southport some time before his death in 1924.

In March 1909 Pagan and Hoggan split their ten-acre holding, Pagan retaining the lot containing “Tulloona” and Hoggan the other five acres. Hoggan does not seem to have ever lived in the street, and it is not known whether he built a rental house here. Pagan remained here until the 1910s, subdividing the land in 1914 (when Palm Avenue was formed), and selling “Tulloona” to Mrs Lilly Addis in November 1917. Mrs Addis sold off further subdivisions during 1930 (by which time Franz Road had been renamed Alexandra Road) and again in 1941, when the land reached its current form. By the time the 1933 Detail Plan was surveyed, ‘Tulloona’ had a tennis court to the east, and was surrounded by the smaller houses built on the subdivided lots.

Local history records that the larger area surrounding this house was called “Pagan’s Paddock”. A swimming pool was added in 1969 and replaced in 1981.

1. Brisbane City Council Building Registers & Building Cards

2. Brisbane City Council Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board, Detail Plans

3. Brisbane City Council Minutes of Proceedings

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

5. Information from owner Mrs Ros Moloney

6. Kerr, J 1988, Brunswick Street, Bowen Hills and Beyond: the Railways of the Northern suburbs of Brisbane, Australian Railway Historical Society, Brisbane

7. John Oxley Library photographs & clippings files

8. Lawson, Ronald 1973, Brisbane in the 1890s: A Study of an Australian Urban Society, University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia

9. McKellar’s Estate Maps of Brisbane, 1895

10. Queensland Pioneers Index 1829-1889, Qld Registrar-General, March 2000

11. Queensland State Archives, Blue books 1884-1903

12. Queensland Post Office Directories, 1887-1949

13. Transmission of Real Estate by Death index