Downey Park (includes sporting uses areas)

Originally, much of what now constitutes Downey Park comprised part of an area subdivided in the late nineteenth century into large suburban allotments fronting Gould Road and Creek Terrace on the southern side of Breakfast Creek. North of the creek were the much smaller residential allotments fronting Garden Street, Green Terrace and Melbourne Street in the Swan Hill Estate. Much of the land was low-lying and subject to flooding.  After the severe flood of February 1931, a meeting of prominent Swan Hill and Valley businessmen urged Brisbane City Council to investigate the cause of the severe flooding and to take steps to alleviate the situation. Over the next ten years, Council proceeded to straighten, widen, deepen and divert the creek. A number of sections of the creek altered markedly. Fill was added in a number of areas and swampland drained.  

In 1948, flood mitigation works in this vicinity resulted in the formation of what to-day constitutes Rasey Park, on the southern side of Breakfast Creek, and much of what is now Downey Park on the northern bank of the newly canalised Breakfast Creek.  Around this time, twelve blocks of land originally on the southern side were transferred to the Parish of Enoggera and thirty-five blocks totalling a little more than four acres were transferred to the Parish of North Brisbane. For the next thirty years, the area named Downey Park in 1948 grew as a result of flood mitigation works, acquisitions of flood prone properties by Council and the incorporation of a small area of parkland between Vine Street and Newmarket Road. 

Over the same period, the determination and hard work of countless hundreds of volunteers, service clubs and women’s sporting clubs has resulted in the development of facilities to serve the needs of affiliates of the Queensland Women’s Amateur Sports Council and the generations of school children who have honed their skills in various sports on these grounds.  A number of Olympians have received their early training there. The Australian Olympic softball team has also trained at this venue.

Prominent among those countless women associated with the Park and instrumental in its early development were Jessie Groom, Lady Mayoress, and instigator of the Women’s Amateur Sports Appeal Committee and Ruby Robinson, journalist. The park is not only the first and only women’s sports reserve in the city, but since the Women’s Amateur Sports Appeal Committee accepted tenancy of Downey Park in 1959, it has also played host to many State and inter-state Carnivals and Championships and several international competitions.

1. Brisbane City Council Park Information files

2. Jenkins, L., A Women’s Place: The Downey Park Story, Brisbane: Brisbane City Council, 1997

3. Hacker DJ., et al, Herston Recollections and Reminiscences, Brisbane: Qld Women’s Historical Assn., 1995

4. North-West News. 8 August 2001, p.14.