33 Cairns Street, Kangaroo Point

In January 1876 quarryman John Mullen purchased one rood (40 perches, or a quarter of an acre) of land in the Shafston Estate. The block fronted Cairns Street, with a side frontage to Lambert Street. Mullen, who had arrived in Brisbane with his wife and five children in 1873, took up residence in Cairns Street by 1878. The Mullens’ house is likely to be the house now situated on the corner of Lambert Street, a transverse gable cottage with brick chimney and separate kitchen quarters.

In 1882 Mullen moved to Bowen Bridge with his family to operate the Bowen Bridge Hotel, leasing his Kangaroo Point house to tenants. Three years later, however, his application for a renewal of the licence was refused, and he returned to Kangaroo Point. In June 1886, Mullen took out a mortgage over the property for £240, and promptly advertised the lease of a four-roomed cottage next to his house on Cairns Street. The cottage appears to be one of three identical cottages built around the same time, as by 1887 three tenants were listed on Mullen’s land in Cairns Street, in addition to Mullen.

Mullen likely built the rental properties himself; he had worked as a labourer as well as publican and quarryman. The cottages were (and are) small, based on a central core of four rooms with front and rear verandas, and built of timber. Originally the cottages also featured brick chimneys and fireplaces, though these were later removed. 

The cottages were constructed at the height of a population and building boom in Brisbane. This boom saw dramatic growth in the demand for housing, especially on the south side of Brisbane. Demand was particularly high in Kangaroo Point, where the population had increased from 1,903 people in 1881 to 3,204 in 1886. At the same time industry moved into Cairns Street, with Moar’s shipyard opened at the river end of the street, providing further employment opportunities in the area. Landowners like Mullen constructed rental houses, taking advantage of the increasing population. Mullen’s forty perch site was not large enough to provide each house with a sixteen-perch land holding, the minimum subdivision size required under the Undue Subdivision of Land Prevention Act 1885. Mullen circumvented the legislation by keeping the houses on a single holding.

Mullen’s first tenants – a painter, an engineer and a messenger for the Queensland National Bank – reflected the diverse range of residents seeking accommodation in Kangaroo Point. Shipbuilders, likely working at nearby Moar’s slip, took up occupation in later years, as did the lessee of the Kangaroo Point ferry. 

After Mullen’s death in 1898 the property passed to his unmarried daughter Margaret. She retained ownership of the property until 1945, leasing all four cottages. The area remained popular with tenants, particularly following the opening of the Story Bridge and the re-opening of the Cairns Street shipyard in the 1940s. The cottages passed through a number of owners in the latter half of the twentieth century and were restored in the 1980s. They were held on a single block of land until 2007. In 2009 the houses were converted to commercial use and in 2016 operate as offices.

1. Brisbane City Council, aerial photographs, 1946, 1995-2013

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

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

4. Brisbane City Council Department of Works, Detail Sewerage Plan

5. Centre for the Government of Queensland, Queensland Places: Kangaroo Point, 2015

6. Department of Natural Resources and Mines, Queensland Certificate of Title and other records

7. McKellars Map 1895

8. National Library of Australia Trove newspapers, Telegraph, The Week, Brisbane Courier 

9. John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, Picture Queensland

10. Queensland Post Office Directories

11. Queensland State Archives, Immigration index

12. Queensland Women’s Historical Association, Walk into History: A history of Kangaroo Point (1983?)

13. RPData, photos