The Rafting Ground

An area adjacent to Moggill Creek, The Rafting Ground was the focal point for the local timber industry during the 1860s and 1870s. Timber harvesting was scaled down as the resource was logged out and the rafting site was no longer required by 1898 when the rafting site and surrounds was gazetted as a park. The reserve was cancelled in 1919 and the smaller current reserve was gazetted at the same time. In 1943 the area of the reserve was reduced by a resumption for road widening along Moggill Road.

Until the 1950s the park received occasional use, with people coming to swim or fish in the creek.

In 1959 local residents formed a committee to bring the park into a condition fit for use as a public park. From 1965 the Scout Association used the Reserve for their activities, and with the local committee struggling to maintain the park, the Brisbane City Council took over the management of the Park in 1976. In 1996 a Masterplan was compiled to guide the management and development of the Park.

Along Moggill Creek there were once stands of Hoop Pine. Along the Brisbane River, in the round scrub at the base of Mt Elphinstone and in the top scrub of Upper Brookfield there were other stands of trees including Crows Ash, Silky Oak, Tulipwood, Cedar, Mahogany and Tallowwood as well as Eucalypt hardwoods. Many of these trees were harvested during the 1860s and 1870s, the peak of the timber getting activities in the area.

The only road to the Brisbane sawmills was in poor condition and road haulage was fraught with difficulties. It was found practical and economical to bring felled logs from the scrubs to the banks of Moggill Creek for rafting downstream to the mills.  Bullocks and sometimes horses were used to haul wagons loaded with logs from the scrubs to the Rafting Grounds along the track now known as Rafting Ground Road.

Local history remembers some of the bullockies who hauled the timber including Fred Smith, Richard Meddleton, Sam, George and Harry Wilmott, Patrick and James Pacey, George Logan, John and William Brimblecombe and Sam Heathwood. The horse teamsters included the family names of Burton, Huff, Guymer, Logue and Burnett.

Once at the Rafting Grounds, the logs were rolled from the wagons and down the slope to the edge of the creek. Steel pegs hammered into the logs held the chains rafting the logs together. As the tide rose, the rafts were eased into the stream and as the tide ebbed away they floated out and downstream to the sawmills with sawyers on board to steer them. The operation took at least a couple of tides to complete and often a week. During the making tide, the sawyers tied the rafts up to large trees on the riverbank. Local history reports that Patrick Pacey, whose father cut timber around Moggill Creek from 1852, first went downstream on a raft with the sawyers when he was twelve years old.

Hard and dangerous work, a number of young men were killed in the Brookfield scrubs felling timber with axes and cross-cut saws.

There are now over 60 different species of trees growing at The Rafting Ground. Over 200 hoop pine trees were planted to commemorate Australia’s Bicentenary in 1988.

The park covers about two hectares of grass and trees surrounded on three sides by Moggill Creek. The higher ground adjacent to Moggill Road is an open eucalypt forest which provides a grassed and shaded setting for BBQ facilities, picnic tables, play equipment, toilet facilities and a carpark. The lower area is grassed and shaded by densely foliaged trees. There is stepped access to the Creek in this area.