Floraville

In 1886 journalist Walter J Morley acquired a one acre and 13.5 perch site (0.44ha) in Chelmer, which was conveniently close to Chelmer railway station. It faced a street then known as Riverview Terrace or Florence Street, and overlooked the river at the rear. It lacked a river frontage but this proved an advantage when the property was spared damage from the severe floods of the 1890s. The site was on the western side of the railway line, which in Chelmer was beginning to feature more substantial and prominent residences than the eastern side, where the residents were mainly blue collar working families.

Morley had arrived in Brisbane at the age of five in 1858. He joined the staff of the Brisbane Newspaper Company in 1865 and was the editor of the Evening Observer, becoming the editor of the Queensland Government Mining Journal in 1900. At the time of his land purchase he was living with his growing family in Quay Street, Petrie Terrace. His choice of this site may have been influenced by his family, as his parents resided in Sherwood and his sister Martha had married into one of the area’s European settler families.

Morley had a house constructed shortly after purchasing the site. He may have built the house himself as he was listed in the 1887 Post Office Directory as a ‘carpenter’ rather than ‘journalist’ as in earlier directories. The large timber house was to accommodate his family, then consisting of Morley, his wife Victoire and seven children. The family took up residence in their house, called ‘Floraville’, in 1887. Morley resigned from the Brisbane Sailing Club in August 1887 ‘owing to inability to attend the meetings’ – possibly because of the distance between Chelmer and the city. The Quay Street home was advertised for sale or lease in September 1887, and in October that year Morley was enrolled to vote in the Oxley electoral district, using his Chelmer residence as qualification. 

Morley and his family took an interest in local matters, particularly those associated with outdoor recreation. Morley served on the Sherwood Divisional Board from 1895 and encouraged the planting of street trees, including Laurel Avenue’s eponymous camphor laurel trees (cinnamomum camphora). Though it has not been verified, local history credits the Morley family with planting the entire avenue of camphor laurels, which stretches approximately 1 kilometre in length. As an enthusiastic sportsman, Morley became involved in tennis clubs while living in Chelmer, including the Queensland Lawn Tennis Association and the Indooroopilly Lawn Tennis Club. Morley had a lawn tennis court constructed in the Floraville’s yard immediately behind the house and it was one of the courts used by the Indooroopilly club in the 1900s. The Morley family also participated in tennis club competitions in the early twentieth century. When Morley’s age forced him to give up tennis, he became a foundation member of the Graceville Bowls Club in 1919. 

From the twentieth century Chelmer was recognised as a desirable residential suburb. The Laurel Avenue plantings were anticipated to ‘add greatly to the attractions of Chelmer’1 in the early 1900s. By the 1920s properties like Morley’s added to the view of Chelmer as ‘essentially a home-like suburb – with its pleasant level stretches of green, its prettily planned villas, with ample room for the tennis courts that often adjoin them in this district and its white tree-ordered streets.’1

Morley reduced the size of his holding in 1919, retaining a block of nearly three roods (0.3 hectares) on the corner of Laurel Avenue, Jarrott Street and Morley Street. He renamed the house ‘Maroomba’, a word from the Jandai language (spoken on Stradbroke and Moreton Islands) meaning ‘good’. The name may have been inspired by a yacht of the same name, which the Royal Queensland Yacht Club built in 1922. Morley resided in the house until his death in 1938, six years after retiring as editor of the Queensland Government Mining Journal. 

After Morley’s death Floraville/Maroomba became the property of a series of prominent Brisbane residents. By the late 1930s Chelmer was considered one of the ‘dress-circle’1 suburbs of Brisbane. The appeal of the suburb increased with the opening of the Walter Taylor Bridge in 1936, providing better accessibility to the city by car. This made the house, with its already appealing facilities, even more attractive to purchasers.

John Park, a tea company manager, purchased the property with his wife Barbara in 1938. The couple renamed the house ‘Tresta’ and undertook extensions, which were built by Barbara’s father Charles Abernathy. The front was modernised in art deco style and the verandahs were enclosed. The garden was completely rebuilt by Mrs Park’s friends, though the tennis court remained and hosted afternoon tea and games for the garden workers.

In 1943 Tresta was transferred to Clive and Dorothy Sippe. Clive Sippe, a medical doctor, had returned to Brisbane earlier in the year from service in World War II, and was considered by fellow medical practitioners to be ‘one of the most brilliant physicians in Brisbane’1. In addition, the Sippes took part in numerous sporting events, including sailing, golf, tennis and racing, and had celebrated their marriage with a fishing honeymoon. Clive Sippe was a member of the Warehouse Tennis Association, providing another use for the house’s tennis court.

Clive Sippe died in 1949. Dorothy retained a section of the land but sold the house and 65.7 perches (1661.74m2) of the land to Dr Otto Nothling in 1951. Like Clive Sippe, Nothling was a well-respected doctor and sportsman. Nothling had represented Australia in both rugby union and cricket and was selected to replace Donald Bradman in the 1928 Test match against England. He then became a Maryborough alderman before moving to Brisbane, where he was the first skin specialist appointed to the Brisbane Children’s Hospital. He resided at the Chelmer residence until his death in 1965.

The Chelmer house provided an ideal function venue for its owners through the 1940s and 1950s. Dinners, wedding parties and fundraisers hosted at the residence by Mrs Park, the Sippes and Nothling were described in social sections of the newspapers, including a bursary fundraiser with one hundred guests at the ‘attractive riverside home’ in 1948.1

The house was transferred through a number of proprietors in the late twentieth century. In the 1980s owners renovated the property, which reopened the verandahs and instated a traditional appearance to the house. An extension was added to the north in 1993. In 2015 it remains a substantial intact timber residence with generous garden and tennis court on leafy Laurel Avenue. 

1. Brisbane Courier, Saturday 7 July 1906 p12

2. The Daily Mail, Saturday 12 August 1922 p9

3. Truth, 8 April 1934 p23

4. Courier Mail, 18 January 1949 p3

5. Sunday Mail, 14 March 1948 p6

6. Brisbane City Council aerial photographs, 1946, 2012

7. Brisbane City Council Building Registers

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

9. Brisbane City Council Heritage Unit, Walter Taylor South Character and Heritage Study, 1997

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

11. Brisbane City Council Water Supply and Sewerage Detail Plans

12. Department of Natural Resources, Queensland Certificates of title and other records.

13. Department of Natural Resources and Mines, Queensland Place Names: Chelmer

14. McKellars’ Map of Brisbane, 1895 and 1907

15. Pugh’s Almanac

16. Centre for the Government of Queensland, Queensland Places: Chelmer

17. Queensland Post Office Directories

18. Queensland Electoral Rolls

19. Queensland Births, Deaths and Marriages

20. National Library of Australia, Trove digitised newspapers, Telegraph, Daily Mail, The Week, Brisbane Courier, Courier Mail, Daily Standard, Worker

21. Mrs Cyril Bodes, Chelmer Through the Years 1860 to 1973, 1973

22. Nanette Lilley, Welcome to Laurel Avenue, Graceville: Nanette Lilley, 2014

23. G. P. Walsh, 'Nothling, Otto Ernest (1900–1965)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/nothling-otto-ernest-11264/text20093, published first in hardcopy 2000

24. Austin, CG, ‘One hundred years of sport and recreation in Queensland’, Journal of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland, Vol 6 No 1 (1959), pp 268-293

25. Fones, Ralph, ‘Tennis Anyone? Tennis Almost Everyone!’, in Fones, Ralph (ed), Oxley-Chelmer Places, Patriarchs and Pastimes, Oxley Chelmer History Group Papers 1 (1996-7)