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Frederick B. Schell paints the Windmill on Wickham Terrace
Frederick
Schell, was only twenty-seven when he was
offered the exciting assignment of selecting
the illustrations for the mammoth three-volume
publication The Picturesque Atlas of Australasia.
He had already acted in a similar capacity
as Art Editor for a companion volume The Picturesque
Atlas of Canada which had proved a most successful
publication, running
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into several editions. It was intended to employ
these direct selling techniques to sell the 'Picturesque
Atlas of Australasia' to the newly-affluent capital
cities of Australia and to owners of remote properties
in the bush. No expense was spared and some of Australia's
finest landscape artists such as Julian Rossi Ashton
and Arthur Henry Fullwood were commissioned to travel
to different areas and paint the most historically
interesting or beautiful views available. Schell,
as Art Editor, chose Julian Ashton, William Fitler
and himself to make the Brisbane paintings, which
were used to illustrate the chapters on Queensland's
exploration and subsequent development.
He chose to paint Wickham Terrace as the epitome
of all that was prosperous and secure in Victorian
Queensland. Forgotten were the rough pioneering
days of Captain Wickham or the harsh convicts era,
when convicts in heavy leg-irons shuffled up the
steeply sloping track which is now 'The Terrace'
to put in a fourteen hour day on the treadmill.
Schell's view of 'The Terrace' shows it during the
year's if Brisbane's unparalleled financial boom,
when revenues from mines like Mount Morgan, or hugh
pastoral fortunes based on wool from the Downs for
the frozen meat export trade, paid for the Brisbane
Opera House, and crates of imported French champagne
were consumed on the exclusive premises of the Queensland
Club.
Residences like 'Alexandra', 'Montpelier' and 'Gowrie',
now the site of suites of professional rooms for
Brisbane's medical and surgical specialists, then
housed some of the most important families, whose
daughters were driven daily to school or to shop
in Queen Street in horse-drawn carriages handled
by liveried coachmen.
This era ended abruptly with the financial crash
of 1893, which destroyed so many of Queensland's
self-made men and revealed the much of the Colony's
apparent prosperity had been based upon a delicate
and intricate system of mortgages, loans and credits.
Of particular interest is Schell's portrayal of
one of the earliest telephone lines in Brisbane,
which had connected the Observatory, formerly the
Windmill, to the City Fire Station since the beginning
of the 1880s. However some of the residents of elite
Wickham Terrace had gladly paid the hugh sums that
it cost in that era to obtain the luxury of a 'speaking'
apparatus installed in their mansions.
The coded flags on the Signal Mast at the left of
the Observatory indicated, the merchants and townsfolk
in the City below, what ships were on their way
between the Fort Lytton Signals Station and the
wharves. Different coloured flags represented different
classes of shipping and the arrival of the eagerly-
awaited monthly mail ship was always signalled by
a red flag. The arrival of a ship from England or
Europe at this period generally meant that imported
machinery and merchandise for the merchants of the
Terrace would be arriving, together with luxuries
from London and Paris for their wives. These same
ships, would, in their turn export the wool, hides,
frozen meat and gold from Northern Queensland goldfields
to pay for them.
Historically the former Windmill is undoubtedly
Brisbane's most important and unique building. Soon
after his arrival in 1837 Andrew Petrie rectified
its design faults and it is believed that the Windmill
continued the grinding of maize under sail power
until 1841. In 1849 a public outcry followed the
proposal to sell the building for re-development
and the Windmill was saved. In 1862 it housed the
Natural History Collections of the Queensland Museum,
to which Silvester Diggles contributed so much work.
By 1865 it had become a Signal Station and Observatory,
the domed top shown by Bowerman and Martens was
removed and a flagpole was erected. The balustrated
platform, formerly used to repair the sails was
converted to an observation platform. In the 1930s,
no longer an Observatory, the Windmill was used
for some of Brisbane's first experiments in television
and it still stands today on Wickham Terrace, where
its site has been preserved as a park by the Brisbane
City Council. |
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