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- The St Lucia Pre-School started life in this recycled military hut, the Presbyterian Church Hall in Hawken Drive
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- School badge for the relatively short lived St Thomas Aquinas School at St Lucia
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- Richard Gailey’s imposing mansion Glenolive built on the knoll at the river end of today’s Glen Olive Lane
This history of the St Lucia Pre-School outlines some of the challenges associated with establishing and maintaining this community service. Whilst St Lucia specific it is more than likely these were typical of those faced by its contemporaries in other parts of Brisbane. This paper, prepared by former Director Isa Maynard, and based on material unearthed by Marjorie Voss, covers the period from its establishment in 1948 up until 2000. 2018 will mark this local ‘institution’s’ seventieth year of operation.
Recycled military huts also feature in the history of the St Thomas Aquinas Parish, services commencing in a two storey configuration in Eighth Avenue prior to the current church being constructed. The huts also provided accommodation for the St Thomas Aquinas School, an initiative of the Brigidine sisters, which operated from 1953. Former student Liz Little prepared this history following a reunion in 2006, forty years after the school closed its doors.
Check out when the Title for your house lot was first registered and there is a good chance it will be in either the 1880s or the 1920s by which time most of the land in St Lucia had been sub-divided for residential purposes. Both were periods of comparative economic confidence. St Lucia’s third phase of residential sub-division began in the 1970s as houses were demolished and replaced with multiple dwelling strata titled units, and multi-storey apartments. This paper tracks the progressive sub-division for one such tower block, Riverford, which was built on part of what was the first land freeholded in St Lucia, Robert Cribb’s Lang Farm.
brisbane history west 