Bulimba House is a heritage-listed detached house at 34 Kenbury Street, Bulimba, Queensland, Australia. It was designed and built by Andrew Petrie from 1849 to 1850. It is also known as Toogoolawah. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992. A number of timber cottages were constructed around the main house.
History
Bulimba House was erected in 1849–50 for early Queensland pastoralists David and Mary McConnel. David had established Cressbrook in the Brisbane Valley in 1841, the second run in the Moreton Bay district of New South Wales.
In mid-1849 he purchased of land on the angle of the Brisbane River approximately five miles downstream from Brisbane Town. The subtropical rainforest area was known to the local Aborigines as Tugulawa or Toogoolawah, meaning "shape of heart". Here McConnel established an experimental farm, attempting to prove that cash-crop agriculture was a viable activity in Moreton Bay. Early crops included cotton, wheat, barley, maize, oats, lucerne, rye grass and yams.
Whilst residing at Kangaroo Point in the second half of 1849, McConnel employed builder Andrew Petrie to construct the house at Toogoolawah, the first masonry Tudor-style homestead in the Brisbane region. The stone, as sandstone without directional grain, was quarried from the nearby Quarries Reach of the Brisbane River, and Moreton Bay cedar was employed in both the structure and the finishes. Cabinetmaker Robert Towell was engaged to craft most of the furniture on the spot, using local cedar and stained pine. Scottish labourers were used to clear the land around the property.
McConnel and his wife Mary moved to Toogoolawah in December 1849, living in the detached service wing until the main house was completed. By 1852 they were using the Aboriginal name from the Whites Hill area which was already the official name for the whole parish—Bulimba, meaning place of the magpie lark or peewee.
Situated on a rise in the centre of the property, Bulimba House overlooked the entire estate and boasted sweeping panoramic views from every window. It functioned as the centrepiece of a model manorial farm which, besides the cash cropping, operated self-sufficiently with a dairy herd, numerous livestock and poultry, kitchen garden and extensive orchard.
By 1853 the farm comprised and included a variety of outbuildings: kitchen, laundry, store, stable, coachhouse, workrooms, dairies, barns and workers' cottages. In the early years eighty to one hundred men were employed on the estate, although some of these were probably seasonal, and various wives and daughters served in the house, kitchen, laundry and dairy.
In manorial tradition, McConnel encouraged his workers to establish their own farms, selling them small portions of the Bulimba property for which they made regular repayments from their wages, and were given time off to clear and cultivate.
Due to Mary McConnel's ill health the property was sold in February 1853 to pastoralist Donald Coutts for , and the McConnels returned temporarily to Britain. Most of the household furniture also was sold at this time.
Coutts later subdivided the estate but remained in the house until his death in 1869. Since then the house has been owned or rented by a number of prominent Brisbanites including Arthur Edward Moore, Premier of Queensland from 1929 to 1932, who purchased Bulimba House in 1935. The property remains a family home on a much-reduced site of . Substantial additions to the rear of the house and some internal alterations were made during the 1970s by the owners at the time. The timber kitchen and service wing was demolished at this time. The current owners have undertaken extensive conservation work throughout the house and have refurbished the kitchen.
Description
Bulimba House is a fine two-storeyed sandstone and brick residence which sits on the rise of gently sloping hill, and is set in a garden containing mature trees. The house in its setting makes a picturesque contribution to the Bulimba townscape. Bulimba House has a steeply pitched terracotta tiled gabled roof, with substantial chimneys rising above the roof line. The external form expresses a simple L-shaped plan; the front (north) elevation has two projecting gables to the western end, and a deep ground floor verandah with a terracotta tiled skillion roof to the eastern end. The back of the house (to the south) also has a deep ground floor verandah with a (now enclosed) verandah above.
