An essay collection

All We Leave Behind

Essays on Queensland’s Lost Heritage

by Troy Reeves

The outlined building is not there. It has not been there for some time.

Brisbane remembers the demolitions that happened at midnight. It has forgotten the ones that happened in daylight, with a permit, and no one watching.

About the collection

In April 1979 a wrecking crew took down the Belle Vue Hotel a few hundred metres from the Queensland Parliament, starting just after midnight on an order officials would attribute only to “a higher authority”. Three years later the same firm took Cloudland off the Bowen Hills ridge at four in the morning. Those two nights became the story Queensland tells about itself: a government that knocked things down in the dark, and a city that woke up angry.

This collection argues that the story is the wrong way round. The midnight demolitions are remembered precisely because they were fought. Far more of Queensland’s built inheritance has been lost since Bjelke-Petersen left office than was lost under him, and almost none of it is remembered at all. The Regent was fought for in 1979 and fought for again before the machines came in 2011 — and it made no difference the second time, because the heritage register meant to protect it had been quietly redrawn in 1994 to leave the auditorium out.

Eleven essays and a coda work through that ledger: the buildings, the valley that was nearly drowned twice, the premier nobody remembers, the heritage laws that arrived four decades late, and the handful of places that survived because somebody decided they would.

The ledger

A partial register. The entries set in heavy type are the losses Queensland remembers fighting. The rest went quietly, or the fight has been forgotten.

  1. 1979 Belle Vue Hotel George Street, Brisbane Demolished Work began just after midnight on 21 April.
  2. 1982 Cloudland Ballroom Bowen Hills Demolished Taken down in the early hours of 7 November.
  3. 2003 Festival Hall Charlotte Street, Brisbane Demolished Closed and cleared for apartments.
  4. 2011 Regent Theatre auditorium Queen Street, Brisbane Demolished Fought for in 1979 and again in 2008-12; the register boundary, redrawn in 1994, had already excluded the auditorium.
  5. 2024 Gympie Hospital nurses' quarters Alfred Street, Gympie Demolished A century old, cleared by a state health service for a temporary car park.
  6. 1828 The Old Windmill Wickham Terrace Still standing The oldest surviving building in Queensland.
  7. 1829 Commissariat Store William Street Still standing Convict-built; now held by the Royal Historical Society of Queensland.
  8. 1889 Customs House Queen Street Still standing Restored in the 1990s.
  9. 1886 Treasury Building Queen Street Still standing Built in stages, 1886-1928; converted rather than cleared.

Contents

Part I

Midnight in Brisbane

The demolitions everyone remembers, and why they are the ones we remember.

Part II

The Valley

The destruction that nearly happened, twice, to the same stretch of the Mary.

Part III

What the Record Keeps

How memory fails, in families and in governments.

Part IV

The Ledger

The argument: who actually destroyed what, and who was watching.

Read it as it is written

The collection is being published one essay a week as it is finished. Subscribers get each instalment in full, in order, before the collected edition appears.

See the contents

The first instalments are being written now. Links to the serial and to the collected edition will appear here as each becomes available.