Contents

• Introduction The State That Forgets Queensland was the last mainland state to pass a heritage act, in 1992. For the forty years before that, whether a building stood was a question of who held the title and what they wanted. This introduction sets out what those decades cost and why the losses that drew no protest are the ones worth counting. Published

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

• Chapter One Midnight Madness: The Belle Vue The Government bought the Belle Vue in 1967 and spent twelve years running inquiries, consultations and restoration studies towards a decision it had already made. On 21 April 1979 a Deen Brothers crew began work just after midnight, on an order a Works Department spokesman would attribute only to “a higher authority”. Forthcoming
• Chapter Two The Night Cloudland Fell Four in the morning, 7 November 1982. The same contractor, the same method, and no warning that the machines were coming. Cloudland was not a hotel opposite Parliament but a dance hall on a ridge, and its loss is remembered by a different Brisbane. Published
• Chapter Three All That Remains: Demolition as Spectacle The Deen Brothers era read as a system rather than a series of outrages: who ordered the work, who profited from it, who was in a position to stop it, and how a firm’s slogan became the epitaph for a decade of Brisbane. Forthcoming

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

• Chapter Four How Safe Was My Valley A first-person account of the Mary Valley: a childhood geography, a landmark that disappeared while the author was overseas, and the slow recognition that the drive home had been rearranged around an absence. Forthcoming
• Chapter Five Return to Borumba The Traveston Crossing Dam was refused in 2009 on federal environmental grounds. Pumped hydro has brought the same financial logic back to the same valley, a generation later, under a different government and a cleaner name. Forthcoming

How memory fails, in families and in governments.

• Chapter Six A 170-Year Coda What a family record keeps and what it loses across a hundred and seventy years in Queensland, and why the documentary trail thins exactly where it would be most useful. Forthcoming
• Chapter Seven The Premier Nobody Remembers Frank Nicklin governed Queensland from 1957 to 1968 and has left almost no trace in the state’s popular memory. Drawn from the author’s Master of History thesis and his article in the Queensland History Journal, still the only substantive published work on the period. Forthcoming
• Chapter Eight Policy by Agreement The unwritten understanding between the long Labor government and the Catholic Church over secondary education, uncovered in the thesis research, and what it says about how Queensland actually made decisions before anyone wrote them down. Forthcoming

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

• Chapter Nine A Monolith of Paper Heritage classification did not save the Belle Vue, which held the National Trust’s highest listing. Twelve years of consultation did not move the decision by a measurable amount. An account of what Queensland’s heritage protections are actually able to protect. Forthcoming
• Chapter Ten · the argument The Quiet Demolitions The book’s argument. The Regent was fought for in 1978-79 and fought for again in 2008-12, and the second campaign failed before it began: the heritage register had been redrawn in 1994 to leave the auditorium out, so the demolition needed no heritage consent at all. Set against Festival Hall and the post-1987 record, the ledger does not say what Queensland thinks it says. Forthcoming
• Chapter Eleven What Survived Customs House, the Treasury, the Commissariat Store, the Old Windmill. None of them survived by luck. Each one is the residue of a decision somebody made, and the decisions are more instructive than the buildings. Forthcoming
• Chapter Twelve The Daylight Demolitions The third method, and the one we are living in. The Ekka showgrounds and the Gabba are being rebuilt for 2032 in full daylight: costed, consulted upon, contractor named, heritage itemised rather than ignored. The Gabba's fate changed three times in two years, from demolition to a billion-dollar upgrade to sale, and none of it was reached in bad faith. A review found the ground could not get an ambulance onto the field or seat a wheelchair user beside more than one person. The case for removal is a good one. That is what makes it an entry in this ledger rather than an exception to it. Forthcoming

• Coda What We Leave Behind A short close, tying the wrecking firm’s slogan to the valley and the family record. What is lost when a landmark goes is not the landmark. It is the thread that ran through it. Forthcoming