The Herbert River Valley - home of the 'Queenslander' house

Mauritian planter Charles Leon Burguez in front of his Gairloch home, 1880. (Source: Hinchinbrook Shire Council Library photograph collection)

Bachelors' Quarters, Stone Hut 1865. (Source: Hinchinbrook Shire Council Library photograph collection) 

Why have Queenslanders living in areas prone to floods and mosquito born fevers abandoned the ‘Queenslander’ house?

Wherever Europeans built homes and even businesses in tropical areas in colonial times a noticeable adaption was to raise the structure on high stumps or piles and encase it in verandahs which provided a covered walkway around the entire structure. Interiors were accessed from the verandahs via French doors and adjustable sash windows provided additional ventilation. Kitchens were detached in order to keep the heat and danger of fire away from the main structure.

 In Queensland this came to be called the “Queenslander.” The intent was to not only raise the house out of the miasmas that were thought to cause fevers (particularly malaria) but above the threat of high flood levels. It also afforded the best way to syphon breezes through the house assisted by ‘whirlybird ventilation vents’.  Even if later more economical houses were built lower and without the enfolding verandahs they were still built on stumps.

Alan Frost who has written on the Queenslander observed that our northern sugar lands gave rise to “quintessential Queensland feature”: the Queenslander house. He goes so far as to assert that “It was on the banks of the Herbert River that settlers first set their houses high.” He claims that they did this for one particular reason: “their medical knowledge told them that they might avoid malaria by sleeping off the ground.” On the Herbert they started out on two foot stumps and not enclosed with verandahs, but with Henry Stone’s Stone Hut the trend started in the district to build houses on seven to eight foot stumps until by 1875 it was observed by a visitor to the Valley that houses “on high piles [was] a peculiarity …everywhere noticeable.” Those first Queenslanders were also built on the highest ground and away from large trees where pools of stagnant water would provide a breeding ground for mosquitoes. Bats inhabited the ceilings, eating the mosquitoes while breezes blew the mosquitoes away from the house.

As Tony Raggatt wrote in his opinion piece in the Townsville Bulletin (February 2, 2019, 39) of the high-set Queenslander he lives in: “Not only are they cooler for the ventilation they provide under the home and are raised above the jaws of the armies of termites that patrol the garden, they are designed to allow floodwaters to flow underneath them.” He observes that if the houses have not been built under there is little to be lost from water damage.

We watch with dismay the disaster unfolding in Townsville this February 2019. Ingham, this time, has not been inundated to the extent feared. Every summer we wait in trepidation knowing so well the nature of the Herbert River in flood and the havoc it causes.

Fortunately, because of a civil society, efficient government, strict structural building standards, and numerous bodies to call on for emergency services we have not witnessed in Townsville the scale of property destruction, mayhem and death that occurs when such disasters hit in less developed countries. Yet the property loss and damage, and the fear, distress and discomfort experienced by Townsville residents during this event cannot be made light of. The physical recovery will take years, and the psychological scars will linger forever.

While it is being called a one in one hundred year event it still does beg the question about where councils have allowed homes to be built, the failure of land developers to site houses responsibly and ergonomically and the style of housing that we have come to favour because of taste or economics: low-set brick or concrete boxes lined with non-durable materials such as gyprock; stifling in summer, freezing in winter, walls exposed to blazing afternoon sun, ill-placed to catch passing breezes and only bearable to live in with air-conditioners full-bore.

Whatever the answer to why Queenslanders have abandoned the ‘Queenslander’ house — why they generally fail to site houses ergonomically, continue to build low-set homes in areas prone to floods and mosquito born fevers (ie: as on the flood plains of Ingham) — perhaps it is time this “quintessential Queensland” architectural style originating in the Herbert River Valley is re-evaluated and appreciated anew.

Source: Frost, A. “The Queensland High-Set House. Its Origins, Diffusion, Refinement and Sociology.” Unpublished paper, 1992.

Frost, Alan. East Coast Country: A North Queensland Dreaming. Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1996.