About This Station

Observations, since the commencement of this station's operation on 2nd March, 2011 until 11th February, 2020 were made by a Vantage Vue weather station model #6357 by Davis Instruments, Hayward, CA 94545 USA. On the latter date, the Vantage Vue was upgraded and replaced by a Vantage Pro 2 model #6152AU weather station again by Davis Instruments. The data is collected and the site updated every 5 minutes. This site utilizes the Saratoga Weather Template set and its data is collected using CumulusMX Software. The station is comprised of an anemometer, a rain gauge and a thermo-hydro sensor situated in optimal positions for highest accuracy possible.

Brisbane

Brisbane is the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland, and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of 2.3 million, and the South East Queensland urban conurbation, centred on Brisbane, encompasses a population of more than 3.4 million.

The Brisbane central business district stands on the original European settlement and is situated inside a bend of the Brisbane River, about 15 kilometres (9 miles) from its mouth at Moreton Bay. The metropolitan area extends in all directions along the floodplain of the Brisbane River Valley between Moreton Bay and the Great Dividing Range, sprawling across several of Australia's most populous local government areas (LGAs), most centrally the City of Brisbane, which is by far the most populous LGA in the nation. The demonym of Brisbane is Brisbanite.

One of the oldest cities in Australia, Brisbane was founded upon the ancient homelands of the indigenous Turrbal and Jagera peoples. Named after the Brisbane River on which it is located – which in turn was named after Scotsman Sir Thomas Brisbane, the Governor of New South Wales from 1821 to 1825 – the area was chosen as a place for secondary offenders from the Sydney Colony. A penal settlement was founded in 1824 at Redcliffe, 28 kilometres (17 mi) north of the central business district, but was soon abandoned and moved to North Quay in 1825, opening to free settlement in 1842. The city was marred by the Australian frontier wars between 1843 and 1855, and development was partly set back by the Great Fire of Brisbane, and the Great Brisbane Flood. Brisbane was chosen as the capital when Queensland was proclaimed a separate colony from New South Wales in 1859.

During World War II, Brisbane played a central role in the Allied campaign and served as the South West Pacific headquarters for General Douglas MacArthur.

Brisbane is well known for its distinct Queenslander architecture which forms much of the city's built heritage. It also received attention for its damaging flood events, most notably in 1974 and 2011. Major landmarks and precincts include; the South Bank Parklands, Queensland Cultural Centre, City Hall and King George Square, Story Bridge, Parliament of Queensland, ANZAC Square, Howard Smith Wharves, Fortitude Valley known for its night life, West End, the City Botanic Gardens and Roma Street Parkland, the Brisbane Powerhouse, and St John's Cathedral. The city is a popular tourist destination, serving as a gateway to the state of Queensland, particularly to the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast, popular resort areas immediately south and north of Brisbane respectively. Several large cultural, international and sporting events have been held at Brisbane, including the 1982 Commonwealth Games, World Expo '88, the final Goodwill Games in 2001, and the 2014 G-20 summit. In 2016, the Globalization and World Cities Research Network ranked Brisbane as a Beta world city.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brisbane

Carina (marked on the map below) is a south-eastern suburb of Brisbane and is situated 7km (4.3 miles) from the Brisbane CBD.

Brisbane Area Map

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History of Carina

Aboriginal history

Aborigines were known to live and hunt in the hills along Bulimba Creek both before and after white settlement, and there was a corroboree ground on Bulimba Creek near the wool scour in adjoining Belmont.

A large group lived on the flats and some members worked on the Stanton farm for food or tobacco.

Urban development

Carina was named after the estate of Ebenezer Thorne who owned land on Creek Road in the 1850s. He named his homestead 'Carina' after his daughter Kate Carina, and this name passed on to the suburbs of Carina, Carina Heights, and Carindale. Carina Heights was designated a separate suburb in 1975, but historically it belongs with Carina and Belmont.

Carina and Carina Heights were first visited by timber getters. In 1863 several pieces of land in the area were bought at auction, including Lot 150 which was bought by Edward Deshon. A. Slaughter and W. Weekes bought large holdings south of Wynnum Road, where the waterholes were in what is now Todman Street. Other public auctions and private purchases followed, with land bought by other people who stand out in Brisbane's history, such as Thorpe Riding, Henry Ruddle, and J. Sankey.

Sugar was grown along Bulimba Creek in the 1860s and 70s and was crushed in local mills. As sugar farming left the Brisbane region, small crops, dairying, and vineyards became more important. Many of the settlers were German immigrants who settled the Camp Hill and Carina areas; often having bought land for two shillings and sixpence per acre [0.4 hectares]; and started dairy farms or vineyards.

Many of these sold out in the land boom of the 1880s, creating such estates as Battersea Rise (1886) and Stanley Street Extended (1889), but there was a major scandal when many of the blocks sold by developers were flooded in the 1893 flood. The creation of the Belmont Shire Council Tramway from Norman Park to Belmont was a minor spur to development during the fourteen years it operated (1912–26) but Carina remained mostly bush, the major development in Carina occurring after World War II, with war service and housing commission homes.

The housing estates at Carina were first served by trolley buses (pictured below at the Stanley Street East, Coorparoo Level Crossing),

Source: Trams DownUnder - Richard Jones

but in 1948 the tramline was extended along Old Cleveland Road to Carina, to what was known as Belmont Terminus. (Trams at Belmont terminus pictured below)

Source: Trams DownUnder - Richard Jones

Carina's height of development was in the 1960's and Carina formed the outer city limit till the end of the seventies. After that the main growth was in the splinter suburb of Carindale.

Notable residents

Carina State School was opened in 1917, with an enrolment of sixty-two, which swelled to eighty-six by the end of the year. The first head teacher was Charles Kemp Briggs, who, together with Douglas King, had moved from Belmont State School. The Briggs family lived beside the school and had a great influence on many of the children. Charles was an enthusiastic sportsman who also played the fiddle at the euchre nights held on Saturdays to raise money for tennis courts. He organised swimming lessons in the creek and an annual show in the paddock. During the Depression many children who had come to school hungry were sent over to see Mrs Briggs for some bread and wet children were dressed in the Briggs childrens' clothes. Mrs Briggs continued to live there after her husband's death in 1944.

Clem Jones was born in 1918. After studying at the University of Queensland he worked as a surveyor and town planner, reputedly building Australia's largest surveying practice. He was elected Lord Mayor of Brisbane in 1961, in which office he remained for fourteen years. During that time he saw Brisbane develop beyond the old ten-mile (16.1 kilometre) limit, the city region grow into a high-rise centre, and sewerage come to the city. He continued to hold a variety of public positions, including delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1998. He was involved in a variety of sporting and community groups, including the Camp Hill Carina Welfare Association, and with the development of the Clem Jones Centre at Carina. The picture below was taken in August 1965 and shows a Carina (Route 8C) trolley bus at its terminus at the intersection of Stanley and Creek Roads. The Clem Jones Centre was established on the land to the right of the bus.

Source: Flickriver - Richard Jones

Around 1900 George Cooling sailed into Manly in an old boat in which he lived until it fell apart. He then lived near Manly State School until he bought a block of land at Whites Road. He made his living out of taking photographs of people from Manly to Cannon Hill. He built his own motorbike and sidecar and navigated through the often-perilous roads on this. His name, 'Dirty George' came from his aversion to washing. He travelled around taking photographs, often in exchange for a meal and he reportedly built an aeroplane out of scrap, which he flew into the top of a large tree.

Major J. R. Sankey was a partner in Flavell, Roberts, and Sankey, who owned a jewellery store in Brisbane. In 1868 the first gold, which started the Gympie gold rush, was weighed in their shop and in 1872 they displayed the first three ingots of tin smelted in Queensland. Major Sankey owned 395 acres [160 hectares] to the south-east of Whites Hill and also near Pine Mountain. He was also active in the volunteer army. Sankey Street, Sankey Road, and Sankeys Mountain were all named after him.

Landmarks

In the 1950s Carina had a serious problem with youth crime. Camp Hill–Carina Welfare Association was formed and its members decided to take over a local tea tree swamp, which was adjoined by two large Housing Commission estates and a lot of which was used as a rubbish dump. The City Council gave them a twenty-year lease over the whole seventeen hectares and they set about transforming the dump into sports fields.

They cleared the land by hand, burnt the rubbish (the fire burned for three weeks), and carted away what would not burn in trucks provided by the City Council. The first sports were games to raise funds. The swamp was cleared with borrowed machines, and machinery retailers held their field days there to drain the swamp and make a dam for water for the fields.

Wally Grout, the cricketer, helped establish three practice pitches named after him and Easts–Coorparoo Old Boys Football Club chose it as the site of their club. Fields for hockey and soccer were also built and later the swimming pool, gymnasium, and squash courts were added. In 1976, the centre was officially named the Clem Jones Centre, after the mayor who had negotiated leases and contractors, and helped drive a truck and clear the land.

Originally closer to Brisbane, what is now Wynnum Road was called Bulimba Road, and further out it was called Wynnum Road or Lytton Road. When the bridge was built over the mouth of Norman Creek in 1856, Wynnum Road became a faster route to Cleveland and so became known as the Cleveland Road. In 1863, a Parliamentary report declared the road was impassable and people had to travel by private land. Wynnum Road was known as Cleveland Road until the 1950s.

In 1959 commemorative palms were planted along New Cleveland Road at Cannon Hill. Each had a plaque with the name of a soldier from the district. Children swinging from them destroyed the palms on the south of the road. Those on the north were removed in the 1960s when the road was widened.

Old Cleveland Road was first shown as a line, probably representing blazed trees, on a sketch made by Alan Cunningham in 1829. In 1839 and 1841 James Warner surveyed Norman, Hilliard, and Tingalpa creeks and proposed (but did not draw) a possible route from Brisbane to Cleveland (Emu Point), although he did show the bridges and fords that crossed these creeks. In 1849 the decision was made to plan a town at Cleveland Point. In 1850 Warner presented his 'Survey of a practicable road from Brisbane in the County of Stanley to the proposed Town of Cleveland' and Old Cleveland Road became a road constrained by surveyors' pegs.

When the bridge was built across Norman Creek in 1856, the traffic to Cleveland tended to use that route hence Wynnum Road was known as Cleveland Road. An auction announcement in that year referred to Old Cleveland Road as 'High Cleveland Road'. The mail coach used this route from then until the railway went through in 1888. It was still a rough track in the 1860s, but by the twentieth century was a popular motorists' run down to the bay.

Pine Mountain reserve is a large reserve that extends to Camp Hill. There is a large quarry at the end of Bendenna Street. Locals claim this has greatly reduced the height of the mountain. Pine Mountain is the easternmost peak of a ridge that runs across to Whites Hill in the west. Pine Mountain still has much eucalypt forest with wattle and she-oak shrubs and kangaroo grass. Sankeys Scrub, near Pine Mountain is a rare example of riverine rainforest remaining in Brisbane.