History
‘Zoo’ in the middle of the CBD
CHRIS CURRIE wanders back to a time when Brisbane’s much-loved city gardens were home to more than just a collection of interesting flora.
For many of us who enjoy the Brisbane City Botanic Gardens, it’s hard to imagine they once held a wildly popular collection of animals … just don’t call it a zoo.
The story of its animal inhabitants can be told through the official reports, studies, photographs and newspaper accounts held at State Library of Queensland.
The Brisbane City Botanic Gardens were established in 1855, on the site of former government agricultural gardens, built to feed the then convict settlement.
The first recorded animal residents were three tortoises, donated in 1859 by John Clements Wickham, former magistrate of Moreton Bay. The (likely apocryphal) story goes that the tortoises were given to Wickham by Charles Darwin. One of the three tortoises, Harriet, lived to the ripe old age of 176, passing away at Australia Zoo, Beerwah, in 2006.
The gardens’ 1879 annual report reveals that the introduction of animals to the space was not an unusual occurrence, with a noted bird fancier “let(ting) loose a few … Budgerygar parrots” which “appear to have taken kindly to their change of location”. As early as 1890, concerns were raised in local newspapers as to why Queensland was “so far behind” southern colonies in “the matter of a zoological collection”.
A zoo of sorts began under the curation of Philip John MacMahon from 1889, with an enclosure for emus and an aviary. Two years later, much fanfare was given to the construction of a bear pit which housed two black bears from Japan for the amusement of onlookers.
A few years later, the idea of building a zoo in Brisbane gained further traction, with the formation of the Queensland Zoological Society.
The two favoured locations were Mt Coot-tha and Yeronga Park.
Despite the vociferous calls for a zoo, both the premier and the mayor of the day steadfastly believed money could be better spent elsewhere.
The botanic gardens continued to accept some animals over the next decade, usually through one-off donations, including cassowaries, deer, kangaroos, pelicans, curassows (tropical American birds), peacocks, blue cranes, sheep, monkeys and a “fretful porcupine” discovered in a South Brisbane woodpile.
By this time, according to then curator EW Bick (whose papers reside at State Library), visitors were now taking a “keen interest” in the zoological collection. In 1926, the gardens sent a collection of zoological specimens to the Netherlands in an exchange agreement with Rotterdam Zoo – the first of many exchanges with zoos throughout the world.
By 1927, the gardens were registered as an ‘A-class zoo’, but only for the purposes of welcoming quarantined animals seized by the Customs Department (many of the ever-popular monkeys were reportedly once the pets of visiting sailors who didn’t want to pay the £50 quarantine bond).
While Brisbane never established an official zoo, more than a million people reportedly visited what unofficially became known as Brisbane Zoological Gardens, with many holding fond memories of their visits.
It was closed in 1958 due to “conflicts of interest, the cost of upkeep of the animals and the poor state of the animal enclosures”.
Today the bear pit is a picnic shelter for visitors.
If you have any memories of materials relating to the Brisbane Zoological Gardens, contact qldmemory@ slq.qld.gov.au
