Prospect St. Kangaroo Point in 1950

This is a fascinating photo showing a typical street in the 1950s before development of what is now Dockside. A time when streets were unpaved, cottages were huddled close together and the road led directly down to the waterfront and the busy shipyard of Evans Deakin. All that’s gone now! The river view from the top of Prospect Street is blocked by the high-rises of the Dockside Precinct, shops and cafés have taken the place of cottages and the Dockside Ferry terminal and river pontoons have replaced the shipyards.

Prospect Street in a different era – leading down to the shipyards in what is now the Dockside Precinct.

Bubonic Plague in Woolloongabba in 1900

The first Brisbane case of Bubonic Plague was identified in Hawthorne Street,  Woolloongabba on 27 April 1900.

Although we think we’re badly off when suffering flu symptoms, we can be thankful that we’re not living in the 1900s in the days of the Bubonic Plague (also known as the Black Death because of dark patches on the skin caused by bleeding under the skin).

The origin of the outbreak in Queensland was traced to an infection carried by rats arriving aboard vessels from Sydney, at a time when the plague was known to exist there. The infection spread to local rats then to humans.

The first case in Brisbane was James Drevesen who lived in Hawthorne Street, Woolloongabba. He was a van driver employed to remove goods from the wharves where dead and plague-infected rats were found. Twenty five deaths were recorded from fifty-six reported cases of the disease. (Source: SLQ &  The Queenslander, 5 May, 1900).

The house on the left is where the first case of Bubonic Plague was identified in Brisbane on 27 April 1900. It was occupied by James Drevesen, a van driver whose job it was to take goods from the wharves where dead and plague-infected rats were found. Both houses are sealed off with quarantine barricades, (SLQ # 47425).

Another view of the quarantine barricades.