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Townsville’s former Customs House is located on the corner of Wickham Street and The Strand. Completed in 1902, the building was designed by George David Payne of the Government Architect’s Office in the Queensland Department of Public Works. Payne was a London-trained architect who had emigrated to Australia around 1887. Payne designed an impressive Romanesque-style building with a semi-circular corner entrance and low tower for shipping observation. The two-storey, L-shaped building was designed to suit the tropical climate with high ceilings and fanlights to maximise airflow and broad, colonnaded verandahs to provide shade for the interior rooms. Tenders for construction were called in early 1900 with the tender of £26,642 submitted by Brisbane contractors Messrs Crawford and Cameron being accepted in March 1900. The building was constructed of local bricks from the North Queensland Brick and Pottery Company and faced with granite quarried at Cockle Bay, Magnetic Island. The roof tiles were manufactured locally, and timbers sourced from throughout north Queensland, such as cedar and silky oak, were used internally. The ground floor plan included a circular entrance hall, a Long Room with a public counter and work area, general offices, storerooms, two safes, two small strong rooms, and a large office for the Sub-Collector of Customs. The upper floor was designed to house offices for the Deputy Registrar, Harbour Master, and Stamps and Titles offices. A large strong room with a fireproof door was located at the end of the Titles office. The Strand frontage contained two entrances for access by the public, while the Wickham Street elevation contained two private entrances. One private entrance was for the exclusive use of the Sub-Collector of Customs, while the other was for the use of boarding officers and tide waiters. Although intended as functional plans, Payne’s hand-coloured drawings are also visually very beautiful. Subtly different colours have been used to represent the different external building materials of granite, brick and stone. Interestingly, Payne’s signature does not appear on the plans. The only signature discernible on the Townsville Custom House plans are that of A.B. Brady, the Queensland Government Architect. Though Payne was obviously a talented architect, at this time he was just one of a number of draftsmen who worked for the Department of Public Works, so his drawings were signed by the senior officer, Brady. Source: jculibrarynews.blogspot.com/2020/05/50-treasures-townsvil...

For the past 130 years, the Holy Trinity Anglican Church has been a central place of Christ’s light in a vast Parish district which by 1906 covered 16,000 square miles: including Gore, Inglewood, and Texas to the east, Talwood to the west, and Koorangarra in the north. The first church building on the current site in Bowen Street, Goondiwindi, was completed in 1882 after 11 years of planning, fundraising, and public subscription. The timber church was consecrated by the Right Reverend Matthew Blagden Hale, Bishop of Brisbane on Sunday 23rd April 1882 and remained in use until the current brick church building, three times the size of the old timber structure, was completed in 1939. Source: goondiwindiregion.com.au/directory-listing/holy-trinity-c...

Situated on the border between New South Wales and Queensland, Goondiwindi was established in the late 1830s as the first of three large stations in the district. It was gazetted as a town in 1888. The first Anglican service recorded in this district was in 1848 at Wyaga, and the first church on the present site was dedicated on 23 April 1882 by Bishop Hale. The foundation stone for the present church was laid in 1939, and it was opened and dedicated later that year. After being gutted by fire in 1942, the building was restored and finally consecrated by Archbishop Halse on 7 May 1944.1 The organ was completed in November 1952 by Whitehouse Bros of Brisbane at a cost of £1,865.17.6. to a specification that had been agreed in March 1950.2, It was dedicated on 10 December 1952. The Goondiwindi organ was of the same size as the one completed in the same month for the Wynnum Baptist Church (now at St Paul's Anglican Church, East Brisbane), although its tonal design was on a larger scale. Another pneumatic-action organ of the same size and similar specification was built by the firm in 1954 for St Anne's Anglican Church, Gresford, New South Wales. The arrangement of the façade pipes at Goondiwindi and Gresford is identical with that at the Anglican Church Grammar School, East Brisbane, where the Open Diapason stop was added in 1953. The instrument was overhauled in 1988 by Peter Jewkes of Sydney, who surmised at the time that it was possibly the last pneumatic action organ built in Australia.3 This is not quite true, as the Whitehouse firm was still building instruments with pneumatic action as late as 1957. Source: www.ohta.org.au/organs/organs/Goondiwindi.html

1880 - St James' Church enlargement Having become the Cathedral of the new diocese, St James’ Church was enlarged, extending the nave and north and south aisles 1883 Plans for a new and larger cathedral began when members of the church formed a committee to raise the funds 1884 The proposal to build a cathedral was approved by a church synod and the Cathedral Building Committee was appointed. An organ, donated by Miss S.E. Holland (an English friend of Bishop Stanton), was added to the church. 1885 Arthur Blackett of Sydney, son of Edmund Blackett (the New South Wales colonial architect) was commissioned to design a new cathedral. The initial designs called for a cathedral constructed of sandstone with granite columns which would hold 1000 parishioners. Source: www.stjamescathedral.com.au/the-cathedral/history/ The nave would be 37 feet (11 m) wide, transepts would be 24 feet (7.3 m) wide and the total interior length from chancel to bell tower would be 115 feet (35 m). 1887 Many features of these designs were rejected upon review by the diocese and three revisions were necessary before a final plan was approved. The final design was for a church built in stone, with a low wide central tower that would act as a ventilation shaft, and a single tower at the northern door. It was to cost £24,000 but was built in sections. The diocese called tenders for the construction of the Cathedral. The first sod was turned on the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria on June 22nd. 1892 The building was erected by Townsville contractors MacMahon & Cliffe. Subsequent financial constraints forced changes to the design, and the Cathedral was constructed in brick, with concrete facings, a temporary roof, and no towers. This first stage of the Cathedral was consecrated on October 27th by the second Bishop of North Queensland, Christopher Barlow. 1896 On 26 January, Cyclone Sigma struck Townsville; however, the Cathedral was relatively unaffected by this 1903 On March 9th, Cyclone Leonta struck Townsville, destroying the 1871 St James’ Church and the temporary roof of the Cathedral. The Cathedral was promptly rebuilt with higher walls and a more permanent roof at a cost of £2,500. The gas lights, seen here, remained until 1922. They were replaced by electrical lights when it became available until 1959 The second stage of the Cathedral was designed in 1955 by Melbourne architect Louis Williams, with Townsville architects Black and Paulsen responsible for the building between 1959-1960. 1959-60 Although Blackett’s design had a strong Byzantine flavour, with its magnificent pointed arches and the apsidal east end, at one stage of the design he envisaged having a dome above the nave. Williams favoured a Gothic design, which was popular for churches up to the end of the 1960s. The nave and the Western façade with the bell tower and stature of St James were all added Evidence of the extension can be seen as although the brick makers, Scott Brothers, reopened the original clay pit to make new bricks for the extension, a slight difference of colour can be seen due to the aging of the bricks. Evidence can also be seen in the ceiling where the original rough sawn, lapped timber was replaced with machine sawn, tongue-in-groove. The final foundation stone was laid in 1960 marking the completion of the Cathedral.