Sunshine Coast Hinterland Times

An early treadle Singer sewing machine

A hot water clothing iron

In 2002 Jack Ferris died aged 101, leaving behind a home at Glasshouse Mountains where five generations of his family had lived continuously since 1868. His remaining family sold the home to Council and over a nine year management plan, the house will be carefully restored and its contents methodically catalogued to preserve a rare and fascinating link with Queensland’s pioneering past. In step one Council has launched  a website and soon, a 3D virtual tour of Bankfoot House.

 

Bankfoot House in the 1920s before renovation

From the outside Bankfoot House is a fairly ordinary-looking timber house on a flat block of land set against the Glasshouse Mountains. What is unusual though is to find a house still standing that marks the very beginning of our state’s history.
Bankfoot House was built by an enterprising small businessman from Scotland and his wife, William and Mary Grigor, who realised the huge potential of being located on the road to Gympie when gold was discovered there in 1867.
Steve Chaddock is the heritage project officer for Council and is overseeing the Bankfoot House project.
“The idea is not to alter or move the original building and dairy” explains Steve, “but to develop other facilities so it can be used for visitors with orientation centre, toilets and climate control storage for documents, photographs and certain fragile objects”.
Steve has a background in archaeology and as a museum curator in the UK where he was also a heritage consultant for ten years.

An early 20th century manual typewriter

Despite its modest appearance Steve is full of praise for Council’s decision to purchase the property.
“I would almost put Bankfoot House at the national level of importance”, says Steve,” because there aren’t that many historic houses around  Australia where the aim is to preserve them in context”.
Bankfoot House became the focus, not only for Cobb & Co coaches to and from Gympie, but became a butchery, a place to post a letter (the original 1860s Post Office box is still there), buy a meal and even have baby! (Mary Grigor was a popular local mid-wife).
Steve Chaddock stresses that Bankfoot House was a busy social meeting place, making it a crucially important historical record of the times.
 “It was the Bunnings and Coles, the Post Office and the hospital of its day, all rolled into one”, says Steve.
What is astounding about Bankfoot House is the mass of household items, documents, photographs, books and magazines that span the 150 years of the house. They range from birth certificates to the family bible, gadgets from kitchen and office, and a yoke for carrying buckets of water from the creek to the house.

Steve is delighted with the discovery of objects that demonstrate technological  improvement over the years. “For example”, says Steve, “you can see the evolution in how people used to do washing.  There’s a copper that went on the fire, then the lady of the house went to basically an electric copper. Then they also have a rather neat, electrically-powered single tub, with a fold-out mangle for drying the clothes. And finally, there’s a plastic Hitachi twin tub as well. So you’re seeing that whole technological progression very practically demonstrated in this house”.
Perhaps the most daunting task is the cataloguing of the mass of documents. That was partly why a Friends of Bankfoot House group has been set up, and this small group of enthusiasts are now carefully identifying, photographing and recording every item in the house. Council is supporting the Friends with oral history workshops as well as cataloguing and guidance on how to look after historical items.
“Partly because we haven’t had the money to develop the public facilities”, explains Steve,” we’ve been considering how we can get our message out to residents. The new website gets out information to people while they’re not able to visit Bankfoot House.”
The two main features of the website are the 3D virtual walk through of the house which will be launched in May.  The most innovative use of the Web is the educational pack that has been written by Broad Oak Productions and designed by Fig Creative, both Hinterland companies.
“We’ve also been lucky to find teachers with experience of the Studies in Society and Environment curriculum”, explains Steve.  “The aim through the various class units is to get the students to empathise with what it was like to live in those early days. Apart from learning modules there are interactive games to make it more fun to learn”.
The education pack is designed not only for the curriculum needs of schools in the Glasshouse country region but throughout south-east Queensland and beyond.
“What’s unique is the way we are presenting Bankfoot House”, says Steve. “It’s not just a snap-shot in time, say only of the 1890s. Our philosophical coverage is more drawn out than that. It’s not set in any one time zone, but over the whole period of the life of the house. And that in itself is unique”.