Queensland sites
Roma Street Parkland opened to the public in April 2001, marking a new chapter from a varied and colourful past.
Prior to European settlement in 1825, local Aboriginal people used the area for perhaps thousands of years for meetings and ceremonies.
It has since incorporated an early Brisbane park, the Albert Park and Recreation Ground gazetted in 1877, and land previously used for an orphanage and a railway goods yard.
Adjacent areas (bound by Roma Street, Albert Street, Wickham Terrace, College Road and Countess Street) were used for the Brisbane Grammar School, the first Brisbane railway station, agricultural and produce markets, a power station and a gas works.
The belated arrival of the main western railway to Brisbane in 1875 was heralded by construction of a terminal station in Roma Street on land resumed from the Brisbane Grammar School. It was built to handle people and goods travelling between Brisbane, Ipswich and Toowoomba.
As the major goods yard for Brisbane, Roma Street was extensively redeveloped between 1911 and 1934.
The steep terrain required extensive excavation to provide a level area for the goods yard and was not completed until 1920. A total of 554,300 cubic metres of rock and earth were removed – the equivalent of 110 football fields one metre high – leaving an artificial escarpment at the boundary of Albert Park.
It’s still apparent today in the dramatic change of level between the Lake Precinct and the Upper Parkland.
Near the Wickham Terrace boundary, the Brisbane City Council built two concrete air raid shelters in what is now the upper parkland.
During World War II, Queensland Railways transported war materials and military personnel, becoming a busy hub during this period.
Despite further development in the 1960s and 1970s, the limitations of the site and the increasing mechanisation of freight handling and use of containers eventually led to the relocation of the rail freight facility to Acacia Ridge in 1991.
Roma Street Station was redeveloped to service a metropolitan and long-distance train network, vacating a significant portion of the Roma Street yards.
In 1999, the Queensland Government decided to integrate the former rail land with the existing Albert Park, and released plans to redevelop the area as a new parkland for Brisbane.
Development commenced in January 2000, and the new Roma Street Parkland opened in April 2001.
Click here for a complete history of the Roma Street Parkland site.
<< return to project page
