Gona Barracks

About

Gona Barracks is a heritage-listed barracks at 3, 7, 12, 25 & 26 Gona Parade, Kelvin Grove, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It was built from c. 1914 to 1960s. It is also known as Kelvin Grove Military Reserve and Kelvin Grove Training Area. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 7 February 2005.

The Gona Barracks site was established just prior to World War I in the 1910s, for the purpose of military training for specialist units of compulsory militia forces. The site continued to develop and became a Citizens Military Force training complex in the 1950s, and later an Army Reserve recruitment centre.

The settlement of Brisbane began in 1825 with the establishment of a penal colony along that part of the Brisbane River that was later to become the town's central business district. Transportation of convicts ceased less than twenty years later in 1842, and Brisbane was opened to free settlement. The town was surveyed, and land to the north and west of Spring Hill, an area of early settlement, was made into park land. West of Victoria Park, the largest of the government reserves, the area now known as Kelvin Grove was cleared, and subdivided and offered for sale by the 1860s. The site that was eventually to become Gona Barracks was listed as Portion 322, Parish of North Brisbane, County of Stanley.

On 28 March 1879, Portion 322 was granted by the colonial government to the Brisbane Grammar School as an endowment. The school retained the endowment until 1911, leasing grazing rights to the holding as a means of raising funds for the school. No buildings were thought to have been constructed on the site throughout this period, and the only improvement to the endowment was the construction of a number of fences.

In May 1911, the Commonwealth Government acquired the Brisbane Grammar School endowment, and renamed the site the Kelvin Grove Defence Reserve. Acquisition of the property was a response to the need for training facilities for Australia's expanding military forces. Forces of a voluntary nature, supported by a small number of permanent forces, had been in place in most of the Australian colonies by the late nineteenth century. With the Federation of Australia 's six colonies on 1 January 1901, defence became the responsibility of the new Commonwealth Government, and a Department of Defence was established in March 1901. The department took over control of the various colonial volunteer forces which, together with 1500 full-time soldiers, numbered almost 30,000. An external report completed in 1909 suggested the volunteer militia forces needed to be increased to number 80,000 soldiers and led to the establishment of the Army's Royal Military College at Duntroon in 1911. The Federal Government's response to the report was to introduce compulsory military training for both men and boys. The bulk of the Army's officers and troops were to serve on a part-time basis in the Australian Military Forces (AMF or militia), attending training one night per week and participating in some weekend camps and an annual encampment.

By 1911, some 90,000 men and boys had registered for military training Australia-wide, a number which expanded to over 130,000 two years later. Facilities for training in Brisbane included drill halls in Alice and Adelaide Street Streets in the city, and in Boundary Street in Spring Hill. The increase in numbers placed pressure on these facilities, none of which had room for expansion as each was located in a built-up area. The Department of Defence decided it would solve the problem by swapping the three inner Brisbane drill hall sites with the Queensland Government for more adequate land, specifying that the site be close to a tram line. The Survey Officer of Engineers, Captain Good, identified three possible sites to replace the inner city drill halls. The Grammar School Endowment was favoured in assessments of the sites, and in November 1910 the trustees of the endowment accepted an offer of £ 8000, and the deed of title for the "Kelvin Grove Defence Reserve" was transferred to the Commonwealth in May 1911.

The first buildings to be constructed on the Kelvin Grove Defence Reserve were an Infantry drill hall, consisting of a large drill space with eight offices along one side of the building, an associated toilet building, and an artificers workshop for Army mechanics, completed in 1914. This began an era of intense building activity at the site, precipitated by Australia's entry into World War I in August 1914. To enable the construction of further buildings, the site had to be made level, an activity costing over £ 3000. By October 1915, the levelling had been finished, and another building, the Engineer's depot, had been added to the site. This two-storey timber building was rectangular in shape, and was constructed to the design of Queensland Public Works Department architects. This building was completed at a cost of just over £ 1500 for the 23rd and 15th Engineer Companies, and included two wagon sheds and two harness rooms.

An Artillery drill hall, Brigade office and two gun parks for the Artillery units were the next additions to the site, constructed at the end of 1915. The Artillery drill hall was a rectangular, single-storey building with offices and wagon sheds at each end of a centrally located drill hall. The Brigade hall was a two-storey building, located to the west of the drill hall. The two gun park buildings were built at right angles to the Brigade hall, along the Kelvin Grove Road alignment. Each of the buildings featured a large room for the storage of 13-pounder artillery pieces, harness and cleaning rooms, and an office and commanding officer's room. These artillery buildings were designed by the Queensland branch of the Commonwealth Department of Home Affairs, and are among the earliest Commonwealth designs in Queensland. Most Commonwealth buildings at this time were being designed and constructed by the various state's public works departments as it was some time before the Commonwealth established its own department with its own employees.

A drill hall for the Australian Army Service Corps (AASC) was added at the same time the Artillery buildings were constructed. This hall was built near the 1914 drill hall, at the opposite end of the site from the Artillery drill hall. The single-storey timber building was constructed to the plans of Commonwealth Department of Home Affairs architects, whose drawings were more detailed copies of plans prepared by the Queensland Government. Some other ancillary buildings were added to the Kelvin Grove site by the end of World War I. These included a military laundry with an attached engine house, and a "disinfector" building.

The First World War came to an end on 11 November 1918, and Australian troops returned home. Despite a lack of interest in matters military among the Australian government and people, military training continued at Kelvin Grove throughout the 1920s. By 1921, the Kelvin Grove site had become the training centre for the AASC, Signallers, Engineers and Artillerymen. The reserve was also used by the 11th Mixed Brigade for large training exercises, to which the specialist units based at Kelvin Grove were attached. On one occasion in 1923, the Kelvin Grove Engineers, Artillery, Signals and AASC units, together with Infantry, Australian Light Horse and Australian Army Medical Corps from elsewhere, combined for a training exercise at the site.

The use of some of the Kelvin Grove Defence Reserve buildings changed during the 1920s. The AASC moved out of its drill hall, which thereafter became ordnance offices and stores, while one of the gun parks was converted to an ordnance store, and the 1914 drill hall was converted to an ordnance lecture room.

The interwar period from 1919 to 1939 was an era of gradual expansion on the Reserve site. The first building to be constructed after the war was a corrugated iron remount depot. This building was dismantled and re-erected in 1933, and together with two riding yards and a manure pit, became the riding school. Many of the subsequent buildings to appear on the site throughout the Depression years of the 1930s were structures relocated from other locations. In 1934, the Royal Australian Engineers (RAE) drill hall was relocated to Kelvin Grove from Toowong, at a cost of £ 1620. The hall was located on sloping land near the AASC drill hall at the southern end of the site. It was positioned on reinforced concrete stumps and converted into a two-storey building. A Belgian 5.9-inch (150 mm) gun, captured from the Germans at Pozières in France during World War I by the 9th Battalion, Royal Queensland Regiment, was mounted on the grass outside the building. Living quarters for an Army staff officer were also added in 1934. The three bedroom timber house was constructed along Sylvan Road by builders NT Stansfield and Thomas Foster at a quoted price of £ 1500. The following year, a Field Artillery officer's mess was constructed between the Artillery drill hall and brigade office, thereby converting the two separate buildings into a single structure.

The Frank Moran Memorial Hall was another building to be added to the Kelvin Grove site in the interwar period. Frank Moran was a cadet officer prior to World War I, involved the training of Brisbane Grammar School military cadets. When Australia entered the war, Moran enlisted in the 1st AIF and left Australia in November 1914. He fought at Gallipoli and died of wounds on board ship in August 1915. The Hall was one of three memorials erected in his memory, the others being a Memorial Cross at St Brigid's Catholic Church in Red Hill (dismantled in the 1930s); and a stained glass window in the Brisbane Grammar School War Memorial Library. Capital for the construction of the hall came from funds raised by Moran in 1913 and 1914, intended for the construction of a recreation building for cadets at Red Hill. Some £ 400 were raised, but lay forgotten until 1920. In 1925, the trustees of the fund decided to donate the money to the Army, provided the funds were used in a project that reflected the intentions of Moran more than ten years earlier. The following March, it was proposed the money be used for the construction of a recreation hut at Kelvin Grove which was to bear Moran's name. The Commonwealth Department of Works and Railways prepared plans for the Frank Moran Memorial Hall in 1928, and in November 1929 the hall was completed at a cost of £ 461. The simple timber building was sited between the AASC drill hall and the 1914 Infantry drill hall. Left-over funds were used to purchase furniture, and a bathroom extension was added in 1933. In 1937 ownership and control of the hall was signed over to the Defence Department.

Throughout the interwar period, the northern portion of the Kelvin Grove Defence Reserve, the "lower barracks", remained undeveloped by the Defence Department, who leased the land to private individuals for grazing purposes from the 1920s. The department resumed control of this area for the riding school in late 1934.

As the 1930s progressed, it became increasingly evident that another war was approaching. In February 1938 further additions were made to the site following a reorganisation of the existing buildings. The Engineers had moved from their 1915 depot building to the relocated Toowong drill hall, and the Army Signals Corps moved into the former Engineer's depot, renamed the Kelvin Grove Signals Corps depot. The southern side of the building was extended with a two-storey wing, positioned at right angles to the original structure. This area housed a drill space and various stores and messes. In May 1939, the original 1914 drill hall was also altered with the construction of a skillion-roofed extension to the north. A fire hut was relocated to the rear of this drill hall. The Queensland 61st (Infantry) Battalion occupied the building at this time. Finally, in May 1939, a new lavatory block featuring a female toilet was erected under the Signals Corps depot; a closet building behind the AASC building was converted into a cookhouse; and a wireless hut located to the north of the Signals Corps depot, and a combined social and lecture hall were added to the Reserve.

Australia entered the Second World War on 3 September 1939 with a declaration of war on Germany. Within the month of September, the 5th Field Artillery Regiment; the 42nd and 43rd Artillery Batteries; the 105th and 111th Artillery Batteries; and the first motor transport for the Batteries' 18-pounder guns and 4.5-inch (110 mm) howitzers, had assembled at the site. The militia troops from the Signals Corps, the RAE and the AASC were also located at the Kelvin Grove Mobilisation Stores, and the 9/49th Signals Unit and the 61st Battalion were operating out of the 1914 infantry drill hall.

During World War II there were two permanent additions to the Kelvin Grove site. One was a garage and workshops building for servicing AASC vehicles, made necessary by the Army's process of converting from horse transport to motorised. Plans for the building were prepared in November 1939 and it is thought construction of the building was completed around 1942. The other permanent construction was the School for Linesmen-in-Training building, a two-storey, timber-framed and sheeted with fibrous cement building, finished by July 1941. The still undeveloped lower barracks area was the location of the building, constructed at a price of £ 2961 by Percy Richard Ayre. The building was constructed for the Postmaster-General's Department, who agreed to train militia forces at the facility.

Besides the permanent additions to the barracks site, a number of temporary structures were added to accommodate some of the troops mobilised for the war effort. By the end of the war in 1945, temporary and permanent buildings of various shapes and sizes had spread throughout the Military Reserve. An area of notable development occurred around the staff officers quarters at the lower barracks. Here, 27 buildings formed the 2nd Australian Commander Royal Engineers camp. The buildings were likely to have been standard prefabricated structures of the World War II period, consisting of timber and masonite with fibro sheeting. A sloping dirt road connected the upper and lower barracks areas at this time, as did a long line of steep steps.

The US Army were also involved with the Kelvin Grove site during World War II. The parade ground area at the upper barracks site was made level by the US Army, whose alterations created the sunken road that runs past the relocated Toowong drill hall.

The Second World War ended in August 1945, and in the months that followed, Kelvin Grove Military Reserve saw the demobilisation of returning soldiers, and the disposal of surplus stores. In 1947, 48 buildings consisting mainly of the RAE Maintenance Company and Signals Camps in the Lower Barracks area, were designated as surplus to Army requirements and sold.