Newstead Gasworks

About

Newstead Gasworks is a heritage-listed former gasometer at 70 Longland Street, Teneriffe, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It was built from 1873 to 1887. It is also known as Brisbane Gas Company Gasworks and Newstead Gasworks No.2 gasholder. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 24 June 2005.

The Newstead Gasworks was established in 1887, as the second Brisbane gasworks. The surviving Newstead Gasworks No.2 gasholder (remnants) and guide framing was erected at that time and was probably moved from the original gas works site at Petrie Bight where it was erected in 1873.

From 1861 to 1864, Brisbane's population more than doubled, to 12,551. In the mid-1860s, Brisbane's infrastructure blossomed, with construction of the first cross-river bridge, a new Brisbane Town Hall, a vastly improved water supply and its first gasworks. Commercial gas supply originated in London in 1812, Sydney in 1841 and Melbourne in 1856.

The Brisbane Municipal Council was anxious to provide street lighting, for which gas was seen as the only feasible system. Earlier in the decade, the Colonial Government, supposedly for health reasons, refused permission for the Council to establish a gasworks on a site at Petrie's Bight. On the same site, however, in 1864, the Government authorised private enterprise to establish this new public utility. Central to these decisions was the Minister for Lands and Works, Arthur Macalister, then at the epicentre of friction between the Government and the Brisbane Council, friction which has erupted on several occasions ever since.

One of the founding directors of the Company in 1864 was Lewis Adolphus Bernays, secretary for the first 37 years, and eventually a board member, of the (Brisbane) Board of Waterworks. Bernays, also listed in Who's Who from 1851 to 1905, was prominent in a number of Queensland organisations including the Acclimatisation Society, and held the position of clerk of the Queensland Legislative Assembly.

Brisbane Gas Company production started at Petrie Bight in November 1865. The streets of Brisbane were lit. Soon after, however, council's arrears of payment resulted in its gas being turned off, with the streets plunged back into darkness. The streets remained unlit until the council's (and the colony's) financial situation had recovered sufficiently, in 1870. By 1873, the boot was on the other foot. The council's cash flow had recovered, but gas flow could not satisfy demand. The Company duly solved the problem by installing another, larger (No.2) gasholder (probably known then as a gasometer).

The 81-year-long association of the Cowlishaw family with the board of the company also started in 1873. James Cowlishaw, later the Hon. James Cowlishaw, Member of the Queensland Legislative Council, an architect, was chairman for 41 years. He served on the board for 45 years. His brother George Cowlishaw also served on the board for 28 years from 1884. James Cowlishaw was succeeded in the chair by his son Thomas Owen Cowlishaw, who served for 34 years until 1954. A fourth Cowlishaw, George Owen Cowlishaw, was involved with the Company in 1939.

The main demand for gas during the 1870s was probably for lighting, and the Municipal Council was almost certainly the Brisbane Gas Company's biggest customer. After the financial woes of the later 1860s there followed two decades of steady growth in Brisbane, reflected in an increase of demand for gas, for both lighting and for domestic and industrial fuel. Supply was expanded to, among other places, South Brisbane. The company had outgrown the Petrie's Bight site, and acquired 22 acres (8.9 ha) of suitable land at Newstead, in 1883. Further adjoining land was bought in 1885 to facilitate the company's first major expansion.

The company's engineer for the shift from Petrie Bight to Newstead was JH Tomlinson, arriving in 1880 from a previous appointment in Birmingham. He presumably managed the design, supply and erection of the new gasworks. The equipment, much of it imported from England, was landed at the company's wharf at the Brisbane River frontage of the site. The company first manufactured and stored town gas at Newstead in 1887 after a period of 22 years manufacture at Petrie Bight.

As part of the shift to Newstead, the Petrie's Bight gasholder No.2, constructed in 1873 from puddled iron, was re-erected on the recently acquired land at Longland Street. No.1 gasholder remained at Petrie Bight. At this time, the first weight-controlled governor would have been installed in its governor house.

Just as had occurred in the early 1860s, the land boom of the 1880s was reflected in booming demand for gas. Events proved that there was room for a second gasworks. The South Brisbane Gas and Light Company Limited was formed in 1885, entered the market very aggressively, and produced its first gas at the end of 1886. By this time, gas was increasingly in use for domestic fuel as well as for lighting. A price-cutting war lasted until 1889 when the companies, without any concerns about restrictive trade practices, carved Brisbane up into north and south of the river as their respective marketing territories. It was not until the Gas Act of 1916 that the government saw fit to look more closely at the cosy arrangements between gas companies, which by that stage included the Wynnum and Manly Gas and Lighting Company Limited, formed in 1912. The Act dealt with product quality and pressure, and provided for gas examiners. Price was also dealt with. (A later piece of legislation, the Profiteering Prevention Act, also encompassed gas).

A further consideration in the 1880s was the emergence in Brisbane of electricity generation for power and lighting. Eventually, as electricity technology advanced, gas lighting would literally fade into the background, the demand for gas as fuel outstripping the demand for use for lighting. Active defence was mounted to protect the gas companies' interests in lighting, and it was not until 1917 that the first permanent electric lighting took to the streets of Brisbane.

The demise of gas lighting would not have been immediate, and the demand for gas continued to grow. In 1929, No.3 gasholder at Doggett Street was commissioned, a four-lift frame-guided steel tank gasholder, again made from puddled iron, with a capacity of 2,500,000 cubic feet (71,000 m 3 ), by far the largest in Brisbane.

In 1937, gasholder No.2 was fitted with a new crown of riveted steel plate.

In the post- World War II period, demand for gas again boomed, to such an extent that at one stage some 5000 newly constructed northside dwellings were completed without their gas having been connected. The core of the problem lay in English gasworks manufacturers' inability to deliver. A major retort augmentation planned for completion in 1950 finally came on stream in 1954, but not until an emergency measure had been taken to erect a Humphreys and Glasgow water-gas plant, for which coke was the feedstock. This came on stream just in time for the winter of 1953.

When the Queensland Railways were converted to diesel fuel in the 1960s, it was judged that there would be a risk of serious damage if a locomotive were to derail near No.2 gasholder. Accordingly, a reinforced concrete wall was built as a shield between the railway spur line and the gasholder. Diesel locomotives were seen as a greater risk than their coal-fired steam counterparts that had used the same track, in the same proximity, for the previous half-century.

By 1965, No.1 gasholder in Ann Street had been dismantled. In 1999, so had No.3, and No.2 has been disabled by splitting a hole in the crown plating, leaving the inside of the gasholder exposed to a moist oxidising atmosphere, ideal conditions for rapid rust.

In 2008, planning approval was given for the Gasworks Newstead urban redevelopment project, replacing the former industrial area in Newstead. The project incorporated the gasometer site and repurposed it as an outdoor amphitheatre.

The foregoing history has been compiled in the context of gas storage, with the emphasis on the remaining No.2 gasholder (remnants) and guide framing, which has stored and delivered both town gas and natural gas.

The sources of gasholder feed have been a series of gas manufacturing plants on the site, of which there are none left. The size and programming of the manufacturing plants have been determined by several factors: