Books and articles relating to Western Creek

Here I will list the key books and articles that I have used in researching the story of Western Creek. At the moment I am still yet to write most of the content in the historical section of the site, so expect to see this listing grow as I do more research. If you know of a useful reference that I have not listed, please share it in the comments below.

Books

  • Pearn, John (1997), Auchenflower – the suburb and the name: A history of Auchenflower, Brisbane, Australia, Amphion Press: Herston, Qld. (Available from the Brisbane City Council Library). As well has historical maps and photographs, this book contains a wealth of information about the early exploration and settlement of the area, the first landowners and their residences, and the development of the modern suburb.
  • Miles, Allan T. (1978), A history of Rosalie, Eastwood, NSW. On the contents page of the type-written, hand-bound copy that the author donated to the State Library of Queensland, there is a note explaining that “it is a draft copy, and, more than that, a ‘promoting’ copy, intended to draw information from those people who know more than the author does.” I don’t know how much information Allan ever received, but his foreword captures precisely the spirit in which I am launching this website. This is a wonderfully written and comprehensive volume, and it is a shame that it never received proper publication. I hope that this website can in some way build on the work that Allan started. Much of the information from this volume can be accessed more conveniently in his article ‘Rosalie – Brisbane’s forgotten daughter’ (listed below).
  • Miles, Allan T. (1973), Milton State School: A history. (Available from the Brisbane City Council Library).
  • Miles, Allan T. (1984), A History of the Rosalie Baptist Church, Ashgrove, Qld. (Available from the Brisbane City Council Library)
  • Condon, Matthew (2010), Brisbane, University of NSW Press: Sydney. (Available from the Brisbane City Council Library). Partly a personal account of growing up in Rosalie, and partly an exploration of key events in the city’s history, including John Oxley’s landing at Western Creek and his observations of the “chain of ponds”.

    • Some of these themes are also explored in Condon’s essay, “The flood”, listed below.

Articles

  • My ‘rabbit hole’ moment in this project was when I discovered the online collection of historical newspaper articles on Trove, a resource provided by the National Library of Australia. Trove contains scanned pages from local newspapers dating back to the 1800s. And the best bit is that the text is searchable. Be warned – you can lose many hours here!
  • Presently there is not much else published online about Western Creek. One article that I did stumble across, and to which this website owes a considerable debt, is ‘Hidden creeks of Auchenflower’ by Kevin Southern, which is on the Auchenflower Residents Alliance Inc website. The article in turn draws heavily from the book Auchenflower: the Name and the Suburb by John Pearn (see above).
  • Allan Miles’ paper Rosalie – Brisbane’s forgotten daughter, presented to a meeting of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland in 1980, presents much of the information contained in his unpublished 1978 volume A history of Rosalie (see above).
  • Matthew Condon’s 2011 article ‘The flood‘ (Griffith REVIEW Edition 32) puts the January 2011 floods into a personal and historical context, building some of the themes from his 2010 book Brisbane (see above).

Last modified: March 20, 2013