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Queensland State Archives posted a photo:

The University of Queensland Gatton Campus was established in 1897 at Gatton as the Queensland Agricultural College. The College initially operated as a tertiary agricultural institution offering a basic practical and theoretical agricultural education for young men and short courses for farmers on specific topics, but from its inception, there was also an expectation that the College would be involved in agricultural research and experimentation.

In 1922, it was re-structured as the Gatton Agricultural High School and College. From 1927, the College also took students from the University of Queensland for a year of practical experience. During the Second World War, the College was used as a field hospital by the United State Army from 1942 to 1944.

After the war, it continued to operate as both a secondary and tertiary institution until the high school section was closed in 1962. In the 1960s the college began

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Queensland State Archives posted a photo:

Supreme Court Fire of 1968

In the early hours of 1 September 1968, as the building’s caretaker was doing his rounds, an unemployed alcoholic named David Brooks, slipped through the doors of Queensland’s historic law courts, designed by colonial architect F D G Stanley in the 1870s.

Resentful of the police and the justice system for his habitual arrests, Brooks made his way to the judges’ chambers, drove a knife into an associate’s desk and scribbled the note ‘judge not lest you be judged, sinner’. He then set the building alight.

By the time the fire was brought under control, much of the building was in ruins. The Supreme Court Library’s books were seriously damaged by the fire, smoke and water – as were the portraits hanging in the Judges’ Hall.

The arsonist was apprehended within three days of the fire, and convicted within three months of the crime.

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Queensland State Archives posted a photo:

Labourer ‘set fire to court’

Brisbane, Thursday. – A 30-year-old unemployed labourer was alleged to have set fire to the Brisbane Supreme Court when he appeared in the City Magistrate’s Court today.

David Bertram Brooks, of no fixed address, was remanded in custody until Thursday. Bail was refused when the police prosecutor, Sub-Inspector C. J. Smith, said he considered that Brooks would abscond if granted bail.

Sub-Inspector Smith said it would be alleged that Brooks had been removed from a public toilet in the city at 3am on Sunday by a policeman. He had then gone to the Supreme Court and had opened the front door of the building.

Cupboard fire

He had gone into No 4 criminal court, where he had put some typing paper in a cupboard and lit it with a match. Then he had gone into No 1 civil court, on the first floor, and had

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Queensland State Archives posted a photo:

Origins of technical education 1881-1902

During the 1860s and 1870s, formal education in Queensland beyond primary level was conducted almost exclusively in grammar schools. These schools were expensive and thus available only to the wealthy. There were some individuals, however, who could not afford a grammar school education but were interested in further education which would provide a form of upward social mobility.

The middle-class liberals of the time encouraged such attitudes to education. In 1872 Charles Lilley, for example, urged that the North Brisbane School of Arts and Sciences should be used as a centre for teaching young mechanics and tradesmen the elements of the useful arts and sciences.

Lilley believed that such an education would lead to greater industrial efficiency and productivity and would also further the careers of these young men. Technical classes were established in that year but failed to continue beyond 1872.

It was

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