The Old Windmill - Brisbane - QLD - Australia
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CADS11
S 27° 27.943 E 153° 01.386
56J E 502282 N 6961980
The windmill, oldest surviving building in Queensland
Waymark Code: WMWZ4J
Location: Queensland, Australia
Date Posted: 11/02/2017
Views: 6
The Old Windmill is a heritage-listed tower located in Wickham Park, on Wickham Terrace in Spring Hill, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It is the oldest surviving building in Queensland.
Surveying
Indicative of the prominence of its physical position, the tower served as one of the stations for the trigonometrical survey of the Moreton Bay district conducted by Robert Dixon, Granville Stapylton and James Warner from May 1839 in preparation for the area being opened to free settlement. Land leases in the wider Brisbane area were issued under s.28 of the Regulations of 29 March 1848 and were nominally one mile square sections within a grid defined by (magnetic) north/south/east-west section lines. The grid had its origin at the convict-built windmill in Brisbane.
Heritage listing
The place is important in demonstrating the evolution or pattern of Queensland's history.
The Windmill Tower in Spring Hill is tangible evidence of the initial European occupation of the Moreton Bay area and important physical evidence of the development of it as a penal settlement, free settlement and separate colony. It is the oldest convict-built structure surviving in Queensland and the oldest extant windmill tower in Australia.
The Windmill Tower is important in illustrating various key phases of the history of Brisbane. It has been used for a variety of purposes, including the grinding of grain and as a form of punishment for convicts, as a trigonometrical survey station, as a signal station for shipping, the Queensland Museum's first home, the official timekeeping device for the settlement, an observation tower, and as a site for wireless radio and telephony research and for early television research and broadcasting
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