Commonwealth Engineering
Commonwealth Engineering was an Australian engineering company that designed and built railway locomotives, rolling stock and trams. Commonwealth Engineering was founded in 1921 as Smith & Waddington, in the Sydney suburb of Camperdown building bodies for motorcars and buses, it was moved to Granville. The Government of Australia took control of the company during World War II to produce materials in the Granville factory; the government purchased a controlling stake in the company in 1946 and changed the name to Commonwealth Engineering. In 1949 a factory was established in Queensland; this was followed in 1952 a plant in Bassendean, Western Australia and in 1954 by another in Dandenong, Victoria. In June 1957, the government sold its shares. In November 1982 Comeng was taken over by Australian National Industries; the Granville factory has been demolished. The site, which sat between the Great Western Highway and Main Western railway line west of Duck River, has been replaced with new developments that include high rise housing and light industry.
The Dandenong plant was sold in 1990 to ABB Transportation and is now operated by Bombardier Transportation while the Bassendean facility was sold to A Goninan & Co. The history of Comeng has been published by John Dunn: Volume 1, 1921 – 1955 published in 2006 Volume 2, 1955 – 1966 published in 2008 Volume 3, 1967 – 1977 published in 2010 Volume 4, 1977 – 1985 published in 2013 Volume 5, 1985 – 1990 published posthumously in November 2013 Commonwealth Engineering's products included: 60 Canberra Bus Service AEC Reliance 470s 30 Canberra Bus Service AEC Swift 505s 50 Leyland OPSU1/1s 50 AEC Regal IVs 50 AEC Regal IIIs Leyland OPSU1/1s 8 BHP Port Kembla D1 class diesel locomotives 6 442 class diesel locomotives 10 70 class diesel hydraulic locomotives 50 80 class diesel electric locomotives 15 XPT power cars 1 Mount Isa Mines 302 class diesel-hydraulic locomotive 1 Mount Isa Mines 305 class diesel-hydraulic locomotive 7 Queensland Railways DL class locomotives 1 MRWA E class locomotive 10 WAGR B class locomotives 11 Westrail N class diesel locomotives Alco 636 M636 diesel locomotives for Hamersley Iron 21 Alco 636 diesel locomotives for Mount Newman Mining 12 Alco 636 diesel locomotives for Robe River Mining 10 85 class electric locomotive 50 86 class electric locomotive 5 1100 class Budd railcars 24 1800 class railcars 2 1900 class railcars 40 2000 class railcars 30 2000 class Adelaide suburban diesel railcars 20 3000 class Adelaide suburban diesel railcars 10 West Australian ADK diesel multiple units 8 West Australian Prospector diesel railcars 5 West Australian Australind diesel railcars 6 Tasmanian Government Railways DP class railcars Diesel railcars for Indian Railways 80 Sputnik Sydney suburban carriages 80 U set Intercity carriages 359 S set Sydney suburban carriages 246 V set Intercity carriages 11 Skitube Alpine Railway electric carriages 570 Comeng Melbourne suburban carriages 24 carbon steel carriages 124 stainless steel carriages 10 C1 bilevel cars 35 N type carriages 67 RUB carriages 75 stainless steel carriages 47 XPT carriages 99 steel carriages 35 stainless steel carriages 100 R1 class Sydney trams 230 Z class Melbourne trams 70 A class Melbourne trams 132 B class Melbourne trams 70 MTR Phase I Light Rail Vehicles 1988 Media related to Commonwealth Engineering at Wikimedia Commons
City of Brisbane
The City of Brisbane is a local government area that has jurisdiction over the inner portion of the metropolitan area of Brisbane, the capital of Queensland, Australia. Brisbane is located in the county of Stanley and is the largest city followed by Ipswich with bounds in part of the county. Unlike LGAs in the other mainland state capitals, which are responsible only for the central business districts and inner neighbourhoods of those cities, the City of Brisbane administers a significant portion of the Brisbane metropolitan area, serving half of the population of the Brisbane Greater Capital City Statistical Area; as such, it has a larger population than any other local government area in Australia. The City of Brisbane was the first Australian LGA to reach a population of more than one million, its population is equivalent to the populations of Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory combined. In 2016–2017, the council administers a budget of over $3 billion, by far the largest budget of any LGA in Australia.
The City derives from cities and shires that merged in 1925. The main offices and Central Library of the Council are at 266 George Street known as Brisbane Square. Brisbane City Hall houses the Council Chamber, the offices of the Lord Mayor and Deputy Mayor and reception rooms and the Museum of Brisbane; as of the election on 19 March 2016, the twenty-six wards, their councillors and their party affiliations were: The City of Brisbane includes the following settlements: Total: 19 Total: 48 Total: 54 Total: 28 Total: 43 Total: 4 The Government of Queensland created the City of Brisbane with a view to uniting the Brisbane metropolitan area under a single planning and governance structure. The City of Brisbane Act 1924 received assent from the Governor on 30 October 1924. On 1 October 1925, 20 local government areas of various sizes were abolished and merged into the new city, namely: Cities: Brisbane South Brisbane Towns: Hamilton Ithaca Sandgate Toowong Windsor Wynnum Shires: Balmoral Belmont Coorparoo Enoggera Kedron Moggill Sherwood Stephens Taringa Tingalpa Toombul YeerongpillyThe Council assumed responsibility for several quasi-autonomous government authorities, such as the Brisbane Tramways Trust.
The Brisbane City Council maintains the Brisbane Local Heritage Register, a list of nominated sites that satisfy the Council's heritage criteria. The City of Brisbane is governed by the Brisbane City Council, the largest local council in Australia; the Brisbane City Council has its power divided between a Lord Mayor, a parliamentary-style council of twenty-six councillors representing single-member wards of 23,000 voters, a Civic Cabinet comprising the Lord Mayor, the Deputy Mayor and the chairpersons of the seven standing committees drawn from the membership of Council. Due to the City of Brisbane's status as the country's largest LGA, the Lord Mayor is elected by the largest single-member electorate in Australia. Like all mayors in Queensland, he has broad executive power; the seven standing committees of Council are: City Planning Committee Environment and Sustainability Committee Establishment and Coordination Committee Field Services Committee Finance and Economic Development Committee Infrastructure Committee Lifestyle and Community Services Committee Public and Active Transport CommitteeFollowing local government elections on 28 April 2012, the Lord Mayor and 18 councillors are members of the Liberal National Party while 7 are from the Labor Party with 1 independent.
Graham Quirk of the LNP, was elected Lord Mayor in his own right on 28 April 2012 after having been appointed to the Lord Mayoralty in April 2011 when Campbell Newman resigned to make an successful bid to become Premier of Queensland. His Deputy Mayor was Adrian Schrinner of the LNP; the day-to-day management of Council's operations is the responsibility of the chief executive officer, Colin Jensen. Elections are held every four years with ballots for the Lord Mayoralty and the individual councillors being held simultaneously. Voting is compulsory for all eligible electors; the election in March 2004 resulted in the unusual situation of Liberal Lord Mayor Campbell Newman co-existing with a Labor majority on Council and a Labor Deputy Mayor, though this resulted in remarkably few conflicts over civic budgets and Council policy. The LNP gained a 5.5% swing on the councillor votes in the March 2008 election, resulting in the Liberals taking control of the council as well. Graham Quirk won re-election as Lord Mayor in 2012 with 61.94% of the vote and the LNP gained an additional 3 wards.
The last election was held on 19 March 2016. Lord Mayor Graham Quirk defeated Labor's candidate Rod Harding. Following Quirk's resignation in March 2019, Adrian Schrinner was selected as Lord Mayor; the Brisbane City Council is incorporated under the City of Brisbane Act 1924, while other local governments in Queensland are governed by the Local Government Act 1993. Council meetings are held at Level 2, City Hall, 64 Adelaide Street, Brisbane City every Tuesday at 2pm except during recess and holiday periods; this temporary venue is in use due to the restoration work being performed on the traditional venue Brisbane City Hall. Meetings are open to the public. Brisbane City Council aims to be carbon neutral by 2026 via the reduction of emissions and carbon offsetting; the motto of the City of Brisbane is Meliora sequimur, Latin. The
Brisbane central business district
The Brisbane central business district gazetted as the suburb of Brisbane City and colloquially referred to as'the city', is the heart of the state capital of Queensland, Australia. It is located on a point on the northern bank of the Brisbane River; the triangular shaped area is bounded by the Brisbane River to the east and west. The point, known at its tip as Gardens Point, slopes upward to the north-west where the city is bounded by parkland and the inner city suburb of Spring Hill to the north; the CBD is bounded to the north-east by the suburb of Fortitude Valley. To the west the CBD is bounded by Petrie Terrace; the Brisbane central business district is an area of densely concentrated skyscrapers and other buildings, interspersed by several parks such as Roma Street Parklands, City Botanic Gardens and Wickham Park. It occupies an area of 1.367 km². The City is laid out according to a grid pattern surveyed during the city's early colonial days, a feature typical of most Australian street patterns.
As a general rule, the streets aligned northwest-south east are named after male members of the House of Hanover, while the northeast-south west aligned streets are named after female members. Queen Street was the central roadway, turned into a pedestrian mall, it forms the pivotal axis for the grid of roads within the district. The Brisbane central business district was built on a spur of the Taylor Range with the highest spot in the suburb being Wickham Terrace. North Quay is an area in the CBD, a landing point during the first European exploration of the Brisbane River. Petrie Bight is a reach of the Brisbane River, which gives its name to the small pocket of land centred on the area under the Story Bridge's northern point, around the Brisbane River to Admiralty Towers II; the location was known as Petrie Gardens and was an early settlement farm, one of two that provided food for the colony. The site was named after Andrew Petrie and has been the base for water police and in earlier times wharves.
The location of Customs House and the preference for wharves was due to site being directly downstream from the central business district. The Brisbane City Library opened in 1965, moving into Brisbane Square in 2006. Up until 1964, a Brisbane City Council regulation limited building heights to 132 ft; some of the first skyscrapers built in the CBD include the SGIO building in 1970 and AMP Place in 1977. In the last few decades the number of apartment buildings that have been constructed has increased substantially. Brisbane is home to several of Australia's tallest buildings. Brisbane's tallest buildings are Skytower at 270 metres, One William Street at 260 metres, Soleil at 243 metres, Aurora Tower at 207 metres, Riparian Plaza at 200 metres, One One One Eagle Street at 195 metres, Infinity at 249 metres, completed in 2014; the Brisbane CBD is one of the major business hubs in Australia. The City contains many tall office buildings occupied by organisations and all three levels of government that have emerged into a number of precincts.
The areas around the Queen Street Mall and Adelaide Street is a retail precinct. A legal precinct exists around the various court buildings located around the intersections of George Street and Adelaide and Ann Streets; the government precinct is an area centred on the Executive Building that includes many Queensland Government offices. 111 George Street, Mineral House, Education House are located here. The Brisbane CBD has only one third the number of premium hotel rooms that either Sydney or Melbourne's central business districts have; the city is serviced by a number of schools in the surrounding suburbs including the Petrie Terrace State School in Paddington and The Albert Park Flexi School in Petrie Terrace. Like most other Australian capital cities, Brisbane has experienced dramatic rises in rental prices for residential and office space before the global financial crisis. At the beginning of 2008, the Brisbane central business district contained 1.7 million square metres of office space.
High demand in the office market had pushed vacancy rates in the Brisbane CBD to 0.7% by January 2008, the lowest in Australia. Premium grade office space was less vacant with an occupancy rate of 99.9%. By the end of 2009 the situation had reversed. In mid 2013 the market for office space had declined to its worst position in two decades with a vacancy rate of just under 13%. In the CBD there many attractions; the Queens Gardens, Post Office Square, King George Square and the City Botanic Gardens are open public spaces located here. The Brisbane City Council operates a public library in Brisbane Square at 266 George Street. Brisbane has many heritage-listed sites, including: a number of properties in Adelaide Street, Brisbane a number of properties in Albert Street, Brisbane a number of properties in Alice Street, Brisbane a number of properties in Ann Street, Brisbane Boundary Street: Howard Smith Wharves a number of properties in Charlotte Street, Brisbane Coronation Drive: Coronation Drive retaining wall 15 Countess Street: Roma Street railway station a number of properties in Creek Street, Brisbane 118 Eagle Street: Mooney Memorial Fountain 118A Eagle Street: Eagle Street Fig Trees a number of properties in Edward Street, Brisbane a number of properties in Elizabeth Street, Brisbane a number of properties in Margaret Street, Brisbane 20-30 Market Street: Wenley House a number of properties in Mary Street, Brisbane a number of properties in North Quay, Brisb
1974 Brisbane flood
In January 1974 a flood occurred in Brisbane, Australia after three weeks of continual rain. The Brisbane River, which runs through the heart of the city, broke its banks and flooded the surrounding areas. In total, there were 16 fatalities, 300 people injured, 8000 homes destroyed and an estimated A$980 million in damages, it had been an exceptionally wet spring, by the end of October most of southern Queensland's river systems were nearing capacity. Cyclone Wanda pushed the systems to the limit, drew the monsoonal trough southward, providing the additional rainfall to the Brisbane River, Bremer River and Stanley River catchments to produce widespread and severe flooding. In the early morning of 25 January heavy rain began to fall on Brisbane. During a 36-hour period 642 mm of rain fell on the city; these torrential rains were caused by Wanda, a weak tropical cyclone which did not rate as a category 1 cyclone. Continual, heavy rain had fallen for three weeks, leading up to the flood, which occurred on Sunday, 27 January 1974, during the Australia Day weekend.
The floods peaked at 6.6 metres according to the Port Office gauge at high tide at 2:15 am on 29 January. The peak flooding in the location of the city gauge was 5.5 metres. Large areas were inundated, with at least 6,700 homes flooded. Around 13,000 buildings were affected by flooding in some way. Buildings in the Brisbane central business district were hard hit; the 67,320 tonne Robert Miller became adrift in the river. As the ship was 237 metres long and the river was about 255 metres wide, it was feared that the ship, swinging around across the river would form a dam, causing the river to rise by a further 3 metres, causing greater flooding in the suburbs. Two tugboats were needed to control the 15 m high and 239 m long oil tanker; the Robert Miller was the largest ship built in Australia at the time. A gravel barge became caught under the Centenary Bridge where it damaged the pylons, causing fear that the bridge would be swept away; the barge was sunk to reduce the risk. The most flood affected.
Close to the city Ipswich, 1,800 premises were affected by flooding. The total damage in Brisbane and the surrounding areas was estimated at A$200 million, but the final value was over A$980 million, with $328 million made in insurance claims. While not as high as the floods in the 1800s this flood is considered to have been worse due to Brisbane's increasing population at the time. Many houses were damaged by land subsidence and land slippage associated with the flooding and high rainfall. Sixteen people lost their lives, including twelve people who were drowned in Ipswich; the first flood related. Raymond Roy Davidson and Hazel Dulcie Afflick were killed in a head-on collision at Wacol, both drivers being blinded by gale force winds and heavy rain. An army amphibious LARC vehicle was carrying out excavation work at Bellbowrie when the vehicle hit submerged power lines which were still live. Two men, Corporal Neville Hourigan and Captain Ian Kerr of the Australian Army Reserve were thrown from the vehicle.
Bill Lickiss jumped into the water to save them. Hourigan died at the scene and Kerr's body was found after the flood had subsided. Lickiss was awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal. A young child, Shane David Patterson was swept from his father's arms on a causeway over Oxley Creek in Inala and drowned. In addition to those that drowned, Robert Adams died of a heart attack during an evacuation of a caravan park at Newmarket, Aiden Sutton, a civilian working with the Queensland Police, aged 50 years, was found dead at home. After the flood, a series of flood mitigation measures were implemented in Southeast Queensland, including the Wivenhoe Dam along the Brisbane River; the flood was a defining event for a generation of Brisbane residents with 8,500 homes flooded in Brisbane and Ipswich, 6,000 of these could not be recovered. The flood had massive economic implications due to loss of export infrastructure. In 2009 as part of the Q150 celebrations, the 1974 Brisbane flood was announced as one of the Q150 Icons of Queensland for its role as a "Defining Moment".
Corinda Landslip List of disasters in Australia by death toll The "Big Wet", Bureau of Meteorology Known Floods in the Brisbane and Bremer River Basin, Bureau of Meteorology Flood map of Brisbane & suburbs / drawn and published at the Survey Office, Department of Lands, Feb. 1974
Division of Moreton
The Division of Moreton is an Australian Electoral Division in Queensland. The division was one of the original 65 divisions contested at the first federal election, it is named after Moreton Bay, stretched from southern Brisbane all the way to the Gold Coast. While successive redistributions have left the seat landlocked, it has nonetheless retained the name of Moreton because the Australian Electoral Commission's guidelines on electoral redistributions require it to preserve the names of original electorates where possible; the seat was in the hands of the Liberal Party and its predecessors for 86 years before Labor regained it in 1990. From until 2013, it was a bellwether seat, voting for the winning party in every election; the seat is known for having decided the 1961 federal election. The Liberals only won the seat by 130 votes to give the Coalition a bare one-seat majority. On its current boundaries, the seat is multicultural, with significant Asian, South Eastern European and African population in the southern part of the electorate in the suburbs of Sunnybank, Acacia Ridge and Moorooka.
Moreton is located in south east Queensland, is based in the southern suburbs of the City of Brisbane. The division includes Archerfield, Fairfield, Karawatha, MacGregor, Nathan, Robertson, Runcorn, Stretton, Sunnybank Hills, Tennyson and Yeerongpilly, parts of Algester, Calamvale, Coopers Plains, Eight Mile Plains, Parkinson and Tarragindi, Corinda. Division of Moreton — Australian Electoral Commission
Electoral district of Algester
The electoral district of Algester is an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly of Queensland in south-west Brisbane. It includes the suburbs of Algester, Hillcrest, Boronia Heights, Larapinta, Forest Lake and Pallara, as well as the Greenbank Military Range, it borders the electoral districts of Sunnybank, Logan, Lockyer and Inala. The Algester electoral district was created at the 1999 redistribution from the former electoral district of Archerfield, was contested for the first time at the 2001 election, it had been a safe seat for the Labor Party since its inception, as had Archerfield, but it was won by Anthony Shorten of the Liberal National Party at the 2012 election. Leeanne Enoch won the seat back for Labor at the 2015 election. Enoch is the first Indigenous Australian woman elected to the Queensland parliament
Archerfield, Queensland
Archerfield is a mixed-use suburb of the City of Brisbane, Australia. Archerfield is a sparsely populated suburb, with most of the land being occupied by Archerfield Airport. At the 2016 Australian Census, the suburb recorded a population of 544; the suburb's western boundary follows Oxley Creek and in the east it follows Beaudesert Road. In the 2011 census the population of Archerfield was 510, 44.9% female and 55.1% male. The median age of the Archerfield population was 37 years of age, the same as the median nationally. 64.5% of people living in Archerfield were born in Australia less than the national average of 69.8%. The other top responses for country of birth were India 3%, England 2.4%, Philippines 2.2%, New Zealand 2.2%, Fiji 2%. 67.4% of people spoke only English at home. Archerfield Airport served as the major airport for Brisbane; the old civil terminal is still in existence on the eastern side of the airfield. During World War 2 the airfield served as a base for military flying operations in support of the war in the Pacific.
On 8 August 1995 as southern Queensland experienced a severe cold snap, a temperature of 0 degrees was recorded in Archerfield. On 4 January 2014, the suburb recorded a maximum temperature of 42.4 degrees, just under the record maximum set in 1940. Archerfield has a number of heritage-listed sites, including: Beatty Road: God's Acre Cemetery 98-138 Kerry Road: Archerfield Second World War Igloos Complex University of Queensland: Queensland Places: Archerfield
