Only London and New York beat Brisbane to electrical power worldwide

Archaeologist Tina King believes early Brisbane cobblestone and gravel roads, stone walls, old jetty pieces and some Aboriginal relics may yet be found as a huge city block is dug up in the middle of Brisbane for the city’s new casino and hotel complex.

On Wednesday, construction crews from the $3 billion Destination Brisbane Queens Wharf casino carefully extracted the 134-year-old Edison tubes, which ran electricity under William Street in 1884 to provide power from a steam generator to the Government Printing Office and Parliament House.

Archaeologist Tina King in William Street as 134-year-old electrical cables designed by Thomas Edison were unearthed.Credit: Tony Moore

Tourism Industry Development minister Kate Jones said unearthing the old cables was an important part of Queensland’s history.

“In 1884 Brisbane was the first city in the Southern Hemisphere to have Edison Tubes,” Ms Jones said.

“This was behind only London and New York.”

Edison himself designed the sequence of “20-feet long” lengths of iron that carried two copper conductors insulated by bitumen pitch and beeswax, that were buried beneath William Street in 1884.

The cabling ran from a steam generator behind the Government Printing Office, near the old Public Service Club, under William Street to Queensland Parliament, where new lights in 1884 replaced 200 hot gas lamps.

“The politicians of the time wanted to work at night,” Ms Jones quipped.

While a small section was removed in 1992 by SEQEB workers, the remaining 150 metres of Edison’s 134-year-old electrical cabling was dug up on Wednesday.

Tourism Industry minister Kate Jones with Destination Brisbane project director Simon Crooks (right) at the unearthing of the 134-year-old electrical cables.Credit: Tony Moore

Sections of the electrical cabling will be sent from Brisbane to the Science Centre in London, the Edison Historic Park in New Jersey, Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum, the Royal Historical Society Museum in Brisbane’s William Street and to the Highfields Museum in Toowoomba.

Ms King said William Street was one of Brisbane’s earliest streets.

“They have been called that because there is layer upon layer of streets that have been built up here since the 1880s,” she said.

“So we have been finding early kerbstones, early road bases – sometimes crushed tuff, sometimes crushed granite – whether it was a primary street or a secondary street."

Primary streets had crushed gravel, while smaller streets – secondary streets - had crushed Brisbane tuff.

An old stone retaining wall was found in Queens Wharf Road, Ms King said.

“In the 1880s and 1890s there were always floods and landslips there and we assume it was a retaining wall to prevent any further slippage,” she said.

The section of Brisbane between Queens Wharf Road and George Street contained homes, jetties, timber mills and early businesses.

Images of the early city near William Street and Queens Wharf Road can be seen in this story which tells of one the city’s earliest timber mills and Queenslanders in the area.

Ms King said although the city’s wharves were demolished before the Riverside Expressway was built in 1975, there remained a chance old jetty timbers could be unearthed.

“There is still potential for some of the piers and posts to be still down there,” she said.

Retired electrical engineer Brian Becconsall.Credit: Tony Moore

“There is also a little reclaimed land on this side of the Riverside Expressway, so there is always the potential for foundations to be found down there as well.”

Aboriginal middens from pre-European history might also be found, Ms King said.

“Miller Park has never been developed and there are other areas down towards the river where we might find something,” she said.

“There could be stone artefacts and middens; that sort of thing.”

Retired electrical engineer Brian Becconsall was pleased to hold a piece of electrical industry history.

“Everything was assembled and tested in New York and they came all the way – 20,000 kilometres – through London and down here to Brisbane to be installed,” he said.

Only two other places preceded Brisbane’s place in the evolution of electrical power.

“The Holborn Viaduct system in London – that was an Edison system - and in Pearl Street, which is somewhere in Lower Manhattan,” he said.