Rhyndarra is a heritage-listed residence located at 23 Riverview Place, Yeronga, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The architect was Andrea Stombuco. It was built from 1888 to 1938. It is also known as No. 2 Women's Hospital, Australian Military Forces 1st Military Hospital, National Service Training Hospital, No. 1 Camp Hospital, and Yeronga Girls' Industrial School. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 7 February 2005.
History This substantial, two-storeyed brick residence and stable was built in 1889 for Brisbane businessman William Williams, as his semi-rural suburban residence. Between 1897 and 1942 it functioned as a Salvation Army Girls' Industrial School, and from 1942 until the late 1990s as a military hospital.
Establishment of Rhyndarra In the late 1880s Williams acquired approximately 140 acres of land along the riverfront at Yeronga. The area at this time comprised a mixture of large farming estates and smaller residential subdivisions and was developing as a middle-class suburb following the opening of the Yeronga railway station in 1885.
It was built in 1889 for William Williams, manager of the Australasian Steam Navigation Company prior to the merger that created the Australasian United Steam Navigation Company. It was designed in 1888 by the Italian architect Andrea Stombuco, and features a two-storey bay window front, gabled roof and decorative cast iron verandah trim. Constructed of stone and brick, it included a cellar, separate service quarters, kitchen, dairy, coach house and stables. Built on a rise facing south west, it has extensive views of the Canoe Reach of the Brisbane River, so named because it is near Oxley Creek, which was originally called Canoe Creek following stranded timber-getter Thomas Pamphlett finding an aboriginal bark canoe there in 1823, enabling him and his two companions to eventually return to civilisation.
Andrea Stombuco, in practice with his son Giovanni, was an Italian who had arrived in Brisbane in the 1870s after working for a period in the southern colonies. He designed many churches and ecclesiastical buildings for the Catholic Church in Queensland and was completing the opulent Her Majesty's Theatre in Queen Street when Rhyndarra was commissioned. He was noted for his residential work, which included Palma Rosa at Hamilton, an elaborate three-storeyed sandstone residence erected in 1886–1887. Rhyndarra was amongst Stombuco's last Brisbane works before moving to Western Australia in 1891.
Rhyndarra was constructed in 1888–1889 at a cost of £3,200. The buildings were erected by contractor R Smith and the lavish interior decoration to the main house was carried out by Lang & Co. The decorative finishes included cedar joinery, marble fireplace surrounds and ornate plaster ceilings and cornices.
Rhyndarra was typical of the large houses built by Brisbane's more prosperous citizens in the late 19th century. The house was raised off the ground on a stone base forming cellars and storerooms, with the ground floor containing dining and drawing rooms with bedrooms on the first floor. A pantry, kitchen and scullery were located at the rear of the house at ground level, with maids' rooms and a bathroom above.
Williams appears to have over-extended financially in his 1880s land dealings. During the depression of the 1890s Williams was forced to relinquish the heavily-mortgaged Rhyndarra to the Australian Mutual Provident Society (AMP) who became mortgagee-in-possession. Williams moved to Western Australia where he lived with a married daughter until his death in the early 20th century.
Salvation Army
The house and land were unoccupied for a period after Williams' departure until leased by the Salvation Army and opened as a home for orphaned and endangered girls (the Yeronga Girls' Industrial School) in 1897. In 1905 Williams was declared insolvent and the AMP Society become the owner of the property. The AMP Society organised the sale of the Rhyndarra estate at which time the property was subdivided into 13 residential lots, each having a street and river frontage. Rhyndarra, on a reduced site of approximately 12 acres, was transferred to William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, in 1907.Booth had established the Salvation Army in England in the mid 1860s as a church with a strong social conscience, campaigning against poverty and the sins of alcoholism and other moral failings. A large part of the work of the church was in establishing homes for people who were destitute, aged, unmarried mothers, orphans and others in need or in peril. The Girls' Industrial School at Yeronga was one of a number of similar institutions conducted by the Salvation Army in Queensland at this time, including maternity hospitals, receiving some financial assistance from the government for the orphanages. These institutions were periodically visited by public servants who monitored the welfare of the children.
The girls who lived at Rhyndarra were trained for domestic service and situations were found for them when they were old enough to leave the orphanage. In 1910 the matron noted that "each girl is taught housework in all its branches, gradually passing through the different stages from dormitories to dining room, laundry to kitchen and pantry." The house was adapted to accommodate the number of girls resident in the institution. The folding doors dividing the drawing and dining rooms were removed to form the main dormitory and the sitting room was used as a dining room. Upstairs rooms were used to accommodate the girls and the staff, including a matron, cooks and a teacher. The stable was converted for use a schoolroom, where the younger girls were taught basic lessons. The older girls helped look after the younger girls and could attend state schools in surrounding suburbs or were employed in the workroom where they learnt needlework and other tasks, or helped milk the cows. The home aimed at self-sufficiency, with a kitchen garden and flower garden, pigs, chickens, cows and horses.
Numbers at the orphanage fluctuated with changing circumstances and the institution accommodated girls who were orphaned, whose parents were destitute and could not care for them, who had run away or were difficult. In 1899 there were about 30 girls at the home, ranging from 6 to 16 years of age. In the early 1900s there were only 18 girls resident, but by the 1930s and the economic depression of that period the population increased to between 60 and 70 girls, ranging from babies to teenagers.
The greatest change to the physical fabric of Rhyndarra during the Salvation Army's occupation was the construction of a two-storeyed timber and masonry extension at the rear of the house. This extension housed a recreation hall on the first floor, with bathrooms and toilets at ground level. It was constructed by the Salvation Army in 1938 with government funding.
World War II
The Salvation Army operated the Girls' Industrial School at Rhyndarra until the Australian Army requisitioned the property in 1942 and the girls were transferred to other institutions outside Brisbane.
Australia had joined Britain in a declaration of war after Germany's invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939. In 1942 Rhyndarra was occupied by the Australian Army for training purposes for the Australian Women's Army Service (AWAS) and as a staging area for members en route to places further north and west. The Australian Army established a military hospital for Australian servicewomen in the grounds of the property, with Rhyndarra becoming the Officers' mess and quarters. The hospital provided training for the Australian Army Medical Women's Service (AAMWS).
When war was declared in 1939, there were no Army hospitals in Australia. In the next few years a range of hospitals was built in Australia and overseas, with a total of more than 100 wartime military hospitals operating in Australia. Casualty Clearing Stations (CCS) were located close to the action, both overseas and in Australia, and were little more than tent hospitals set up in the field where casualties were treated and sent onwards for further care. General hospitals were similar to these, although larger and slightly more advanced. Some general hospitals were established overseas in the field. These hospitals returned to Australia (as discrete medical units) with their divisions and were re-established mostly away from the major population centres. Women's hospitals were of a similar type to general hospitals and of this type 26 were built. Of these, it is thought that part of the hospital at Bonegilla in Victoria, is the only one to survive. Other hospitals included camp hospitals and base hospitals. Like women's hospitals, these were constructed in the capital cities and in areas of great troop concentrations, and were more likely permanent structures of timber, fibrous cement sheet and/or corrugated iron, or were established in existing buildings such as houses, which the Army took over as a matter of national importance.
In 1943–1944 the Commonwealth Department of Public Works, at the request of the Allied Works Council (AWC), constructed the Australian Women's Hospital at Yeronga. The construction period for the hospital was estimated at four months and it had been completed by June 1944. The new facility provided accommodation for 160 female patients. It comprised fibrous cement and weatherboard wards with kitchens, operating theatre and admission building, all linked by covered ways. Ancillary buildings included pathological, laboratories, canteen and administration units.
The hospital was erected to the northeast of Rhyndarra house and a group of small huts were erected along the northeastern boundary of the site as sleeping quarters for the AAMWS. The nurses had their own sleeping quarters to the southwest of Rhyndarra, with the house used for administration offices, officer's mess, and for recreation. Some minor alterations were made to the house, including removing some of the alterations made by the Salvation Army. The stable was used as the quartermaster's store.
This establishment at Yeronga was known as 2 Women's Hospital (2WH). As a distinct medical unit 2WH had been situated at Redbank, in association with the 2/4 Australian General Hospital (AGH), but it moved completely to the purpose built complex at Yeronga by 1943. Only three specialist women's hospitals were established in Australia during the Second World War, the others being 1 Women's Hospital at Claremont in Western Australia and 3 Women's Hospital located in the grounds of the base hospital at Concord 113 General Hospital, Sydney.
Many women were required to assist the war effort, particularly during 1942 and 1943 when all able-bodied men were required to work in more forward areas. Special services were created to facilitate this, the largest of these being the AWAS (Australian Women's Army Service), formed in mid-1941 in order to release men from some military duties so that they could be employed with fighting units. Recruiting began in early 1942 and by 1944 there were more than 20,000 AWAS members.