The Redcliffe Divisional Board, which administered the peninsula from 1888 to 1903, had managed the traditional occupations of local government since the inception of the concept: rates, roads, water and sanitary services.
These hardy perennials occupied the board’s successor body, too. However, the Redcliffe Shire Council – inaugurated under the Local Authorities Act 1902 – and its 1,620 ratepayers were to face other, new-fangled concerns. Among these was the very modern activity of motoring, the regulation of which, while cars were still a novelty, was very much unfamiliar territory for Redcliffe’s councillors.
In 1912, in what must have been one of their first motor-related decisions, the aldermen, noting that a car accident had caused damage to the bridge over Saltwater Creek, charged the offending motorist with the cost of repairs. When, in 1914, an irate citizen complained about “motor cars travelling along Suttons Beach” causing a nuisance to beachgoers and posing a danger to children, the council responded by putting up notices forbidding the practice.
And there was the new and vexed question of women drivers: in 1917, the Daily Mail reported that the Redcliffe police had written to the council concerning “certain unlicensed lady drivers driving registered motor cars, contrary to the bylaws of the council”. Traffic by-laws, the imposition of speeding limits and the licensing of cars and drivers were all novel council agenda items generated by the introduction of cars.
Changing Social Norms and Bathing By-Laws
Changing social mores, particularly relating to sea bathing, also prompted the promulgation of additional by-laws. Many bathing boxes, where modesty could be preserved, sprang up on the foreshore – some provided by council, privately owned ones requiring council authorisation – but despite this amenity, complaints were addressed to the council regarding the attire of beachgoers and “men and women parading the esplanade in their bathing costumes”. In 1914, one complainant, fulminating about a “want of decency” on the part of male bathers, reported that so disgusting were “some of the sights” that parents refused to allow their children on the beach. In response, the council ruled that notices were to be erected forbidding people to “loiter in bathing costume” between the water and the bathing boxes.
Motoring and scantily clad (by the standards of the time) bathers were not matters that had much exercised the divisional board, but times were rapidly changing and the shire council had to move with them. It would have been an interesting and exciting time for the Redcliffe Shire Council – or did they long for the simpler days of the board?
With thanks to MBRC ,Image courtesy of Moreton Bay Regional Council, reference number RMPC-100\100496.
Read more stories from our Redcliffe Guide print magazine here:
- Reddy Roundup: Updates from the Community
- What’s Hot Around Town
- Beautiful You and Home of Hope Liberia: Empowering Women in Crisis
- We Are Scoring More Centuries!
- Brad’s Business Tips
- Morwong Diagramma Pictum Labiosum
- Podcast Review: A Very British Cult
- Local Faces
- Bookworm
- Movember for Men’s Mental Health
- Mousetrap Theatre Unwraps Christmas Joy For All Ages
- Tune In for Fun at 99.7 Bridge FM Open Day
- Piper Movie Review
- Family Awareness Dugong Day
