Redcliffe’s 200-year evolution from the exclusive preserve of its Indigenous peoples to the modern seaside suburban landscape we now enjoy owes much to the pioneers who settled here.
They identified the peninsula’s potential and set about making it a reality. Most of us would not recognise their names, but they are all around us, present on our street signs.
Take Ham Street, Kippa Ring: though tiny, it memorialises quite a slice of Redcliffe history in the form of the family of Thomas Ham, one of the early pioneers of sugar growing on the peninsula. Born in 1821 in England, Thomas migrated first to Sydney in 1842, then to Melbourne where he worked as an engraver and publisher.
He married Mary Jull Collings in 1851 and they moved to Brisbane and later to Redcliffe where they planned to farm. When he died in 1870, he was lauded in the Queenslander as a man of “genial and unassuming nature” with “the strongest faith in the country for the production of … sugar”.
His widow, Mary Jull Collings Ham, was a Redcliffe identity and it was after her that what is now Collins Street, Woody Point was named – the name having lost its ‘g’ at some point. It was Mary who, in 1866, bought for £31 the family’s first parcels of land – 36 acres – where a house was built and where the family lived.
After Thomas’s death – she gave birth to her youngest child the next day – Mary continued his plans to grow sugar cane despite, as she wrote afterwards, “the deep grief of losing a kind husband … and the added burden of business perplexities”. She made further investments in land and became a considerable landholder.
Redcliffe’s Pioneers and Their Legacy
Mary and Thomas had nine children, among them John Collings Ham and Alfred Westbrook Ham. John, born in Melbourne in 1855, was, with his brother Alfred, a financier and real estate agent and Redcliffe landowner. He was elected to the first Redcliffe Divisional Board in 1888 and it was at his offices in Queen Street, Brisbane that the board met for the first five years of its existence.
Elected chairman of the board in 1891, he served until the following year. He was remembered after his death in 1893 as “well-known in commercial financial, local government, and musical circles”.
Alfred (Alfred Street, Woody Point), was also elected to the Divisional Board, from 1893 until 1897, serving as chairman in 1895.
Among the many debts Redcliffe owes the Ham family are the names of three of its streets.
[With thanks to MBRC ourstory.moretonbay.qld.gov.au]
Read more stories from our Redcliffe Guide print magazine here:
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- Local Author ‘Paints’ His Family Portrait
- Mums in Motion Movement: Empowering Mothers to Thrive
- Blast Off with Cosmic Fun at Redcliffe Museum
- Reddy Round Up
- Sunrise, Sound, and Stillness
- Toastmasters Celebrate 100 Years of Confident Communication
- War Widows Day
- What’s Hot for Halloween
