York's Hollow
| Victoria Park | |
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Victoria Park, 2008
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| Location | 454 Gregory Terrace, Spring Hill & Herston, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia |
| Coordinates | 27°27′17″S 153°01′29″E / 27.4546°S 153.0248°ECoordinates: 27°27′17″S 153°01′29″E / 27.4546°S 153.0248°E |
| Official name: Victoria Park | |
| Type | state heritage (built, landscape) |
| Designated | 3 December 2007 |
| Reference no. | 602493 |
| Significant period | 1870s (fabric) 1870s-ongoing (historical use) |
 Location of Victoria Park in Queensland
Location of Victoria Park in Queensland
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Victoria Park is a heritage-listed park at 454 Gregory Terrace, Spring Hill & Herston, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 3 December 2007.
Victoria Park covers an area of 27 hectares of undulating land bordered by Gregory Terrace, Bowen Bridge Road, Herston Road, Queensland University of Technology (Kelvin Grove campus) and Victoria Park Road in the suburbs of Spring Hill and Herston. Named for the reigning British monarch at the time, Queen Victoria, the park was gazetted in 1875.
Victoria Park provides recreational facilities such as cricket pitches, swimming pool and golf course (redesigned with a new clubhouse in 1974). It also provides much needed parking facilities during the annual Brisbane Exhibition (Ekka) held in the adjacent Brisbane Exhibition Ground.
Herston was first settled by Europeans in 1859 although the area was being utilised from as early as the 1820s for major industrial activities such as brick-making and timber getting. This resulted in the denuding of the land, the sullying of the water and dispossession of the local Aborigines. Victoria Park initially spanned an area of 130 hectares. The land set aside for the park was slowly encroached upon over the succeeding years. The suburbs such as Herston, Bowen Hills and Spring Hill grew into the park, as housing development, schools, hospitals, golf courses and show grounds were permitted to be built on the park land.
During the mid 1800s, Brisbane was faced with an influx of immigrants due to the Queensland Government's immigration schemes. As a result, areas of York's Hollow (the name prior to Victoria Park) provided a settling point for various immigrant camps. The arrival of John Dunmore Lang's pioneering emigrant ship Fortitude in Brisbane in early 1849 is recognised as one of the landmark events of Queensland's history, and York's Hollow on the edge of the new township was put to good use for their accommodation. According to the Moreton Bay Courier, 253 immigrants were permitted "to form a temporary village on some of the slopes running parallel to the chains and waterholes in the neighbourhood of York's Hollow". During this time 'York's Hollow' included the area to the east of the park that is now the Brisbane Showgrounds in Bowen Hills. Many recent immigrants to Queensland in the mid-1800s stayed in these temporary camps. As Herston and the surrounding area became a popular urban development, these camps were deemed unhealthy and its residents "moved along". Several beautification projects of Victoria Park were undertaken during the late nineteenth century. This included planting avenues of trees.
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