University of Queensland Gatton Campus is a heritage-listed university campus of the University of Queensland at Warrego Highway, Lawes (east of Gatton), Lockyer Valley Region, Queensland, Australia. It was built from 1897 to 1960s. It is also known as the Queensland Agricultural College, the Foundation Precinct Gatton College and Lawes Campus. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 6 January 2004.
History The University of Queensland Gatton Campus was established in 1897 at Gatton as the Queensland Agricultural College. The College initially operated as a tertiary agricultural institution offering a basic practical and theoretical agricultural education for young men and short courses for farmers on specific topics, but from its inception, there was also an expectation that the College would be involved in agricultural research and experimentation. In 1922, it was re-structured as the Gatton Agricultural High School and College. From 1927, the College also took students from the University of Queensland for a year of practical experience. During the Second World War, the College was used as a field hospital by the United States Army from 1942 to 1944. After the war, it continued to operate as both a secondary and tertiary institution until the high school section was closed in 1962. In the 1960s the college began to diversify the courses on offer and the first women students enrolled in 1969. In 1990, the College merged with the University of Queensland.
The need to establish an agricultural college was first raised in Queensland Parliament in 1874 by Edward Wilmot Pechey, MLA for the Darling Downs. The development of scientific methods of agricultural production appropriate to Queensland was of both public and political concern and calls for a college and experimental farm continued to be made in the Parliament for the next two decades. Unlike the debate over the establishment of a university which divided those in favour of practical, applied education from those supporting humanist education for its own sake, agricultural education was widely supported in recognition of the essential role of primary production in the colony. It was also seen as a means to attract more people to settle and cultivate the land and it was proposed that several colleges were required to investigate agricultural methods for the various regions and climatic conditions in Queensland.
The Queensland Department of Agriculture was established in 1887 and teaching and research into agriculture was part of its early agenda. Following a request from the Queensland Government to the United States Government in 1889, Professor Edward Shelton of Kansas State Agricultural College was appointed as agricultural instructor for Queensland in 1890. After touring agricultural education institutions in other Australian colonies, Professor Shelton advocated the establishment of a local college in his first annual report.
The Australian-wide economic depression of the early 1890s frustrated attempts to utilise the £5000 allocated by the Queensland Parliament in 1891 to the founding of a college, and it was not until 1895 that the first 600 acres of land were purchased by Peter McLean, Under-Secretary of Agriculture. The land was part of the Rosewood Estate near Gatton, which the Government re-purchased under the provisions of the Agricultural Lands Purchase Act of 1894. A further 1092 acres were acquired in 1896 when the new Minister for Agriculture, Colonel Andrew Joseph Thynne, was determined to make the college a reality. The site was chosen both for its proximity by rail to Brisbane (and to the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Stock and its experts) and for its diversity of soil types. Three soil types were present on the site, providing scope for experimentation and wide cultivation experience for students. The Gatton site was also close to the greatest concentration of farmers in the colony. As the land was virgin forest, a contract was let in 1896 for the clearing and grubbing of 233 acres.
Sketch plans for the college were prepared by architect John Smith Murdoch of the Queensland Department of Public Works in 1896. The scheme comprised seven buildings linked by elevated covered walkways, in design reflecting Queensland's timber rural vernacular architecture. JS Murdoch was a talented designer, whose body of work includes such notable works as the Customs House, Maryborough, the Commonwealth Bank in Queen Street, Brisbane (now demolished), Commonwealth Government Offices at Anzac Square, Brisbane, Stanthorpe Post Office and the Old Parliament House in Canberra. The tender of £5079 by RW Roe was accepted in July 1896 and a Foundation Day ceremony, which attracted many notable public figures, was held on 22 August. Changes driven by budgetary considerations were made during construction, including the deletion of the network of covered walkways.
Professor Shelton was appointed as the first principal and the Queensland Agricultural College was officially opened by the Governor, Lord Lamington, on 9 July 1897. The College had an initial intake of twenty-three students and a staff of six men. The buildings were an administration and teaching block, two dormitories, a teacher's block, a dining room and kitchen, the Principal's residence and the Overseer's residence. The buildings were timber framed and clad, with cedar joinery and galvanised iron roofs. They were orientated to face south, in the direction of the Gatton-Forest Hill-Laidley Road and beyond this the Southern and Western Railway, where College Siding was established. The road to the siding was made all-weather proof in the early 1900s and served as the main entrance to the College until the mid-1920s, when the principal entrance was re-oriented to the north and the road from the Warrego Highway. In the first six months of operation a number of sheds, stables and a silo were constructed and machinery and livestock was purchased. Of the original buildings only the Foundation Building (the administrative and teaching block) and the Homestead (former Principal's residence) remain on the site.
The establishment and operation of Queensland Agricultural College was an important commitment by the Queensland Government to agricultural advancement. The development of the dairying industry was an early priority as was the introduction of new agricultural methods and technologies. For instance, in 1897, the first cutting of a crop with a "Scientific Harvester" to produce ensilage was watched by a 200 strong crowd of farmers from as far away as Nanango. As well as providing a basic practical and theoretical agricultural education for young men, the college also offered short courses for farmers on specific topics such as cheese making, milk testing, bee-keeping and sugar farming. The college also held short courses for teachers who were then able to offer basic agricultural education in schools across the state. The college continued to expand, with a gymnasium constructed in 1899 (now Sir Leslie Wilson Hall) and a third residential hall erected in 1908. The first two Canary Island date palms (Phoenix canariensis), now a signature feature of the campus, were planted outside the Foundation Building in 1915. Also planted in the 1910s, during the First World War, was a double row of Eucalyptus trees along College Siding Road.
For the first 25 years of its existence the Queensland Agricultural College was the responsibility of the Department of Agriculture and Stock, and functioned in isolation from the mainstream Queensland public education system. The gap between leaving school at 12 to 14 years and entering college at age 16 meant that there were no "feeder schools" to sustain the College, and the First World War (1914–1918) further reduced student and staff numbers. By the early 1920s, the College was threatened with closure, a 1921 report recommending that the property be sold as farms and the buildings removed and utilised elsewhere.
A special committee appointed by the Governor-in-Council advised that rather than closure, the Queensland Agricultural College be reconfigured as an Agricultural High School and College under the control of the Department of Public Instruction. This was the first major change to the structure and purpose of the college, and was made possible with the passing of the Agricultural Education Act 1922 and the establishment of a Board of Agricultural Education. Agricultural subjects were incorporated into the state secondary education curriculum and the Queensland Agricultural College was re-structured as the Gatton Agricultural High School and College. Boys were accepted from age 14 for high school training and encouraged to continue at Gatton at diploma level in their third and fourth years. At this time, 629 acres of college land was under cultivation including 5 acres for research, 38 for field trials and 20 acres of orchard. Site improvements by this time included a substantial hay shed erected in 1922.
The establishment of a Department of Agriculture at the University of Queensland at St Lucia in 1927 also affected the college at Gatton, as university students were required to complete a compulsory year of practical training at Gatton. Gatton College Principal, JK Murray, had been a representative on the Faculty of Science at the University since 1917, however, closer links were formed with the establishment of the new faculty. Murray, a trained agricultural scientist, was appointed as the University's first Professor of Agriculture whilst continuing as College principal. Murray strongly supported research, and collaboration between institutions continued with the establishment of a Council of Scientific and Industrial Research or CSIR (later the CSIRO) laboratory and field station at Gatton in 1930. (The CSIR was established in 1926 by the Commonwealth Government and in the 1930s established research laboratories throughout Australia to help develop Australian primary industry, including forest products, fisheries and food production.) In 1928 the College paddocks were renamed in honour of famous agricultural scientists.
In the 1920s the main Brisbane-Toowoomba Road through Shire of Tarampa (later Shire of Gatton) was upgraded as one of Queensland's first Main Roads, and the farm road leading from the Brisbane-Toowoomba Road (later the Warrego Highway) to the College was upgraded as the principal entrance to the Gatton Agricultural High School and College, thus re-orienting the main entrance to the north. The avenue of Canary Island date palms (Phoenix canariensis) which extends along each side of the original roadway from the Warrego Highway and through the heart of the campus to the Foundation Building was planted in 1927. A 1936 military map, compiled from earlier aerial photographs and a 1934 ground survey, indicates that an avenue of trees extended along the road opposite the main entrance to the College, north of the Brisbane-Toowoomba Road to Lockyer Creek and a popular swimming hole. At an early period a timber changing rooms was constructed beside the swimming hole.
A spate of building activity and infrastructure improvements barely kept pace with the growth of the College following its conversion to an agricultural high school and college.