Newstead Police Station (former)

New PoliceStation At BreakfastCreek

Breakfast Creek is to have a newpolicestation on a more central site than the present one. The Home Secretary (Mr. Stopford), in making this announcement to-day, said that the Brisbane City Council was resuming the presentstation site which adjoined Newstead Park. The idea was that it should he included in the park area. The Home office consequently had to look for another site, and on the previous day, accompanied by the Police Commissioner (Mr. Short) and the Under Secretary (Mr. Gall), he had inspected some land not far from the presentstation. The department had an option over this land.

BREAKFASTCREEKPOLICE STATION.

On and after Wednesday next, March 10, the BreakfastCreekpolice will bestationed in a house alongside the Booroodabin Bowling Green. The reason for the change is that the Brisbane City Council has resumed the land on which the present station is built alongside the Newstead Park, so that the land could be used in extending the area of the park. The Government bought a house and land formerly belonging to Mr. Thomas Barry, alongside the Booroodabin Bowling Green. The house, which contains nine rooms, stands on stumps 12ft. high. The space beneath the house will be converted into offices, and the rooms and the house will be used for the men stationed there. The site is a particularly good one, for it is handy to the new bridge which is being built at the Five Ways, Albion, over which there will be a great amount of traffic. The site is also a much more central one. Another feature of the change is that instead of paying rent, as it has been doing for several years, the new station will be Government property.

Breakfast Creek Police Station opened on July 5, 1889; closed on September 20, 1904 (when the Hamilton Police Station was opened) and then reopened on September 6, 1905. The initial house rented as the Breakfast Creek Police Station in Newstead Avenue, near Newstead Park. In 1926 when the City Council expanded the park the police had to move to a timber dwelling purchased by the Queensland Police on a block which sat between Roche Avenue and Breakfast Creek Road at 96 Breakfast Creek Road near the Bowling Green.
The station was renamed Newstead Police Station in 1963 and operated as the local police station from 1926 until it closed in 1995. The property was owned by the Queensland Police until 2006.
The original house, built about 1919 for Brisbane tailor, Thomas T. Barry, was one of a number of houses in the area at that time following suburban expansion after World War 1. It is the last remaining dwelling on Breakfast Creek Road, now the main commercial artery between the Valley and Breakfast Creek Bridge. The building, initially used as married quarters for the police, is a typical example of the ‘Queenslander’ timber-framed and elevated dwellings of the period. It was first enclosed underneath with an office in 1939.
The small, timber building at the rear of the property, built pre-1914, was relocated from the old Breakfast Creek Station near Newstead Avenue. It included single-men’s quarters and a police cell.