Six Queensland Colonial Judges and their Houses 1859–1901
From a lecture by David Gibson and Carolyn Nolan
An English style country manor house.
Within a month of his arrival in 1859, Lutwyche acquired 94 acres (37.6 hectares) of land on Kedron Brook. In his reminiscences, Nehemiah Bartley describes the brook as follows:
A crystal-clear mountain-borne stream, flowing from west to east, on the north side of the city, losing itself, ultimately, in swamps, below where the German missionaries, of 1838, had their settlement, Niquet, Zillman, Rode, and the rest of them. The ‘brook’ was a fairy-like stream. Its banks lined with the narrow leaf wattle, which blooms so beautifully, and loads the air with its ‘nutty’ gorse-like scent every August; its banks lined, also, with the narrow-leaf ti-tree, a Melaleuca nerifolia which, in early November, breaks into bloom as gracefully as the wattle, with leaves which, when crushed, exhale the perfume of thyme; and flowers with the exact odour of ‘Grande Chartreux,’ and from which a rare liqueur could be prepared; and there is, also the Kennedya covering the ground with violet blossoms, as it creeps along the surface, in swathes of 20 feet in length, and the pretty little ground orchids, and so forth.
Bartley also describes the circumstances of Lutwyche’s land purchase:
One morning, in early 1859, I espied Judge Lutwyche, spectacles on nose, Government map in hand, taking stock of some Crown allotments near the Green Hills [Petrie-Terrace], and I thus addressed his honour: ‘You are looking at some lots, not very eligible, and which will not be sold for some time to come. There are some Crown ones, better than these, and which I would recommend you to see first, and, if you like to come with me to-morrow, I will show them to you as I mean to buy some myself.’ He replied, ‘I will come with you.’ We went, and Thorrold (I think) came with us. I showed them the nakedness of the land. I resolved on ‘Eilsdon Hill’, the judge on what he called the pretty ‘ha ha’ lawns, where ‘Kedron Park’ now is; and Thorrold selected the Thorroldtown’ of modern days. We camped, and lunched, by the brook, spent a delightful day, and the Judge particularly fancied some ‘Presburger Zwieback’ biscuits I had brought with me, and asked me for a tin-full of them, which I gave him.
Extracted from Nehemiah Bartley, Opals and Agates (1982).
Paul Sayer has written:
When the Lutwyches resided at Kedron Lodge, the water in the brook was crystal clear and provided good drinking water. As it was also rich in fish, the judge spent much of his spare time angling for eels and catfish, which he regarded as a ‘rare table treat’—thereby fulfilling the piscatorial requirements for a Moreton Bay judge. It has been said that just before his death, he declared; ‘During a long residence in the colony I have partaken, I believe, of every known description of fish, but no-one has offered to sell me, nor have I seen at any other table than my own, a catfish’.
Extract from ‘A trusted officer and a worthy gentleman: Judge Alfred Lutwyche of Kedron’ in Paul Sayer, Brisbane: People, Places and Progress (1995), 77.
The name Kedron Lodge
The name of the house comes from its location on the bank of Kedron Brook.
Kedron Lodge
Home of The Hon. Mr Justice Lutwyche
