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Chelmer Police College is a heritage-listed former police barracks at 17 Laurel Avenue, Chelmer, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It was built from 1900 to 1970. It is also known as 10 WRAAC Barracks, The Lady Wilson Red Cross Convalescent Home, and Waterton. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 1 October 2003. == History == The place which functioned as the Queensland Police College until 2012 at Chelmer, was established as a private residence, with additions in the form of staff quarters and a ward block constructed between 1941 and 1942 when the house was converted into a convalescent hospital for the Australian Red Cross Society.〔 The substantial, middle-class residence is thought to have been erected for Thomas Beevor Steele, a Brisbane insurance agent. Steele acquired title to the Laurel Avenue site in March 1900. At this time the property comprised two blocks totalling nearly one and a half acres, stretching from what is now Laurel Avenue to the Brisbane River. A £950 mortgage on the property taken out in September 1900 may have helped finance construction of the house, which was named ''Waterton''. Steele, who previously resided at Indooroopilly, is first listed as resident at Chelmer in the 1901 Queensland Post Office Directory, suggesting that the house was constructed by this date. In February 1901, a Brisbane Courier newspaper article identified the Steele family as residing at "Waterton", Chelmer, a name that remained in use during its earliest years. In design and decorative elements, the house also suggests an early 20th century date of construction.〔 Title to the property passed in September 1913 to Alison Eavis Harding Frew (1883-1952), a prominent Queensland civil engineer, who resided there until . A. E. Harding Frew specialized in bridge design, his work including approximately 80 bridges throughout Queensland during his career. He was a consulting engineer in Melbourne during the 1920s and on the Pyrmont Power Station at Sydney in the early 1940s. He was a consultant on the 1926 Brisbane Cross River Commission and was the designing engineer for the William Jolly Bridge in Brisbane, from 12 November 1926 to 1932. From 1932 to 1935 he was the Engineer for Bridge Construction on the Hornibrook Bridge project, the bridge linking Sandgate and Redcliffe. Much of this work was carried out during the period in which he and his family were based at 17 Laurel Avenue, Chelmer.〔 In 1938, Harding Frew acquired two blocks of land adjacent to the southern border of his Laurel Avenue property, creating an estate of approximately 3.75 acres with a long river frontage. However, he appears to have encountered financial difficulties about this time, taking out a number of mortgages on the property, and reputedly was bankrupted. In January 1939, Queensland Trustees Limited, as mortgagees in possession, offered 17 Laurel Avenue for sale at auction. At this time the dwelling comprised four bedrooms, a large dressing room, drawing and dining rooms, sitting rooms, lounge, spacious front and side verandahs and sleep-out, and a well-appointed kitchen and bathroom. There is a suggestion that Frew had made extensions to the house, but this has not been confirmed.〔 The property did not sell in January 1939. In July 1940, title to just over 1 rood near the southeast corner of the site was transferred as a residential subdivision block, and in December 1940, the house and the remaining land, nearly 3.5 acres, was transferred to the Australian Red Cross Society for use as a convalescent home for Australian servicemen returning from the battlefields of the Second World War. The purchase price was £2,000, which scarcely reflected the value of one of the oldest and largest family homes in the Chelmer district. Title was transferred to Red Cross trustees Edith Wassell and George Rees in 1941, and to the Australian Red Cross Society in 1947. The Society converted the house into the Lady Wilson Red Cross Convalescent Home, providing for the rehabilitation of convalescent Australian soldiers, sailors and airmen. The home was named in honour of Lady Wilson, President of the Queensland Division of the Australian Red Cross at this time, and wife of His Excellency Sir Leslie Orme Wilson, Governor of Queensland.〔 Conversion of the house into a convalescent home required additions to, and some alteration to internal partitions in, the main residence, and construction of a substantial dormitory block behind and parallel to the main house. In 1941, Brisbane architects Roderic Walter Voller, Ronald Martin Wilson, and Edward James Archibald Weller, as Honorary Architects to the Australian Red Cross Society, jointly called tenders for a new dormitory and officers' quarters for the Red Cross Society's Lady Wilson Convalescent Home at Chelmer. A contract for construction of the dormitory was let to contractor AS Taylor by June 1941, and tenders for "officers' quarters" (staff quarters) opened about August 1941. Minor works were still being carried out early in 1942. Photographs of the "Chelmer Convalescent Home", taken in August 1944, reveal that the northern addition to the house, which comprised the staff quarters, was constructed by this date. The place reputedly accommodated 73 patients. It is also likely that during the 1941-42 extensions including an institutional kitchen and dining room were verandahs, which has been replaced since with simple timber rails.〔 In the early 1950s the convalescent hospital was closed and the property was leased to the Australian Military Forces from 1 April 1953 for use as a Women's Royal Australian Army Corps Barracks, occupied by the 10 WRAAC. The WRAAC had been established in 1951 in response to a severe manpower shortage created by the demands of the Korean War and national service in a time of full employment. In the late 1970s female soldiers began to be integrated into the Army at large and in early 1984, the WRAAC was disbanded. In its 33 years of existence, the Corps played an important role in the evolution of Australia's armed forces and the acceptance of women into this field.〔 A valuation inspection of the Laurel Avenue property made in January 1953, prior to the military authorities taking up the lease, provided a thorough description (accompanied by plans) of the Red Cross structures on the property, and show how the buildings had functioned as a convalescent hospital. The core of the house contained recreational and office spaces, and a large dining room and kitchen extension at the rear. The northern addition to the main house served as staff quarters. To the rear of the main house and parallel to it, was a high-set, timber framed, fibrous-cement clad dormitory building.〔 The main building (the house) was described as approximately 50 years old, timber-framed, with 8" chamferboard cladding to the exterior walls, and set on hardwood stumps which varied from 4'6" to 6' in height. The roof retained its original corrugated galvanized iron. The house was surrounded by extensive verandahs, by that date mostly enclosed, and the verandah roofs were lined with 6" vertically jointed pine boards. Flooring to the verandahs and much of the interior was 4" x 1" hardwood, with some 6" x 1" pine. The interior walls and ceilings were lined with 4" vertically-jointed pine. Most of the joinery, including early doors, fireplace surrounds and palm stands, were cedar. There was a front bay window with 6' "colonial sashes", and French doors opening onto the verandahs. The main entrance door had leadlight surrounds. The dining room on the southwest corner of the main building had been extended as a dining hall, clad externally and lined internally with fibrous cement sheeting. Adjacent to this was an institutional-size kitchen. Bathrooms and toilets (which appear to have occupied an earlier kitchen wing) had vertically-jointed timber ceilings, fibrous-cement sheeting on the walls, and terrazzo floors. There was a laundry under the main building.〔 At the northern end of the main building was the two-storeyed addition erected as staff quarters. This was timber-framed and clad externally with fibrous-cement sheeting. The ground floor contained an open lounge with a cement floor; an interior lounge with fibrous cement sheeting to ceiling and walls and hardwood floor; a dormitory, lined and ceiling in vertically-jointed timber, with polished timber floor; and a bathroom/toilet. A covered stairway led to the upper level, which had a hardwood timber floor, and was lined with vertically-jointed timber in the central room and fibrous-cement sheeting in two bedrooms and two dormitories.〔 At the rear of the main building was the dormitory or ward block, containing two wards separated by a central ablutions area, and a doctor's room, sister's room, and store room at the far northern end. Floors throughout were of hardwood and the ceilings of Caneite. The ablutions area had terrazzo flooring and contained toilets, showers and locker rooms arranged around a central passageway running north–south, servicing both wards. French doors opened from the wards onto verandahs along both sides, which were screened with Aerolax blinds. A sub-floor extended the entire length of the building. It had concrete flooring and had been used principally as workshops. It was also part-enclosed as library headquarters for the Red Cross in Queensland (a large room at the southern end); store rooms; ablution blocks; laundry; boiler room; and French polishing room. On the western side of the library was an extension which housed the handicraft section.〔 Beyond the dormitory building, to the west, was a detached, single-storey structure, timber framed, double-sheeted with fibrous-cement, and divided into two rooms, which were utilized as male staff quarters. This building had a "Super 6" roof of corrugated fibrous-cement sheeting.〔 Close to the northern boundary, midway along the depth of the property, was a single garage which appears to have been constructed during the period when the place functioned as a private residence. It was hardwood framed and floored, clad in 6" timber chamferboards, and had a tiled roof. Beyond the garage the ground flattened out to a level floodplain, before dropping steeply to the Brisbane River.〔 Comparatively few changes were required for occupation by the 10 WRAAC from 1953 to 1969, and during this period the Red Cross continued to maintain its library headquarters in the sub-floor of the dormitory block. About 1964 or 1965, the Red Cross subdivided the land into smaller residential allotments around an extension of Sutton Street, leaving the buildings leased by the armed forces on a much smaller parcel of land. At this period the house lost its river access.〔 In the late 1960s a new facility for the WRAAC was constructed at Kelvin Grove. 10 WRAAC vacated 17 Laurel Avenue early in February 1969, although the Army's lease didn't expire until 31 October 1969. The Red Cross failed to sell the property at auction in May 1969, but toward the end of the year it was purchased by the Queensland Police Department for use as an in-service training centre. In January 1970, the Queensland Police College opened at 17 Laurel Avenue, offering a wide variety of specialist and qualifying courses. This function ceased in 2012. The main change to the grounds since 1970 has been the construction of a car park along the southern boundary of the property from Laurel Avenue to the former dormitory block.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Chelmer Police College」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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