Brisbane Tower Mill

      During the time that Brisbane was a closed penal colony the Old 
	  Commissariat at 111 William Street (1829) and the Windmill Building 
	  (Tower Mill) and Observatory Tower in Wickham Terrace (1828) were 
	  constructed using convict labour.  

      The Old Commissariat Store is reputed to be the state's first stone 
	  building,  being constructed with walls ranging in thickness from 60cm 
	  to 1.2m. The first structure was completed in 1829 as a two storey 
	  building, but between 1886-1926 it was increased to three storeys.  
	  Originally a government store,  it later became the State archives and 
	  then and a immigration depot before becoming the present home of the 
	  Royal Historical ociety of Queensland.

      The Old Windmill & Observatory on Wickham Terrace was originally built 
	  with rendered stone and brick in 1828 during the unpopular command of 
	  Captain Patrick Logan. The original idea was to grind grain for the 
	  convict colony, but apparently there was a fundamental oversight in the 
	  design and it didn't work as expected. So it was converted to treadmill 
	  operation where convicts powered the grinding mechanism rather than the 
	  wind. Presumably this made the mill useful both for grinding grain as 
	  well as punishment. However this too saw limited success and the tower 
	  was adapted to a signal station and later to a meteorological 
	  observatory.  By the end of the nineteenth the building was being used 
	  as an observation platform and in 1930 the building was used for  
	  experiments with television.

      Between  1842  when Brisbane was opened to free settlement and the end of 
	  1859 when the separate colony was established there was an active building 
	  program.  However only the old St Stephens Church and the Deanery survive 
	  from this period.  Then the last building boom between 1860 and 1880 saw 
	  the construction of an impressive array of public buildings including 
	  Government House and Parliament House.
 
      Out of the early settlement period only two buildings still stand, partly 
	  because of the city's long history of building in timber and also the fire 
	  of 1864  which destroyed many of the city's finest early buildings.