T. Bryson Robertson, The Old Mill, c1910, Oil on board. Photo: Christopher Hagen. Gift of Rona Arndt 2014, Museum of Brisbane Collection. Courtesy the artist.

Wickham Terrace in Spring Hill, originally a fresh water site for Aboriginal people, is home to some of our city’s most significant buildings.

The Old Windmill was built in 1828 to improve the convict settlement’s self-sufficiency by milling corn. It was powered both by the wind and a treadmill that could be operated by convicts as punishment. The windmill was originally surrounded by a palisade fence to protect the grain. Nevertheless, during 1846, the warrior leader Yilbung boldly extracted a monthly ‘grain rent’ from the windmill to force settlers to pay for use of his people’s land.

The sombre mood of T. Bryson Robertson’s The Old Mill (c1910) hints at the building’s dark history as the site of Brisbane’s first public executions in 1841.

Aboriginal men Mullan and Ningavil were hanged from the windmill for their purported involvement in an attack on surveyors at Mount Lindesay. Mullan and Ningavil were taken to Sydney to be trialled, and returned to Brisbane for execution before a mass of onlookers.

No longer a working mill once the penal settlement closed, the windmill was put to other uses. It housed the first Queensland Museum from 1862. Also in the 1860s, it became Brisbane’s main signal station, with flags communicating to the town below what ships were entering and leaving the city. The tall pole where the coloured flags were hoisted is visible on the left of T. Bryson Robertson’s painting.

Not far from the windmill, Wickham Terrace (named after Police Magistrate John Wickham) is home to Craigston. Brisbane’s first multi-story apartment block, Craigston was built by Conrad Gargett in 1926 in a Spanish mission style. You can spy Craigston in the back of Vida Lahey’s painting Excavations (c1923), which depicts Wickham Terrace undergoing development as Wickham House and other offices are about to be constructed.