Creese, Jennifer

University of Queensland eSpace

A Settlement Geography of Jewish Brisbane 
Introduction 
[SLIDE SWITCH] 
Established in 1865, the Brisbane Jewish community recently celebrated its 150th year and 
has spread widely across the greater Brisbane area, the most geographically extensive state 
capital city in Australia. Historically, it’s quite a typical example of the Jewish diasporic 
centre in a New World setting. The Jewish diaspora post-Enlightenment is a settler culture, 
expanding from Europe through its empires to Africa, Asia, South America and Australasia. 
Jewish communities and groups established themselves within a framework of settler 
colonial ideology, forging places within both the mainstream colonial culture and the 
landscape of the new land itself. There is a complex and interesting relationship between a 
community and the negotiation of its place in the metropolis. Thus today I present an 
analysis of the settlement geography of Jewish Brisbane. Settlement geography is “the 
description and analysis of the distribution of buildings by which people attach themselves 
to the land”. Buildings act as concrete expressions of the relationship between people and 
land, and include houses, community buildings and functional structures. Communities 
create spaces – areas in which they interact. They further develop those spaces into places - 
psychosocial understandings of how the community fits into the whole,  where the 
individual or community belongs or feels stability, and what sorts of social interactions and 
relationships characterise the community in that space. I’ll provide an analysis of where 
Brisbane’s Jewish places were and are, and how they got there.  
[SLIDE SWITCH] 
In this I’ll take us through four key phases – the initial post-statehood establishment, the 
conception of a North-South Brisbane divide in the early 1900s, the suburban creep of the 
post-World War II era, and the new mass migrant settlements of the last 30 years. I’ll 
conclude with some views on contemporary ideas of place and space in Brisbane’s Jewish 
community. 
 
 
Initial Post-Statehood Establishment 
[SLIDE SWITCH]Brisbane’s Jewish history begins in the mid-1800s, when Queensland 
declared separation from New South Wales and a half-dozen Jewish families move north to 
establish homes and businesses in the new colony. On March 4th 1865, the Brisbane Courier 
ran a short classified advertisement, calling for “members of Jewish community to attend a 
meeting to take into consideration the necessity of forming a Congregation in Brisbane.” 
This public declaration of the intent to form a congregation is the first establishment of a 
Jewish place within Queensland, a negotiated space for the performance of social 
interactions particular to the conduct of Jewish life within a British Christian mainstream 
society.  
In settlement geography theory, the establishment of homes and businesses is key in the 
development of the settler society, as places where life is sustained and wealth is generated 
for financing the construction of the civic and religious institutions of the city. Moreover, the 
prominence of a group’s homes and businesses in the city is an ostentatious display of that 
group’s status and presence. Many of Brisbane’s early Jews built grand homes, especially in 
the city’s elevated areas like Spring Hill and Wickham Terrace. They built businesses, 
attaching and distinctly displaying their Jewish names on their shopfronts and factories, like 
the Myers & Co glass depot in Queen Street, and Benjamin Brothers in Elizabeth Street.  
With the bold promotion of Jewish names on buildings and businesses, the community 
proclaimed a strong Jewish place in the budding Brisbane commercial sphere.  
From this point, the early congregation spent the next 20 years in complex negotiations to 
build itself a synagogue. The negotiation of space for the synagogue building speaks 
significantly to the complex nature of the community’s ideas about their establishment of 
place and their settlement of the city. Initially, temporary rooms were taken at the Bulcock’s 
Building in Queen Street, and then from 1870 in a small purpose-built structure on the 
grounds of Aubigny, the grand North Quay home of local Jewish businessman Samuel Davis. 
However, the community soon outgrew that facility both physically and psychologically, 
with several members of the organizational board lobbying for “a more capacious edifice” 
by the mid-1870s. Two river-front properties at the North end of George Street were 
offered up as potential sites, but both rejected as the area had previously housed a burial 
ground and was both religiously improper and economically undesirable. Finally, a site was 
purchased on Margaret Street, at the South end of George Street, in an area which was not 
particularly developed in the 1880s. [SLIDE SWITCH] 
The congregation’s aim, to “raise a permanent testimony of the existence of Judaism in the 
city” had high visibility in the area due to its size and impressive architectural style. The 
synagogue construction functioned as a metaphor for the settlement of Jewish place in the 
city – a proudly Jewish institution, ostentatiously displaying the wealth of its community, 
standing strong in the far reaches of the civilised world. 
Early 1900s – North-South Brisbane Divide 
[SLIDE SWITCH]In anthropologist Doreen Massey’s seminal work on place and space, she 
establishes that communities suffer a distinct psychological disorientation in their 
understanding of their “place” when there is an arrival of “Others”, as it changes the specific 
set of social interactions already established within the space. This is exactly what happened 
in Brisbane in the early 1900s when the first ships of Russian and Eastern European Jewish 
people began disembarking in Brisbane from China, having fled the pogroms and oppression 
of the Russian regime. Since the 1860s, most of Brisbane’s families had been of Anglo-
Jewish or German Jewish backgrounds, sharing similar positions with regard to religious 
practice, language, food and middle-class professions. These newcomers, however, were 
different. The new Russian arrivals spoke only Yiddish, ate unfamiliar dishes, prayed in 
different ways and took working-class positions. Although both groups were Jews, and by 
1911 altogether only numbered about 400 out of the 145,000 Brisbanites, anecdotally the 
groups were all but irreconcilably different. Although in the same space, each group had a 
different paradigm of Jewish place in the city, with different social interactions and 
relationships with each other and with other parts of Brisbane society. A renegotiation was 
inevitable – to make room for each group’s conceptualisation of place, there needed to be 
two spaces.  
Fortunately, by this point, Brisbane city had expanded from the original boundaries of 1865, 
especially across the Brisbane River to South Brisbane with the construction of the Victoria 
Bridge in the 1870s. Property was cheaper, and there was already an established Russian 
community in South Brisbane. The new Russian and Eastern European Jews were drawn to 
the Buranda and South Brisbane area, and quickly made the space into their Jewish place by 
reproducing the social interactions and institutions of their former home, speaking Russian 
and Yiddish on the street and filling the air with the smells of traditional cooking.  
[SLIDE SWITCH] 
The Russian Jews also built a synagogue – however, the rationale behind their selection of 
location reflects a very different mindset with regards to establishment of place. Eastern 
European Jews historically lived in shtetls – ghettos imposed on them by a succession of 
oppressive rulers in their host countries. All of Jewish life happened inside the small space of 
the shtetl – homes, businesses, schools and synagogues all crammed in next to each other, 
and the prohibition on Jews settling outside their prescribed settlements meant that 
generations of Eastern European Jews remained their whole lives in one small place. Upon 
relocation to Brisbane, for the Eastern European Jewish community, settlement meant 
making their own shtetl where their Jewish lives could happen all together in one small 
place that was clearly their own. Their synagogue, built on Deshon Street in Woolloongabba 
in 1915, was located on a street where nearly every house had Jewish occupants, and where 
each street and lane for several blocks in either direction housed several Jewish families and 
businesses. So in the Brisbane and South Brisbane Jewish congregations, there are clearly 
two different groups, two different spaces, and two different ways of negotiating place 
within greater Brisbane – one declaring power and position and prominence in society, the 
other upholding cultural difference as its major identifier.  
South Brisbane grew rapidly following the First World War, as did the Jewish community in 
the area. They arrived in great numbers following the Russian Revolution: comparing the 
1911 and 1921 Jewish populations of Brisbane shows an increase of almost 100 percent.  
[SLIDE SWITCH] 
Events in Russia triggered local feelings in Brisbane, culminating in the 1919 Red Flag Riots, a 
series of violent protests and attacks on Russian institutions, businesses and individuals, 
suspected of socialist views. This included the Deshon Street Synagogue, which was 
surrounded by a blockade of police and local Jewish residents for its protection. The South 
Brisbane Jewish community were quick to publicly declare their difference from the 
Bolsheviks and their allegiance towards the British Empire. This provides an excellent 
example of Doreen Massey’s theory of place being changeable and renegotiable at different 
historical times and situations. Although the community’s occupied space doesn’t change, 
their interpretation of their place within the wider Brisbane community becomes more 
mainstream and less aligned to Russian characteristics, behaviours and institutions.  
The two Brisbane Jewish populations – North and South – continue as staunchly separate 
places through until the late 1930s. The small size of the Jewish population across the city 
did encourage some joint social interaction, particularly amongst young people, however 
the marriage records of the time show there’s not a great deal of intermarriage between 
the two communities until the mid-1930s.  
[SLIDE SWITCH] 
Into the Suburbs – post-WWII 
During the Second World War and the years immediately afterwards, the population of 
Brisbane swelled, as in most major Australian cities, with the arrival of European immigrants 
and refugees. The Jewish community in particular saw the arrival of a significant number of 
Jewish families who either fled Germany through Shanghai before the war commenced, or 
who had escaped the Shoah and arrived after liberation. These new groups established 
themselves in more affordable suburbs particularly New Farm and Clayfield in the inner 
North. The new arrivals came with local sponsorship in many cases, and came from Western 
European centres which shared the social interactions, customs and patterns of the 
established community, and this helped them to fit into existing Jewish communal life. 
Many of the new arrivals were highly educated, especially in their religious education, and 
added to the community’s interactions by teaching Jewish religion and culture to children, 
promoting and supporting local Jewish intelligentsia, and providing a multitude of religious 
ritual and social services.  
[SLIDE SWITCH] 
The newcomers also established many businesses in the local New Farm precincts, as well as 
their homes Although the suburb of New Farm had an established Jewish population from 
the early days of the community, the community established a sense of real Jewish place in 
this space post-war with the increased performance of commercial, religious and cultural 
interactions there – so much so that even amongst the general population, New Farm had 
earned the nickname “Jew Farm” by the 1970s.  
[SLIDE SWITCH] 
Further north, Clayfield also became a centre for new arrivals, developing from the clay pits 
of the early 1900s to a substantial residential and business area by the 1950s. The 
Queensland Headquarters of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association were moved from the 
more expensive inner city and re-established in 1951 in Clayfield, closer to the homes of 
many of the active members, and with more room for larger social functions for the growing 
population. This space was heavily used by the community for social interactions and 
functions until its forced closure in the late 1950s, and although the club was gone, the 
population remained. 
[SLIDE SWITCH] 
New Immigrants, New Settlements – 1970s onwards 
Jumping forwards to the 1970s, although the community had grown significantly from its 
north-south geographical boundaries of the early 20th century, the philosophical divide in 
the Jewish community between north and south remained in many ways. Even though the 
two communities had intermarried significantly by the 1970s, they still maintained their two 
separate places in the city surrounding their separate congregations. This is particularly 
evident in the aftermath of the 1976 fire which burned down the South Brisbane synagogue, 
when amalgamation was discussed. The two groups had relatively small membership 
numbers, and only one synagogue between them.  The boundaries of space had changed by 
now, and most South Brisbane congregants no longer lived in the original Woolloongabba 
area inhabited by their congregation’s founders. On paper, amalgamation of the two groups 
made sense. However, the South Brisbane group voted to retain independence and built a 
new synagogue in Greenslopes in 1979. The sense of a Jewish place in South Brisbane, 
separate in spirit from the Margaret Street Jewish place, prevailed strongly enough that 
amalgamation was not seen as a natural move for the community. The construction of the 
new South Brisbane synagogue in brick brutal-style architecture, quite apart from being 
fireproof, makes for an appropriate metaphor for the South Brisbane Jewish community’s 
determination to keep this separate place.  
 [SLIDE SWITCH] 
From the 1970s, new waves of immigrants arrived in Brisbane’s Jewish community, 
refreshing its population and changing its dynamics. A significant push into the Western 
suburbs began in the 1970s, particularly amongst young people around the University of 
Queensland in St Lucia following the availability of free university studies. These students 
became young families, and by the mid-1980s had such a strong community in the Western 
suburbs that they created the Gan Gani Kindergarten to fill their need for a Jewish place for 
their children in the area. They were also joined by many new South African Jewish 
immigrants, who were drawn to areas like Kenmore, Indooroopilly and St Lucia which 
already had significant British African expatriate communities.  
[SLIDE SWITCH] 
Two new community institutions were also established in the 1970s. Both are interesting as 
they stand firm as Jewish places without surrounding Jewish geographical spaces about 
them, unlike the other Jewish places in Brisbane at their inceptions. The first, Temple 
Shalom liberal congregation, was established in 1971 as the first non-Orthodox religious 
group in the city. They gathered in numbers for both religious and social interaction at their 
synagogue in Camp Hill; however, the suburb of Camp Hill has never had any significant 
Jewish population, either in the 1970s or now. Likewise, the Jewish Communal Centre was 
established on the outskirts of Mt Gravatt in 1975, where again there was almost no Jewish 
population in the suburb, although the community was somewhat connected to the area 
through the presence of a Jewish chapel and memorials at the local Mt Gravatt cemetery. 
From documentation of the period, it appears to have taken no small amount of effort by 
community bodies to encourage the community to the tipping point of realisation of the 
space as a natural place for the community. However, by focusing on becoming a space for 
community relationship, social interaction and cultural activities shared within the 
community but foreign to the mainstream, the Center did manage to establish itself as a 
place of Jewish stability within the wider city. The site later also provided space for the city’s 
sole Jewish primary school, Sinai College, and only Jewish retirement home, adding an extra 
element of intergenerational linkage, lifespan caring, and  educational and social 
interactivity, all of which strengthen the understanding of a continuum of belonging and 
place in that location.  
[SLIDE SWITCH] 
Brisbane’s Jewish Places and Spaces Today 
Today, Brisbane’s Jewish community is as widespread as the city itself. The most recent 
census figures show the Jewish population spread from North to South and East to West, 
with the largest population in the Western Suburbs, followed by the South, the North, and 
the smallest in the Eastern Suburbs. Some of the old centres of Jewish residential 
population, like New Farm and Clayfield, still have many Jewish homes and families. Others, 
like Woolloongabba, South Brisbane, Fortitude Valley, Spring Hill and central Brisbane no 
longer have many (or any) Jewish residents, as these central spaces have been repurposed 
from residential to commercial zones over the years. However, with the exception of the 
second South Brisbane Hebrew Congregation shul, the Jewish communal places of the city 
remain the same – the school and community centre, the synagogues and the kindergarten 
are all in the same location today as they have been for most of their existence.  These 
facilities are all used by Jews from all over the city – increased mobility has meant that claim 
on these places is no longer necessarily based on proximity but on a real sense of feeling 
belonging and stability there. Children attend Sinai College from suburbs over an hour’s 
drive away. Brisbane Hebrew Congregation members living in the outer suburbs book inner-
city hotel rooms for the major holy days to walk to Synagogue the way their grandparents 
did. Families drive from all over the city to celebrate festivals and events at the Communal 
Centre. There has also been an increasing worldwide trend of performing Jewish culture in 
public places since the early 21st century which has found its way to Brisbane, with public 
spaces becoming temporary Jewish places like the six metre tall menorah in the city centre 
every Hanukkah, with an accompanying festival. Coming full circle from the initial 1865 
meeting staking out a special Jewish place to settle in the city, the new public events state 
that, while the community has its spaces, its schools and houses of worship, its place is as 
part of a wider Brisbane society, contributing and sharing in the city it has made its home 
while remaining proud in its Jewish character.  
[SLIDE SWITCH] 


A Settlement geography of Jewish Brisbane

http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:381188/UQ381188_OA.pdf

A Settlement geography of Jewish Brisbane

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