The Bonny View Hotel – or as it was once known, the Edinburgh Castle Hotel – in Bald Hills, 18 kilometres from Brisbane’s city centre, holds a special place in the suburb’s history.
Like many historic pubs in Australian cities and towns, The Bonny View’s story is intrinsically connected to the history of the area, which began as a settlement of mostly Scots emigrating to a new and very different life in Queensland.
To understand the pub’s history – and the crucial role the pub played in settlement towns – we need to know a little about Bald Hills.
Bald Hills, which takes its name from the two grassy hills that stood out from the surrounding bushland in the early days which were prominent landmarks, is one of the Brisbane’s most northern suburbs, divided in half by the Bruce Highway. The highway now effectively splits the suburb, with the “old” Bald Hills to the west of the highway and the “new” Bald Hills to the east.
Back in the mid-1800s, on virtually the same line as the present Gympie Road, was a cattle track developed by John Carseldine from Bald Hills to Kedron Brook.
Carseldine was named after the Carseldine family, who settled in Bald Hills in 1858. The family, which also owned land in the Carseldine area, opened the first store in Bald Hills in 1869.
Bald Hills, was for many years a staging post for Cobb & Co Coaches travelling between Brisbane and Gympie.
By the 1830s, the area was home to a large Scottish population who had emigrated in search of opportunities in a country they knew very little about.
By the early 1860s, the area was predominantly Scottish. Attracted by an offer of free passage and then a requirement to work for a settler for two years before a lease of land could be claimed and owned – shiploads of Scots arrived in the Bald Hills area.
The hot, dry weather and environment was about as different as it could have been for them. But by acquiring a piece of land which had been “gazetted” into what were called “Agricultural Reserves” – small blocks on which to build a house and plant some crops – a new life in Australia had begun.
These parcels of land were on the outskirts on Brisbane between Bald Hills and Sandgate, on the banks of the Pine River.
Two of the earliest families, the Stewarts and Duncans, cleared the surrounding slopes of the native hoop pine and established mixed farming enterprises.
Cobb & Co. travelled through the area from 1867 and train services began in 1888. The first mail service was delivered by Cobb & Co in 1872. It wasn’t until 1908 that Bald Hills had its first phone line.
A year after the Bald Hills post office was opened in 1871 Cobb and Co began a regular coach and mail service. Seventeen years later the North Coast railway began operation, which meant Bald Hills was within easier reach of Brisbane.
The Bald Hills Primary School, which dates to 1866, was the fourth school to have opened in Queensland. The early settlers were instrumental in encouraging the establishment of the school.
They naturally needed a school, but, like all early Australian settlement towns, they needed a pub.
In 1865 William Orr built the Bonny View Hotel, in Gympie Road, Bald Hills. It started life as the Edinburgh Castle Hotel, the name a nod to the area’s Scottish population.
According to Lost Brisbane, in 1885 Mr Michael Goodwin applied to take over the licence from William Orr’s son George Archibald Orr, however by 1888, as coaches were replaced by the new railway line to Gympie, the hotel fell into a state of disrepair and the license was revoked.
Later that same year, Mr Goodwin and wife Bridget applied for a license for a “new” Edinburgh Castle Hotel to be located on the corner of Gympie and Edinburgh Castle Roads at Kedron, construction of which was completed in 1892.
The original Edinburgh Castle Hotel in Bald Hills eventually reopened under the new name Bonny View, another nod to the Scottish heritage of the first settlers in the area.
An insight into the area can be found in an article in the Queensland Times in April 1885 about a meander through the region. “About a mile from the Bald Hills is a township of Strathpine, a hamlet of Scotchmen. From here I made various little excursions to farmhouses and the general complaint was that the times had been hard but without a single exception I found a hopefulness in all.”
The writer went past the Edinburgh Castle Hotel and described it as possessing an “emblematic spirit of the new age – the grandeur and better Edinburgh Castle Hotel. The long walk from Strathpine to Brisbane was recompensed by these fanciful associations of this embryo settlement of the district.”
Tragedy sometimes struck those associated with the hotel. In 1905 a young licensee, Mr Frank Goodwin, took a fall off his horse and sadly died. The Week newspaper of Brisbane noted that “Mr Frank Goodwin of the Edinburgh Castle Hotel, who was thrown from his horse in Gympie Road a few days ago, died at the General Hospital on Sunday.” The horse he was riding was “stumbling in the vicinity of Wallins Hotel, Gympie Road.” The paper said: “Mr Goodwin is a single man and is 30 years of age.”
Like all regional and coastal settlements, the hotel was an integral part of the town, a crucial meeting spot for settlers to find support, share stories, find out about opportunities. It was a place of connection, a place to get together to celebrate. In April 1894 The Telegraph of Brisbane noted “a social” was held at the Edinburgh Castle Hotel at which “the songs during the evening were many and good” and “the Clonke brothers gave a good exhibition of step dancing”. It went on: “Toasts were numerous” and “the proceedings were continued until the wee small hours.”