Morgan’s Paddocks

Being a big landowner, the Morgan family had several paddocks in Albany Creek, one being the cattle resting yards adjacent to Keong’s Piggery (part of the Country Club Estate) and opposite O’Brien’s horse knackery (Allamanda Drive).
The main silo paddock was opposite the Police Station (Albany Vista). This paddock had the farmhouse, workers’ cottages, abundant water and the dominant feed silos (now Cistola Ct) and the camphor laurel lined Kingfisher Creek.
Arthur Morgan, one of the original Morgan’s tribe of 12 children, tells of the high set family homestead with living quarters upstairs and kitchen and eating areas on dirt floors under the house.
Whilst he was a student at Albany Creek school in the 1920’s and his farm duties included a weekly solo drive of fattened cattle from Albany Creek to the family sale yards at the Newmarket (this activity precluded attention to home work).
The weekly cattle drive was along Old Nothern Road. Longer term locals will recall the hazardous, dusty bush track from Keong Road to Everton Park in the 60’s. Old Northern Road has always followed basically the same route from Kelvin Grove/ Everton Park/ Albany Creek/ Samsonvale/ Wamuran.
To this day, Morgans hold the record as the biggest private employer in the short history of Albany Creek, with up to 70 on the pay roll.
Over the years, Morgans’ farms were the biggest local commercial enterprise, with pigs, chooks and cows, being an area for fattening and slaughtering for the Brisbane food market.
Others were Paterson and Wrucks poultry, Morgan, Barker and Keong meat abattoirs, McKenzie, Leitch, Wright, Cuthbert and Perrings’ milk production.
The silo paddock was owned for many years by the Reid Murray Group (a spectacular financial failure) and almost became a QUT campus (this was won by Carseldine). Morgans paddock (Albany Vista) was developed by news agent Lucky Ted Howard in the early 80’s with the estate bounded by Old Northern Road, Faheys Road, Kingfisher Drive and James Cash Court.
Up to the 1980’s, this great access route was the catalyst for the establishment of homesteads like Whiteside, Murrumba Downs, Griffin Station and Head Station. It was sealed after a local ALP meeting when the then, local Federal Member, Dean Wells, got Transport Minister, Pete Morris, into his red sports car and, hey presto!, after 10 Minutes of being chocked with dust, Peter Morris said, “I do”. It was sealed within six months.
What came out later was that a local branch members beat the open sports car to the unsealed section and created a thick pall of dust.
During my 9 years at Albany Creek school, my only formal school outing was a picnic to Morgan’s Paddock (a far cry from the annual Canberra trip of today). Our other trips were to Wooloowin State school for manual arts and swimming classes in the deep water hole at Leitchs Crossing.
If you have any old photos of the district in the earlier days, even the 70’s, you could please lend them to me for copying. These photos and yarns are part of our social history, that will be passed on to our younger generation.

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