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| All Listings in Chronological Order
1970-1979 Hints on Restoring your Old Home. Pat on the back awards. Mackay Heritage Listed Buildings and Landmarks.
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I have created this site to document the demolition of Mackay's built heritage as a lasting reminder to a past that will be forgotten. It is important for a community to save its building heritage for the community to have a sense of belonging and a link between the old and the new. As many travellers would know many overseas communities treasure their building heritage and for instance some communities streetscapes have changed little in hundreds of years. Mackay was first settled in 1862 and being located in a tropical area of Australia the early buildings were mostly made of timber and iron. The harsh weather extremes meant that these buildings would deteriorate quickly due to rot, termites or due to the wind effects of the Tropical Cyclone. Many of Mackay's early buildings were flattened in the Great Cyclone of January 20, 1918. Due to this event there are a lot of buildings in the Central Business District constructed after this date. Mackay has many buildings from the 1930's in the "Art Deco" style which is unique for a Queensland city. My concerns really started about two years ago when I looked at an aerial photograph in our museum taken in 1978 of the Mackay CBD. A couple of us stood around and studied the photograph and then said....."that is gone, so is that, that is not there anymore". In about 10 minutes we counted at least 30 buildings. Since then a conservative estimate puts the number of old buildings disappeared from the CBD in the region of 300+. Many of these had historical significance some did not. Two reports were commissioned by the Mackay City Council in 1994 and 1996 to look at Mackay's built heritage. The "Heritage Context Study for the Mackay City Council Planning Review" that was produced in July 1996 identified 110 buildings of heritage value in the Mackay CBD. since that time 20 have been demolished and a further 3 are under immediate threat of demolition as at June 2005. So you can see where my concerns lay. This report has never been implemented by the Mackay City Council. When I looked into it further I surveyed the number of heritage listed sites in Queensland with information from the Queensland Environmental Protection Authority. The are 16 sites listed on the Queensland Heritage Register for the Mackay City Council area. Mackay has the lowest number per capita of Heritage Place listed on the Queensland Heritage Register for any city proclaimed before 1930. Mackay has 16 places listed on the register or one for every 4,890 persons. The closest one to us is Bundaberg with one site per 3,020 persons. Others are as follows including Brisbane:
*per 2001 census ** per EPA website May 2005 Other Queensland communities are recognising the need to save their built heritage and are actively involved in helping their communities save their built heritage rather than slash and burn and put up brick and glass edifaces in their place with little stylistic merit but cheap to construct. This site will be updated regularly with news of demolitions as well as appreciation of efforts of community members restoring old buildings and/or homes who are actively involved in saving our built heritage. As a community unless we lobby our local, state and federal politicians to implement controls we will lose our sense of community. I need your support. Make it clear, I am not against progress or development. There has to be controls and not open slather. I only want to save a little bit of our history for future generations. Glen Hall
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