page_title: Cressbrook Homestead
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Cressbrook Homestead / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Homestead at Cressbrook Station, 1930 Cressbrook Station was owned by the McConnel family.
context_page_description: Cressbrook Homestead is a heritage-listed homestead at off Cressbrook-Caboombah Road, Cressbrook, Somerset Region, Queensland, Australia. It was built from 1841 to 1914. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992.
context_section_description: Cressbrook Homestead was constructed as the head station of the Cressbrook Run which was taken up by the McConnel family in 1841.
  David Cannon McConnel arrived in Sydney from Britain in February 1840 where he purchased sheep and started searching for a suitable pastoral lease. His search took him northward to the Moreton Bay region recently opened for selection after the closure of the penal colony. After this event, many eager British immigrants, including the Leslie Brothers, Wickham, the Bigge Brothers and John Balfour were selecting land in the Moreton Bay area. McConnel pressed northward past the rich Darling Downs into the Brisbane River Valley which became the next centre of pastoral development after land on the Darling Downs was fully selected. The Brisbane River Valley was explored by both Cunningham and Patrick Logan in the late 1820s and many squatters took up land in the early 1840s.
  On 15 July 1841 David McConnel took up 240 square miles of land in the Valley, with the Brisbane River and a creek running through. David McConnel was the son of James McConnel who founded a machine making company in Manchester after which, in 1835, he became the owner of the long established and Cressbrook Mill in Derbyshire where lace thread was produced. It was here that the McConnels established their family home and it was to commemorate this place that David McConnel named his Australian property and the creek running through the property. Within one year, Francis and Frederic Bigge established the adjoining Mount Brisbane Station and six months after this John Balfour took up land on the other side of Cressbrook for his station, Colinton.
  McConnel established Cressbrook as a sheep farm but found the land more suitable for Shorthorn cattle which were introduced by 1845. He constructed a timber slab house in 1841 but because the location was deemed unsuitable another two-roomed slab house was constructed with verandah overlooking the Brisbane River to the north. Two Bunya pine trees were planted by McConnel at the west end of this verandah. The slab hut and one of the Bunya pines survives to this day; the hut now forming the eastern wing of the principal house.
  David McConnel returned to Britain in 1847 where he married Mary McLeod of Edinburgh on 25 April 1847. Mary's parents were against the pair returning to Australia and therefore the newly weds settled in Nottinghamshire, though financial difficulties at Cressbrook, which had been left in the hands of managers, necessitated their return in 1849. They returned aboard Chaseley, one of the three boats chartered by the Rev. Dr. John Dunmore Lang for the transport of Presbyterians to the new colony of Queensland. Having arrived, David and Mary McConnel settled in Brisbane, establishing the house, Toogoolawah (now known as Bulimba House).
  On 1 January 1851 David McConnel's brother, John McConnel, joined in partnership with his brother and they purchased Durundur Station, previously belonging to the Archers, who moved to the Burnett region. In 1851 the McConnels owned 400 cattle and 10,000 sheep on both of the Brisbane River Valley properties.
  David McConnel returned to England with his seriously ill wife in 1854 and they did not return to Cressbrook until 1862, when the partnership between David and John McConnel was dissolved with John McConnel taking exclusive rights at Durundur and David maintaining the ownership of Cressbrook. Upon David and Mary's return to Cressbrook extensive alterations were made to the slab hut, which was from an early date known as the House, to distinguish it from the Cottage which was built nearby. This addition to the House comprised the construction of a timber section, two storeyed in part and generally larger in scale than the wing to which it was abutted. A kitchen wing, another timber slab building, was added to the south of the House.
  As well another residence was constructed at Cressbrook, the previously mentioned Cottage which was built further west of the House and overlooking the Brisbane River and adjacent flood plain. The Cottage was
caption: Homestead at Cressbrook Station, 1930
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