Hemmant State School is a heritage-listed state school at 56 Hemmant–Tingalpa Road, Hemmant, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It was built from 1876 to 1930s. Its architects included Francis Drummond Greville Stanley. It was also known as Bulimba Creek School and Doughboy Creek Mixed School. On its grounds is the historic house Dumbarton, also known as Ashcroft House and Gibson House. The original Hemmant State School closed at the end of 2010, and in 2012 was replaced by the Hemmant Flexible Learning Centre, a new school targeted at students disengaged from mainstream education. The school buildings and structures were added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 4 September 2003.
History Hemmant State School was established in 1864 as the Bulimba Creek School (non-vested). It contains several generations of public works buildings that were built as the community at Hemmant expanded and developed. The oldest remaining building was erected in 1876, to a design by Queensland Colonial Architect, Francis Drummond Greville Stanley. The Playshed was added in 1884. The house known as Dumbarton, which was relocated from another Hemmant location to the school site in 2001, was built probably in the 1870s or early 1880s and local opinion attributes its construction and occupation to the Uhlmann and Gibson families. The Uhlman family was significant in the area as local butchers, milkmen and storekeepers, while the Gilson family were significant in the development of the sugar industry in Queensland.
Hemmant was originally known as Doughboy Creek and the first land sales took place in 1858. Non-indigenous settlement in the area commenced the following year when the Franklin and Popham families migrated in the same ship and took up adjacent pieces of land at Hemmant. English, Scottish, Dutch and German migrants followed and established farms. The soil was easy to clear and fertile, and the first crops were vegetables and fruit, which were transported up the river to Brisbane until the construction of the bridge over Bulimba Creek in 1870 made road transport possible.
In 1863 William Gibson and his son Angus arrived in Moreton Bay and settled at Hemmant. The remainder of the family followed in 1864. In 1866 William Gibson obtained cane cuttings from Louis Hope at Ormiston, which he planted at Hemmant, on a farm he called Clydesdale. Other farmers in the district also switched to sugar production. In 1868 William Gibson and Sons established the Clydesdale Sugar Mill, and by 1871 there were seven mills in the area. In the second half of the 1870s, however, drought and disease destroyed the crops repeatedly and sugar farming was moved further north. In 1883, the Clydesdale Mill was sold and the Gibson family began the move to Bingera at Bundaberg. The mill closed down the following year, and Hemmant returned to vegetable and dairy production.
Hemmant State School was opened on 9 May 1864 as Bulimba Creek School on a two-acre site. It was a non-vested school; the Department of Public Instruction supplied the teacher, Frederick Ffoulkes Swanwick, and the parents paid for the construction of the school, a shingled, weatherboard building, . Eighteen children enrolled during the first week and 74 by the following year, although the average attendance was only 32. By 1866 three classes were required. In 1866 the name was changed to Doughboy Creek Mixed School, to avoid confusion with the newly established Bulimba State School. It then became the Doughboy Creek Primary School (1869), Doughboy Primary School (1870) and Hemmant Primary School (1876). In 1873 a new teacher's residence was built.
Complaints by the teacher and parents about the condition of the school, which had been built entirely of pine and was now a dangerous, white ant-eaten shell, resulted in a detailed inspection by David Ewart in 1876. He recommended that a new school be built, with the residents again contributing to its construction. The building was a standard Public Works school design (Burmester, Pullar & Kennedy 1996 classification: B/T2), with verandahs on both front and back, designed by Francis Drummond Greville Stanley, the Colonial Architect. In 1884, a large open playshed was built to another standard Public Works design (Burmester, Pullar & Kennedy 1996 classification: B/T5). In 1897 the shingles on the school building were replaced with iron and in 1899 two new rooms and other improvements were made to the teacher's residence. In 1889, were transferred to the Railway Department to enable the construction of the Cleveland railway line, and in 1912 the Headteacher's residence was moved to the north of the railway line and more land was resumed to make an island platform closer to Hemmant Village. During the flood of 1893, much of Hemmant was submerged, including a popular tourist attraction known as The Aquarium. During the flood the men took refuge in the school while women and children were lodged in nearby buildings.
An open-air annexe (Burmester, Pullar & Kennedy 1996 classification: C/T9), by with verandahs on two sides, was built by AG Temperley for in 1915. It was equipped with canvas blinds to offer some protection from the weather. This was built with its front verandah adjoining and connected to the rear verandah of the existing building. In 1922 sash windows were installed to replace the blinds and the building was enclosed. In 1931 Mr AC Weedon was contracted to improve the residence, construct a teachers' room and install new earth closets for . The Teachers' Room was built on the front of the verandah of the previously open-air annexe. In 1939 the school residence was sold and a tennis court built on the site. An additional which adjoined the original school site was added to the school in 1951 to make a total of . In 1955 the schoolrooms were remodelled and a new classroom was built at the rear of the previous annexe. In 1961 major remodelling and additions took place at a cost of . Major changes which took place in these 1955 and 1961 remodellings included enclosing the verandahs, removing the front verandah of the original school, and dividing its large classroom into two. In 1980 the preschool was opened and in 1988 the tennis courts were cleared.
In 2001 a nearby house now known as Dumbarton was moved from 41 Hemmant-Tingalpa Rd, corner of Brand Street, onto the school site. Dumbarton was associated with the development of Hemmant as a farming community in the last quarter of the 19th century. Its original site was part of a 29-acre property alienated from the Crown by Friedrich Uhlmann and F Harz in 1859. In 1869 the land was subdivided and the Dumbarton site was transferred to Friedrich Uhlmann. In 1873 this land was further subdivided and one acre (including the Dumbarton site) was transferred to the Doughboy Sugar Company. In 1880 a mortgage was taken out against the property, possibly for improvements, which may have included construction of the house. In 1885 title to this property was transferred to Angus Gibson, then to Christof Uhlmann in 1888, thus returning to the Uhlmann family.
The Gibson and Uhlmann families were connected by marriage, William Gibson's daughter Margaret having married Frederick Uhlmann's son Christopher Frederick in 1876. Local sources, and descendants of the Gibson family claim that the house was built by Friedrich Uhlmann for the Gibson family, possibly as early as 1864. The first definite evidence of the house is in 1887, when it is marked on a Railways survey of the proposed route of the Cleveland railway line. In 1911 the house and land were bought by Henry Skiller who lived there until his death in 1955 when it was transferred to Alan Skinner, subdivided and sold to William and Elizabeth Ashcroft. The house fell into disrepair but was renovated in the 1990s.
In 2000 the Main Roads Department acquired the land to build a new road to the Port of Brisbane. Following representation from local residents, members of the Gibson and Uhlmann families and local historical organisations, the house was moved to the Hemmant State School site in April 2001. The name "Dumbarton" has been applied to the house only recently. Previously it was known as the Gibson House or the Ashcroft House. "Dumbarton" was named after the original home in Scotland of the Ashcroft family.
Hemmant State School closed on 31 December 2010. In 2012, the site reopened as the Hemmant Flexible Learning Centre, a new school targeted at students disengaged from mainstream education.
Description Hemmant State School is situated on a four-hectare site facing Hemmant-Tingalpa Road. The school uses only the northern third of the block. The remainder is separated by a fence and provides grazing for horses. The occupied portion is roughly equivalent to the original two acre site. The site slopes west/east and is partially levelled with a retaining wall above the playground. All principal area of heritage significance on this site is to the west, i.e. above, this retaining wall. This area includes the 1876 school, the 1915 open-air annexe and its extension, the 1931 teachers' room, the 1884 playshed, and Dumbarton House. These buildings and structures are arranged around a bitumened play area. To the west of the playshed is the toilet block, which is relatively recent and not of significance. To the east of the retaining wall and not included in the heritage register listing are the preschool, playground and shade cover, tennis courts and shelter sheds, a shade house, and three sheds.
The 1876 school is the building closest to Hemmant–Tingalpa Road. It is an asymmetrical, low-set, rectangular, timber-framed structure, , which has been divided into two classrooms. An enclosed verandah extends along the western side and into a walkway to the other school buildings. The walls are weatherboard except on the eastern wall where it is weatherboard on the southern section with more recent aluminium siding for the remainder. The stumps are concrete and the floor timber, although internally it is covered with carpet and linoleum. The roof is corrugated iron, slightly hipped and broader on the eastern side to cover the enclosed verandah section. The roof is straight on the western side but protrudes beyond the line of the building to shade the windows. There are two whirlybirds on the verandah portion of the roof. Each classroom has four banks of three hopper windows on the western side. On the southern wall there is a row of four casement windows topped by hoppers and protected by an awning in the classroom, and a hopper window on the enclosed verandah section. There is also a ventilation window into the ceiling space in the southern wall. On the eastern wall there are aluminium framed sliding windows above the aluminium cladding sections of the wall. Access to the building is via a parallel staircase, railed and posted, on the eastern wall, which leads to a landing which goes to an ante-room on the enclosed verandah. Internally the walls are primarily tongue and groove, vertically jointed boards, with fibrous cement ceilings, flat in the classroom and sloped in the verandah. The classrooms are divided by a wall with a sloping blackboard and white board on either side of French doors. Cupboards run under the black/white boards. The northern end of the enclosed verandah has a stove and sink fitted on the eastern wall. The northern end of the verandah leads to an enclosed walkway through to the other school buildings.