Post Office Square Brisbane: The History Beneath the Square

Post Office Square Brisbane is a public square connected with the former Brisbane Gaol, the Female Factory, Dundalli’s public execution and the 1942 Battle of Brisbane. It sits between Queen Street and Adelaide Street in the Brisbane CBD, so a familiar city stop becomes a very different place when you know what happened on this site.

What is Post Office Square Brisbane?

Post Office Square is a 3,300 m2 public square in Brisbane, Australia. Its significance comes from the specific history attached to this site: the square occupies the former site of the Brisbane Gaol and is associated with several important stories from Brisbane’s colonial and wartime past.

What happened at Post Office Square?

Post Office Square brings together stories of imprisonment, Aboriginal resistance and conflict between Allied troops. The site is associated with the Female Factory, a women’s prison constructed here in 1829, and with the public execution of Dundalli at the former Brisbane Gaol site in 1855.

The square also connects to the Battle of Brisbane. In 1942, the streets around this site became the setting for a conflict between Australian soldiers and American troops in Brisbane. To see the Female Factory account as part of the wider colonial story, visit the Brisbane convict and colonial route. For the accounts of Dundalli and the Battle of Brisbane, visit the Brisbane murder and mystery route.

Who was Dundalli?

Dundalli was an Aboriginal Turrwan, meaning a lawman and great leader in the Yuggara language. He was a key figure in resistance against the violence and injustices faced by Aboriginal people during early European settlement.

Dundalli was arrested in 1854 and sentenced to death. On January 5th, 1855, executioner Alexander Green, a former circus performer from Sydney, led him across the road to the gallows in Anzac Square from the former Brisbane Gaol site. A ceremony is held at Post Office Square every January 5th. The story of Dundalli’s final words remains part of the account preserved by the Brisbane murder and mystery route.

What was the Female Factory?

The Female Factory was a dedicated women’s prison constructed at this site in 1829. There were originally no female convicts in the Brisbane settlement until three arrived in 1827, but their numbers grew quickly.

The Factory held women transported to Australia for petty crimes who had since reoffended. The surviving account also describes women who had been abandoned by their husbands, left destitute or forced into prostitution. The Factory eventually held around 144 women. You can visit the site through the Brisbane convict and colonial route, which introduces this history at Post Office Square.

What was the Battle of Brisbane?

The Battle of Brisbane was a 1942 conflict between Australian soldiers and American troops in Brisbane, rather than between Australian forces and an enemy army. The streets around Post Office Square became part of the setting as tensions grew between the troops.

The source describes differences in pay and supplies, American access to luxury goods such as chocolate and cigarettes through the PX, wartime rationing, cultural clashes and relationships between American servicemen and Australian women. On Thanksgiving night, November 26th, a scuffle outside the PX sparked an all-out riot. Visit the Brisbane murder and mystery route to encounter this account at the square.

Next time you pass through Brisbane’s CBD, visit Post Office Square and look at it through these specific stories. Then visit the convict and colonial route for the Female Factory history and the murder and mystery route for Dundalli and the Battle of Brisbane.