Happy Home Lodge
William Greg O’Neill founded the Queanbeyan Oddfellows Lodge, or to give it its full title: the Happy Home Lodge of the Manchester Unity Independent Order of Oddfellows, in 1856 and within six months, the head count of Odd Fellows in the Queanbeyan District was at least 60.1
To put it mildly there are still a few odd fellows living in Queanbeyan at the moment, so it is safer to write about the distant past than the present, when referring to the odd men that are part of our town.2
Building Boom
At the same time as the head count, land in Antill Street was purchased with the intention of building an Oddfellows Hall, but the building of a hall at that location did not proceed.3
Instead the Oddfellows continued to meet in a hired room at the Harp of Erin Inn, on the corner of Trinculo Place and Macquoid Street, which had alcoholic refreshments on hand to keep the Oddfellows in good mood after the meeting.4
During the late 1850s and 1860s there was a great building boom in Queanbeyan, which saw the completion of the first Queen’s Bridge across the Queanbeyan River (1858), a new Christ Church built on the corner of Balcome (now Corlett) Street and Rutledge Street (1860), a new Courthouse built on the Lowe and Monaro Streets corner (1860); and a new District Hospital built on the Antill and Balcombe (now Collett) Streets corner (1861).5
Free from servility
Errol Lea-Scarlet wrote in his book, Queanbeyan District and People that the Oddfellows Lodge
“gave the town its first touches of colour,” because it was, “a townsman’s affair, essentially a middle-class co-operative, effort free from the servility often evoked by the landed gentry. … and in 1857 it’s, processions and entertainments gave delight to everyone in the town”.6
In 1858 the Oddfellows Band waited in front of Mrs Lee’s Inn (now Bill Lilley Mitsubishi) on the corner of Crawford and Morrisset (sic) Streets, for their NSW Parliament representative, Terence Aubrey Murray, from Yarralumla, to lead the procession to the new and first Queen’s Bridge where Murray stood on a tree stump and spoke to about 200 people before he declared the bridge opened.7
A Wonderland for Alice
In 1861 Joseph Jones, of Goulburn but formerly of Queanbeyan, offered land in the West end of Monaro Street to erect an Oddfellows Hall.8
This offer was accepted and builder Daniel Jordan who had just completed the District Hospital was also a trustee for the Lodge drew up plans and won the contract to build the Oddfellows Hall.9
Alice, on the first Monday in August 1861, witnessed, or may have been part of the Oddfellows procession that left the Harp of Erin Inn, crossed the already rickety 1858 Queen’s Bridge and marched up Monaro Street to the West End where she laid the foundation stone on the site that was once Donoghoe’s Electrical shop and is now occupied by Elders Real Estate.
Alice’s surname was Hayley – she was the daughter of Doctor William Foxton Hayley, the first locally qualified doctor in the Queanbeyan District.10
Gold and population doubled
Mr Jordan, probably with extra help from the Oddfellows, finished the hall in three months and it was used officially on New Year’s Day 1862.11
Although the population of NSW doubled during the 1850s when immigrants from America, Europe and Asia flocked to NSW to find gold and thereby get rich quick, Queanbeyan did not have its own successful gold field and the nearby Braidwood, Auralen gold discovered in 1851 and in the 1860s the Captains Flat minerals and Kiandra goldfields did not have the predicted impact on Queanbeyan so its population grew more slowly, even so its population grew by 40% of mainly disappointed diggers.12
In 1838 the town of Queanbeyan had a population of 72 people.13
In 1851, 13 years later, the town of Queanbeyan’s population had increased by an extra 300 people (372).14
In 1861, ten years on, the town of Queanbeyan had increased by only 154 people, to total 526 people.15
In 1851 the population for the Queanbeyan District was 2,500 – ten years later, in 1861, it had increased by almost 50% (1,100) to a total 3,600 people.16
First Council Chambers
Queanbeyan is fortunate in having a collection of old photographs, which show what a visual and aesthetic achievement the Oddfellows Hall was for the town at that time, as well as being the last monument for the pioneer builder and architect Daniel Jordan, who died of blood poisoning the following year after a rusty nail had penetrated his foot.17
Photos show the Oddfellows hall with it’s triple arched entrance (the width of the building) leading into the open porch and then into the Hall itself – with two feet wide foundations it was built to last.
As well as meetings and suppers held in the Oddfellows Hall,18 it was also used as premises for the first Queanbeyan Penny Bank, a Public School,19 lectures on Astronomy and Federation, and offices and businesses like the present Real Estate and former Tom Donoghoe’s electrical shop.20
The Queanbeyan Borough Council used the Oddfellows Hall as the Council Chambers from 1885, which makes it of special importance,21 until the Council was relocated to the Masonic Hall in Crawford Street in 1899.22
Reconstruction
The Oddfellows Hall still exists in Monaro Street, Queanbeyan, but radically altered at the front and with the addition of a first floor it is now unrecognizable – but under Burra Charter 23 Heritage guidelines could be reconstructed and once again be an aesthetic addition to the town.24
END
Footnotes / Resources
1. Lea-Scarlett, Errol. Queanbeyan District and People, Queanbeyan City Council, 1968, p. 44.
2. Connee-Colleen, “Queanbeyan Outlook (149): Odd fellow,” The Queanbeyan Age July 18, 2008, p. 32.
3. Ibid. p. 44.
4. Ibid. p. 45.
5. Ibid. p. 37-53.
6. Ibid. p. 44.
7. Ibid. p. 39.
8. Ibid. p. 45.
9. Ibid. p. 45.
10. Ibid. p. 45.
11. Ibid. p. 45.
12. Ibid. pp. 86-90; p. 59.
13. Ibid. p.41.
14. Ibid. p. 45.
15. Ibid. p. 45.
16. Ibid. p. 45.
17. Cross, Rex L Bygone Queanbeyan – Revised Edition. Queanbeyan Publishing Company, 1985, p. 93.
18. Lea-Scarlett. pp. 39-45, 107-108, 121, 123, 129, 149, 216
19. Cross, pp. 3, 6, 58, 93.
20. Sheedy, PB. (BEM) & EA Percy. Monaroo to Monaro – History of Monaro Street 1830s-1995. Queanbeyan City Council, 1995, pp. 114, 118, 122, 154, 196.
21. Lea-Scarlett p. 216.
22. Ibid. p. 216.
23. Burra Charter: The Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance, 1999. ISBN 0 9578528 0 0. Print copy of Burra Charter: <www.icomos.org/australia>
24. Burra Charter: Article 20: Reconstruction, p. 7.
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