Qualla: Redcliffe Peninsula

Redcliffe Peninsula: Introduction

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Three small boys stood on the back of a truck as it circled the dirt track at Redcliffe Speedway, singing into the noise of the engines while spectators flung coins onto the ground. Whatever the brothers could grab from the dust between races was theirs to keep. The eldest was Barry Gibb; the twins were Robin and Maurice. Within a decade they would be the Bee Gees, selling records by the hundred million. But it started here, on this flat thumb of land jutting into Moreton Bay, where the sea breeze never quite stops and the red cliffs that gave the place its English name still catch the light at the water's edge.

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Image: Public domain

Redcliffe Peninsula: The First Settlement That Wasn't

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit United Kingdom Hydrographic Office, Public domain. On 17 July 1799, the explorer Matthew Flinders landed here from the sloop Norfolk at half past ten in the morning and named the spot Red Cliff Point for the rust-coloured cliffs facing the bay. A quarter-century later, in 1824, the colonial authorities chose this shore for a new ...

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Image: United Kingdom Hydrographic Office | Public domain

Redcliffe Peninsula: Humpybong: The Dead Houses

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. This is Ningy Ningy and Turrbal country, and it was Aboriginal people who named what the Europeans left behind. Looking at the deserted settlement, they called the empty buildings 'oompie bong', from words meaning shelter and gone, vanished, dead. Anglicised over time to Humpybon...

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Image: Public domain

Redcliffe Peninsula: How Three Brothers Found Their Sound

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Seo75, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Gibb family arrived from England in August 1958 and settled at Redcliffe. The boys sang to make pocket money, and a speedway promoter named Bill Goode put them to work entertaining the crowd between races, often from a moving truck circling the track. The group's name has a t...

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Image: Seo75 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Redcliffe Peninsula: A Town Built on Bridges and Saltwater

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit StormcrowMithrandir, CC BY-SA 4.0. For most of its life Redcliffe was an island in all but name, reachable from Brisbane only the long way around until 1935, when the Hornibrook Bridge first strode across Bramble Bay. Better bridges followed, and in 2010 the Ted Smout Memorial Bridge opened at 2.7 kilometres, amon...

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Image: StormcrowMithrandir | CC BY-SA 4.0