Stage Number: MBSH.03.03.22
Group: Southern
Local Study Area: Bulimba-Balmoral-Hawthorne-Morningside
Epoch: Early 20th Century
Street Address: Keralgerie Park, Richmond Road, Morningside
Latitude & Longitude: -27.473,153.07913889
Time Link: 1915
Map Link: 1915
Image Time Point: 1915
The quarry was used post-World War I for bluestone, to meet the needs of providing roads in the growing suburbs. It could be a dangerous place. Victor Kelsey died after a fall there in 1933, and C. Callaghan died after an explosion in 1936. During the 1940s the quarry was filled with water and used by the local community for swimming and diving, including the 1948 Australian diving championships. The quarry waters, which were between 5-20 metres deep, gained the ominous local nickname ‘The Devil’s Pool’. Unfortunately, this name was well-earned as several people drowned in the quarry, including Edith Zeiner, aged 38, who drowned there in 1952, and two youths named William McKinnon and Victor Miller died the same way in the following year. After this, the Brisbane City Council fenced the pool off and banned swimming in there, and then the water was found to contain traces of typhoid anyway. It was then drained in and filled in, and today forms the site of Keralgerie Park.
Daily Standard, 1 July 1933, 9 January 1936, 31 December 1948; Brisbane Telegraph, 26 January 1952; Queensland Times, 16 November 1953.
Woman diving into the Morningside Quarry, Brisbane, 1949. John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland. Record number: 200227.
MLMS. 2 mile AG1 series 1906–1915—Moreton district. 2 Mile to the inch. Moreton 2 Mile map AG1 series sheet 2. AG1
