Explore Buderim's hidden gem: Pioneer Cottage - a testament to the pioneers' resilience

by Bill Lavarack

An early image showing Campbell’s sugar mill in the foreground and J.K. Burnett’s house in the background. There appears to be no detached kitchen, but the brick oven is there. The large white building may be the barn.

Today Pioneer Cottage is Buderim’s museum and a major tourist attraction. It was built over 140 years ago, but what is its history? Under what circumstances did the Cottage’s original residents live?

In 1870 Charles Ballinger selected portion 64 on the recently surveyed Buderim. His son Thomas John had portion 57 which stretched from the present Ballinger Road to the present Crosby Hill Road.

TJ built a house named ‘Clifton Cottage’ near the site of the present Tavern. In 1876 John Kerle Burnett arrived on Buderim followed soon after by his wife Ann and four children (the family was later to grow to eight children).

J.K. commenced work at the recently established Dixon and Fielding sugar mill on Mill Road. They rented the house built by Tom Ridley near the corner of Box Street.

Burnett family in front of the house about 1890.

John Kerle Burnett.

In November 1878, John Kerle and his wife purchased 20 acres (eight hectares) of land, part of portion 49, parish of Mooloolah, for £15, obtaining the deed of grant in March 1879. It was very different from what we see there today.

Today the house is surrounded by suburbia, but in 1882 most of the block would have supported tall forest probably with only a few acres cleared.

At that time there were less than twenty houses on Buderim with only three or four in the central part which is now the town centre. Initially JK planted sugar cane like everyone else, and planned to build a house.

Roads were rough at best and the only way for people to travel, or to import goods such as furniture or bulk supplies, was through the port of Mooloolah Heads. The ‘road’ to Brisbane was virtually impassable to wheeled vehicles.

There was no railway until 1891 when it reached Palmwoods and Woombye. There were no shops so the community had learned to be largely self-sufficient. Fortunately a provisional school had recently opened.

In 1882 JK, with the help of local builder Harry Board, built a house on his block. But that simple statement does not tell the story.

Firstly, he could not just go to the sawmill and buy pre-cut timber. Most of the timber to be used was still growing tall on the block or nearby. The walls, ceiling and floor were constructed from white beech, felled and pit-sawn into planks on the block. Red cedar was relatively abundant on Buderim and this attractive timber was used for doors and joinery such as window frames.

Hardwoods such as tallowood and flooded gum were used for bearers and the shingles for the roof were also tallowood. Imagine the work involved in making hundreds of shingles from the raw timber without any electrical tools.

The house was built to a simple design very popular at the time. ‘Pioneer Cottage’, as we see it today, looks much as it did in 1882. It was set on low stumps less than a metre from the ground.

There was a central corridor with two rooms on either side and it was surrounded by a wide, open verandah on all four sides. Part of the verandah was enclosed at a later date. Also at a later date, as the family grew, two attic bedrooms were added with a steep staircase leading up from the central corridor.

These attic rooms must have been very hot in summer. One family legend is that the children were permitted to avoid the summer heat by sleeping on the verandah when they grew to be as tall as the railing on the verandah.

Originally the four main rooms consisted of a parlour and the main bedroom on either side of the corridor at the front, and at the rear, a dining room and a bed room which was divided into two parts.

This image by Fred Mead was painted from memory and shows the house as he remembered it in 1910. A large kitchen building is shown attached to, or very close to, the rear of the house and incorporating the brick oven at the western end.

A very early image of J.K. Burnett’s house about 1883. Note – no detached kitchen, but brick oven is present.

A large brick oven used for bread baking was placed a short distance from the rear. Soon after the house was built a detached kitchen was added between the house adjacent to, or perhaps incorporating, the oven.

This building was more than just a kitchen, as it included a family room where most meals were taken, a large pantry and a maid’s room. The dining room was used for dinner on Sundays and special occasions. Having the kitchen remote with its wood-fuelled stove was an important insurance against fire. Local clay was used to make bricks for the fireplace in the dining room and detached kitchen and for the front steps.

Today a hot bath or, better still, a hot shower, is a pleasant part of everyday life. Things were very different in the late 1800s. There was no bathroom and family members took their weekly baths in a tin tub in the kitchen.

Father first – imagine being at the end of the pecking order! Of course the water had originally been fetched from a well at the rear of the house and warmed on the wood stove. Other bathroom facilities consisted of a jug and basin in the bedroom.

The toilet was a small sentry box down the yard over the top of a deep hole, complete with spiders and cut up newspaper, supplemented, of course, by a potty under the bed.

Nearby there were stables, a large barn, a buggy shed and a blacksmith shed. These were to the west of the house and now long gone. A long building west of the house, shown on the photograph taken from the sugar mill, may well be the ‘large barn’.

In the early 1900s the shingle roof was replaced by corrugated iron. The two rear corners of the verandah were enclosed and later also the part of the verandah between the corners. One corner today is the kitchen, the other the bathroom.

It seems likely these corners were originally enclosed to make bedrooms as the family grew, possibly in the 1890s, and put to their present use after the detached kitchen building was demolished in the 1930s.

In 1890 Buderim had a population of less than 250. One report gives the numbers for 1889 as ‘25 families and many labourers and 50 school children’. There was no power, no reticulated water or sewage.

There were no automobiles before about 1916. There was no store on Buderim before J.K. Burnett opened his general store in 1887.

Today we all recognise that the pioneers had it rough, but sitting in our comfortable living rooms in front of our television sets, with the bathroom not far away and the kitchen with its electric or gas stove, refrigerator and microwave even closer, do we really have any understanding of the lives the pioneers like John and Ann Burnett lived?

• Visitors Welcome. Buderim Pioneer Cottage is located at 5 Pioneer Crescent, Buderim. Open: Monday to Saturday from 11am to 3pm.