Location: Beenleigh, Queensland, Australia
Description: By the early 1870s, Beenleigh was growing from a small, close-knit farming community to a flourishing rural centre that required more than a small bush hotel, a general store and an unofficial post-office. The Queensland National Bank quickly opened a branch in a former hotel 'beautified with festoons of creeping plants', and blacksmiths, drapers and bakeries sprang up to cater for the more sophisticated demands of the district's planters, builders and labourers. The stores and other buildings were described as having 'a prosperous, natty appearance, owing possibly to the prevalence of sawn timber in their construction and to a liberal employment of the paint brush.' August Lee's pastry shop was located next door to the Beenleigh Hotel, erected by Michael Tansey in 1872..
View this image at the State Library of Queensland: http://hdl.handle.net/10462/deriv/9427