Redcliffe State High School buildings are a group of heritage-listed buildings at Redcliffe State High School on the corner of Klingner Road and Oxley Avenue, Redcliffe, City of Moreton Bay, Queensland, Australia. They were built between 1958 and 1962. They were added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 31 May 2019.
History
Redcliffe State High School opened in 1958 as the first state high school on the Redcliffe Peninsula. The school retains its seven original school buildings built between 1958 and 1962, which were designed by the Department of Public Works to provide abundant natural light and ventilation for optimal educational environments. These standard buildings are arranged on the site according to 1950s nuclear master planning ideals, providing outdoor courtyard assembly and play areas and retaining pre-existing mature trees. The complex includes three vocational training buildings, built between 1959 and 1962.
The Redcliffe Peninsula is part of the traditional lands of the Kabi Kabi people, and was briefly the site of the Moreton Bay penal settlement at Redcliffe Point (1824-5). For many years the Redcliffe Peninsula was known as "Humpybong" (dead house), the name the Kabi Kabi, gave to the abandoned convict settlement. A 23,000 acre (9302ha) Redcliffe Agricultural Reserve, which included the peninsula, was declared in 1861, followed by the sale of farm portions from 1862. Some coastal portions were subdivided for "marine villas" in the late 1870s-early 1880s, when the peninsula was promoted as a resort, but few subdivisions were actually occupied at this time. Steamers initially provided the main access to Redcliffe, with jetties constructed at Woody Point (1882) and Redcliffe Point (1885). By 1890 steamers were bringing 10,000 day-trippers and holidaymakers per year, although there were still only 352 permanent residents on the peninsula in 1891.
Redcliffe did not develop as a residential centre until road transport links improved. Anzac Memorial Avenue was opened from Petrie to Redcliffe in December 1925, and the population boomed after the Hornibrook Highway Bridge was opened in October 1935. The population of the Town of Redcliffe (declared in 1921) grew from 8,871 in 1947 to 18,000 in 1959, the year the City of Redcliffe was declared, and this strong growth continued into the 1960s. In 2008 the City of Redcliffe became part of the Moreton Bay Region, which was renamed City of Moreton Bay in July 2023.
The earliest school on the peninsula, the Humpybong Provisional School, opened in Clontarf in 1876. The Redcliffe Provisional School opened at Redcliffe in 1888. Humpybong State School opened in Margate in 1909. The peninsula's first private secondary school, Soubirous Convent School in Scarborough in 1951. However, the peninsula did not have a public secondary school for another seven years when Redcliffe State High School opened in 1958, followed by the opening of Clontarf Beach State High School in 1964. Although the Queensland Government had instituted a high school system in 1912, high schools remained few in number until after World War II.
The site of Redcliffe State High School was once part of Portion 226 of the Redcliffe Agricultural Reserve. By 1905 2.26ha of land at the northwest corner of this portion was a reserve for railway purposes. The North Coast railway line reached North Pine (now Petrie) in 1888. Despite a branch railway line to the Redcliffe Peninsula being proposed in the 1880s, it was not until 2016 that the Redcliffe Peninsula railway line was opened. In 1885, a 2-acre (0.8ha) Reserve for Post and Telegraph Office was surveyed in the northeast corner of Portion 226, with a 5-acre (2.0ha) Reserve for Police Purposes to its south. In 1936 the unused railway reserve was leased by Claude AM Reid, of Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary in Indooroopilly (now in Fig Tree Pocket), who opened a koala park and zoo on the site in October 1937. The former railway reserve and koala park was gazetted as a "reserve for a state school" in 1945. The government also acquired 6.5ha of the northern part of the showgrounds, opposite the school reserve and west of Oxley Avenue, in 1947 for a school sports ground.
Another decade passed before a high school was built. In 1954 it was reported that high school enrolments in Queensland had more than doubled since 1948, from 4,500 to nearly 11,000. An enormous demand for state education began in the late 1940s and continued well into the 1960s. This was a nation-wide occurrence resulting from immigration and the unprecedented population growth now termed the "baby boom".