Antbed House is a heritage-listed detached house at South Street, Georgetown, Shire of Etheridge, Queensland, Australia. It was built . It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 26 November 1999.
History
The Antbed House was erected , probably as a mine manager's residence. It is the only surviving adobe house identified in North Queensland towns, and is constructed of bricks made of antbed from termite mounds. Antbed was used more commonly for floors, tennis courts, and mortar or to seal slab buildings, but rarely for bricks.
Georgetown was established as the township of Etheridge, following the discovery of the Overland Telegraph reef near the Etheridge River in 1870, and was renamed by the Mines Department in honour of the Etheridge goldfields first Gold Commissioner, Howard St George, who was appointed in 1872. Initially it was just one of several shanty town which mushroomed on the huge Etheridge goldfield following publication early in 1869 of geologist Richard Daintree's discoveries of gold on the Gilbert River. A rush began immediately, and by July 1869 there were 3000 men on the field. By late 1871, the township of Etheridge (Georgetown) had a population of 600, and emerged as the field's administrative centre. From the early 1870s, both the police and the mining warden (who usually was the police magistrate as well) were located at Georgetown; the town was serviced by the Bank of New South Wales and the overland telegraph from Normanton to Cardwell from 1872; and a state school opened at Georgetown in July 1874. Timber was scarce, and most of the buildings were constructed of timber frames clad with corrugated galvanised iron.
Georgetown was a mining township, subject to the Gold Fields Act of 1874, and sections 1 to 20 of the township of Georgetown were surveyed in mid-1874 by mining surveyor EA Kayser. His survey plan, dated 25 July 1874, indicates buildings already erected in the township, including structures outside of the surveyed sections. The Antbed House is not indicated on this plan.
The population and fortunes of Georgetown fluctuated in the 1870s, following the discovery in 1873 of the rich Palmer River Goldfield to the east of the Etheridge, and the Hodgkinson rush of 1876. However, by mid 1878 miners were returning to the Etheridge, and Georgetown settled into an administrative and commercial role, serving Etheridge pastoralists and a number of London-based mining companies. Between 1880 and 1900 Georgetown, with an average population of around 300, experienced something of a building boom, with a new court house, school, post office, and bank, and the hotels re-built as more substantial structures. These buildings were of timber and iron.
Increasing demand for Gold Field Homestead Leases at Georgetown resulted in a Mines Department survey of Sections 21 to 26 of the town of Georgetown, late 1888 early 1889, as residential allotments. The site of the Antbed House (allotments 1 and 2 of Section 22, parish of Georgetown, county of Gilbert) was included in this survey, and there is no indication on the plan, dated 1 February 1889, that there was any structure on the site at the time of survey.
In July 1889 application was made by the British mining company, the Goldfields of North Queensland Limited, for a Gold Fields Homestead Lease on allotments 1 and 2 of Section 22, at the corner of South and Haldane Streets, Georgetown. The area comprised , and at the time of the application, there were no prior claims to this ground. Lease No.257 was prepared by the Mines Department and forwarded to the mining warden at Georgetown in September 1890. It was delivered the same month to the applicant company but appears to have been returned to the mining warden in December 1890 by William Kirby, the new manager for The Goldfields of North Queensland Limited mining company.