Norman Park in the 1950’s

This is another guest post from Michael Scott – a veritable gold mine of interesting bits and pieces of information about the history of our city.

Image sourced from Picture Australia

…first saw this when I was working for BCC and was startled to realise how recent this development was – this is Housing Commission houses in Norman Park in the 1950s – Norman Park is now considered a relatively inner suburb but the long rows of back yard dunnies looks like an old pattern of development in a newly developing suburb, so I initially thought it was a 19^th century photo. 

It wasn’t till I looked more closely at the houses and saw they were cheap post-war houses that the date made sense.  Of course it wasn’t till Clem Jones came along in the 1960s and half-sewered Brisbane that these earth closets made their way onto the back landings of the houses, as sewered toilets.