Newstead Gasworks

Newstead Gasworks is a heritage-listed former gasometer at 70 Longland Street, Teneriffe, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It was built from 1873 to 1887. It is also known as Brisbane Gas Company Gasworks and Newstead Gasworks No.2 gasholder. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 24 June 2005.HistoryThe Newstead Gasworks was established in 1887, as the second Brisbane gasworks. The surviving Newstead Gasworks No.2 gasholder (remnants) and guide framing was erected at that time and was probably moved from the original gas works site at Petrie Bight where it was erected in 1873.From 1861 to 1864, Brisbane's population more than doubled, to 12,551. In the mid-1860s, Brisbane's infrastructure blossomed, with construction of the first cross-river bridge, a new Brisbane Town Hall, a vastly improved water supply and its first gasworks. Commercial gas supply originated in London in 1812, Sydney in 1841 and Melbourne in 1856.The Brisbane Municipal Council was anxious to provide street lighting, for which gas was seen as the only feasible system. Earlier in the decade, the Colonial Government, supposedly for health reasons, refused permission for the Council to establish a gasworks on a site at Petrie's Bight. On the same site, however, in 1864, the Government authorised private enterprise to establish this new public utility. Central to these decisions was the Minister for Lands and Works, Arthur Macalister, then at the epicentre of friction between the Government and the Brisbane Council, friction which has erupted on several occasions ever since.