Williamina MowbrayPrint Page

The park commemoirates Williamina Mowbray, who was important in the early settlement of East Brisbane. Williamina, the wife of the Reverend Thomas Mowbray, died in 1890 at the age of 74. 

On 6 June 1888, the South Brisbane Town Council bought seven 14 perch lots on Mowbray Terrace between Northcote and Heidelberg Streets for a public reserve in the new suburb of Mowbraytown. The tiny park was unnamed until the mid 1990s when the Brisbane East Branch of the National Trust of Queensland petitioned to have it attractively landscaped and named Williamina in honour of Reverend Mowbray’s wife. Descendants of the Mowbray family attended the naming ceremony on 14 June 1997.
Mowbraytown Heritage

The Rev. Thomas Mowbray (1812-67) was born in Hamilton, Scotland, and arrived in Australia shortly after marrying Williamina Anderson (1818-90) in 1841. They moved to Brisbane in 1847 and he went on to be called the ‘Father of Presbyterianism in Queensland’, opening Brisbane’s first Presbyterian Church for public worship in 1851 in South Brisbane. In the late 1840s the couple purchased 11 acres of riverfront land, which is now the site of Mowbray Park, East Brisbane. Such was their local influence that the suburb of East Brisbane was once known as Mowbraytown.

In the 1880s, Williamina donated part of their land for the construction of the Mowbraytown Presbyterian Church, which still stands today as a heritage-listed structure.

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