The corner of Dornoch Terrace and Hardgrave Road doesn’t look like a terminus now.
Asphalt, a raised red median through the middle, white dashed lines, a guide sign across the way, wires between timber poles. Torbreck, the white tower, above the maroon corner building.
Around 1917 a twelve-bench tram car stood here: the West End terminus, photographed for the State Library. The line came down Hardgrave Road to Ganges Street in 1897; the Dutton Park line passed the top of Dornoch Terrace from 1901. Before the trams, horse omnibuses; after, from the 1920s, a private bus to a Dornoch Terrace terminus known as the 29, later the 192.
The trams stopped on 13 April 1969. The rails came up. What’s left is the opposite of a terminus: a median built to slow cars down, not to send anything on.
Four vehicles have used this ridge. Horse bus, tram, bus, car. Three are gone or changed; the fourth is being asked to slow. The road stayed, and it was here first, as an Aboriginal pathway along the crest. The corridor outlasted every vehicle.
The corner’s real question isn’t where the tram went. It’s what survives a terminus: the line, not the car. #highgate-hill #brisbane #tram #place
Image courtesy State Library of Queensland
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