“Enclosure came and trampled on the grave
Of labour’s rights and left the poor a slave.” – John Clare
The land at Kurilpa Commons in West End was transformed by the Growing Forward community group during Covid in 2020. Over six years, volunteers created gardens, orchard, meeting space, and other community facilities on two blocks once intended as a launching pad for a bridge from Boundary Street across to the University of Queensland.
This was common public land used by the local community until it was transferred to Economic Development Queensland EDQ, a department set up for the benefit of developers in Brisbane. Like the small park beside it at the end of Boundary Street, the Kurilpa Commons site should have been transferred back to Brisbane City Council when the bridge became infeasible.
At 10:42 a.m. on 29 June 2026, the following message was posted to the WhatsApp group Save Kurilpa Commons:
“Get down to 250 boundary st to defend Kurilpa Commons. There are currently bulldozers on site.“
For the following 26 hours, the site was visited by well over a hundred people: commoners, assembled media, local residents, workers from the site next door, EDQ contractors digging post holes and erecting a fence, numerous police, police vans, fire and rescue people and even linesmen from Energex who took down the electricity lines to the side at 1-3 Dudley Street West End.
One of the board members of EDQ is developer Michael McNab, who has a conflict of interest because his company owns the adjoining luxury development, Lucia. Lucia was built on the site of the former affordable apartment building, Riviera.
The site became a thriving community hub and was featured on Gardening Australia. We held film screenings there about the history of the Maiwar (Brisbane River) and Queensland’s political past, including Tom Zubrycki’s Friends & Enemies, a documentary about the tumultuous industrial events surrounding the 1985 SEQEB in the shameless corruption of the National Party, a predecessor of the current LNP. government.
To excuse its bulldozing of the garden at the Kurilpa Commons, EDQ put out this thin veil of lies:
Noting the land has been illegally occupied in recent times, the fencing is a necessary element of returning the site to its owner, including facilitating the delivery of more homes.
Nine commoners exercising occupation of the space ‘as of right‘ were arrested and charged with trespass and obstruct police.
Someone placed this note on the Commons in the quiet aftermath of the arrests:
Is that how sentencing works, your honour?
“On 14 July 2026, eight of the nine commoners appeared before the Magistrates Arrest Court in Roma Street, Brisbane. I wrote this short note to the defence (there were nine charged in total, eight before the court yesterday):
Which magistrate did you get for the Commoners today? (Answer: Geoffrey Gunn). A $750 fine for climbing an avocado tree is pretty steep. Was the magistrate holding you responsible 🤔? Lecturing your client to consult you before committing crimes, really?!!? I wonder how much you will get for climbing a Poinciana tree tomorrow? Bigger tree, bigger fine.
The last commoner arrested spent 23 hours in a poinciana tree before a first responder on a crane ‘rescued’ they/them and took this last resistor to the Brisbane City Watch House.
Within minutes, workers began building fencing around one of the blocks and did so behind temporary fencing.
A couple of days later, I visited the site to find the gardens bulldozed and flattened, surrounded by fencing with a For Sale sign attached. The avocado tree was gone. The poinciana tree stood defiant alongside a box tree.
I do not know what became of the frog pond, the memorial to Zoë, one of the activists from KP Prison, or the other memorials, including the architect’s memorial tree.
The builders at Lucia had resumed their work, while surveyors were in the street determining the location of the sewerage lines. They had difficulty removing one of the metal inspection covers, which had rusted into place, possibly because this was where the floodwaters had reached during the 1974 Brisbane flood mixing sewerage with stormwater.
I wondered how long this development would last and remembered the words of Henry David Thoreau in Walden: “Heaven is not only above us in the sky, but at our feet.”
Postscript: The last of the commoners arrested was fined $850, with no conviction recorded. The Magistrate was Lewis Shillito, formerly employed by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service (Qld).
In sentencing, the magistrate said the commoner’s past protest actions spoke to their (implied good) character.
Long live the commons and their defenders!
Ian Curr
15 July 2026