Eulalia Traditional Geocache

Behind where you currently stand is the heritage listed villa Eulalia for which this cache is named after. Eulalia is a single-storied brick house which was constructed in 1889. The land on which the house stands was first bought by August Dimper who purchased 88 acres in 1860. In 1888, the land was further subdivided and 22 acres was purchased by Patrick Real

In the following year Real employed Brisbane architects, John Hall & Sons to design a house for the site and Morley Whitehead of Ipswich were subsequently contracted to build Eulalia, a Greek word meaning speaking well of everybody. At this period, John Smith Murdoch was employed in the office of John Hall and Sons and it is possible that he may have been the designer for Eulalia.

Patrick Real was the son of impoverished Irish emigrants and left school at twelve to become an apprentice carpenter and later to work at the North Ipswich Railway Workshops. After deciding on a legal career, he studied law and was admitted to the bar at the age of twenty-seven. By the time he built Eulalia in 1889, his practice was one of the largest in Queensland. Real was appointed to the Supreme Court of Queensland bench in 1890 and in 1903 he became Senior Puisne Judge. He retired in 1922 and died in 1928. The area around the property still bears several reminders of Patrick Real - Patrick St, Real St and Judge St are legacies of the man who became Queensland's Senior Puisne Judge in 1903.

After Real's death, the house was closed and left vacant for a decade during which time it fell victim to vandals and the weather, becoming known locally as the haunted house. Most of the land had been subdivided and sold by 1925 leaving a property of about 2.2 hectares surrounding the house.

In 1938 Eulalia was bought by Stanley and Sheilah Hancock who restored the property, discovering many items in the gardens where they had been discarded by vandals, and re-instating them in the house.

The Hancock family first arrived in Queensland when they moved from Sydney to Ipswich in the late 1850s. The family established a successful timber milling business which involved five generations of the Hancock family and continued until the late 1970s. Stanley Hancock was president of the National Trust of Queensland from 1974 to 1978. This was a period when a number of National Trust of Queensland properties were established including Bellevue Homestead, Claremont and Brennan & Geraghtys Store.

Whilst Eulalia was a family home for the Hancocks, they also used it as a venue for fundraising functions for a number of Brisbane charities.

This "public" use of Eulalia was further expanded in 1965, when the Hancocks established Early Street Historical Village in the grounds of Eulalia. The establishment of the Village is the earliest known example of the Queensland practice of creating "historical villages" by moving various buildings to one central site. It is therefore demonstrative of the development of conservation practice and theory in Queensland.

Early Street Historical Village closed in 1998 having reached "the end of its life in terms of public appreciation". The other buildings on the site were auctioned off; most were relocated to outer suburban sites for use as housing

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eulalia,_Norman_Park

Cache contains a log, pencil and prize for FTF.

THERE IS NO NEED TO ENTER THE GROUNDS TO RETRIEVE THIS CACHE.

STEALTH MAY BE REQUIRED AS THIS LOCATION CAN BE BUSY