Wallflowers: Canning Downs and Wolverton

Guest blogger: Anna Rowe - 2025 Digital collections catalyst 

The mid to late Victorians were renowned for their exuberant interiors – often expressing their passion for colour, pattern and ornament, and adopting a more is more approach. (1) In modern terms we might consider them maximalists. 

Interiors photographed at Canning Downs Homestead in Warwick and Wolverton in Townsville, illustrate some of the bold aesthetic choices made by Queenslanders in the late nineteenth century. Although located over 1,400 kilometers apart, these two places featured the same wallpaper frieze in one of their rooms! Can you spot it?

Canning Downs Homestead

Canning Downs Station on the Darling Downs was established by brothers Patrick, Walter and George Leslie in 1840.  Emmeline, who married George in 1848, recalled in her memoirs that her new home was a “cottage … built of wood, painted white and lined with canvas, and pretty room papers, thoroughly and prettily furnished and surrounded by a white verandah". (4)  This timber slab cottage forms part of Canning Downs Homestead, which is entered in the Queensland Heritage Register. (5)

Several owners and occupants later, Canning Downs was home to the Macansh family. Scottish-born John Donald Macansh purchased Canning Downs in 1875. (9) Following John’s passing in 1896, Canning Downs was managed by a family trust comprising his six sons and five daughters. (10) Extensive alterations to the house were carried out under the trust, including extensions undertaken by local Warwick architects, Wallace and Gibson, in 1898-1899. (11)

Photographs of the interiors taken around that time, show the dining room and adjoining living room – or library, as indicated by the hand-written label on the original photograph. Both rooms featured wallpaper in bold floral patterns that reflected the 1890s shift towards more stylised designs. The filling pattern comprised large-scale intertwined stylised plant forms, with flowers that were possibly waterlilies or lotus. Similar flowers featured in the frieze, which was more formal in its composition.

The wide arched opening between the two rooms had a marbled finish. Commonly used to enhance the appearance of less expensive materials, the effect was achieved using wallpaper or paint that was applied using brushes, newspaper, rags, string or feathers. Along with graining and stencilling, marbling was one of the many skills offered by nineteenth century painters and decorators. (13) 

It was considered good taste for the general tone and colouring of the dining room to be darker than the drawing room. (14) Suitable palettes for dining rooms included shades of greens, pinks, browns, golds and dark reds. (15) 

Another room, visible through the doorway at the rear of the living room, featured striped wallpaper with a floral frieze. The colours appeared lighter and the patterns were relatively restrained in comparison with the dining and living rooms. A similar combination, with the exact same frieze, was visible in the parlour at Wolverton in Townsville.

Wolverton, Townsville

Wolverton, located on Alexandra Street, North Ward, Townsville, was home to architect and soldier, Walter Howard Tunbridge. Born in Dover, England, in 1856, Walter arrived in Australia as an assisted migrant in 1884 and established an architectural practice in Townsville several years later. (19)  Walter was known for his entertaining at Wolverton.

Interiors photographed at Wolverton in c1895 included the dining room and adjacent parlour. The dining room, considered a male domain in the Victorian era, was painted a dark colour – possibly a dark terracotta or Indian red – and featured a frieze with a stylised egg-and-dart motif. 

In both rooms, the skirting, picture rails, architraves and other joinery were picked out in a contrasting light colour – possibly a creamy white – reflecting the fashion for light colours, pastels and creams that emerged in the 1890s. (23) The windows featured floral fabric blinds and fringed valances.

The parlour, considered a space for entertaining, was decorated with wallpapers comprising a striped filling and a floral frieze. The frieze featured roses and iris or rushes, in a large, three-dimensional, stylised design that was possibly a ‘one over’, that is the full width of the roll. (24) A similar sample, but with pansies, can be found in the collection of samples sourced from England and France by Elizabeth Byrne, the wife of the lighthouse keeper at Sandy Cape. (25)

Walter married Leila Emily Brown in Brisbane in 1904, and they moved to Melbourne, where he established a branch of his architectural firm and went on to serve in World War I, being promoted to colonel in 1918. (28) 

Interestingly, there was more than one Wolverton in Townsville. Another Wolverton, located on Stagpole Street, West End, Townsville, was built in c1903 for Emily and Thomas Turton, a well-known Townsville painter and decorator, and is entered in the Queensland Heritage Register. (29) 

Wallflowers Interactive Experience – Coming Soon!

Interested in viewing the wallpaper patterns from Canning Downs Homestead, Westbrook Homestead and Rinaultrie in an unlimited variety of colours? In my next blog post I will share details about the Wallflowers digital interactive experience, where you can generate and download your favourite combination to use as your own computer or mobile screen background – from ‘wallpaper’ to ‘wallpaper’.

Anna Rowe
2025 Digital Collections Catalyst

Read other blogs by Anna Rowe:

• Wallflowers: Reimagining Historical Interiors
• Wallflowers: ‘Rinaultrie’, Toowoomba
• Wallflowers: Westbrook Homestead

Read other blogs by past Digital Collections Catalysts.

References

1. Forge, S (1981) Victorian splendour: Australian interior decoration 1837-1901, Melbourne, VIC, Oxford University Press, p 11. 
2. Interior view of the living room at Canning Downs station, Warwick district, ca. 1895. John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, Negative number: 1779.
3. Parlour at Wolverton, Townsville residence of the Tunbridge family, ca. 1895. 6282 Tunbridge Family Photograph Albums. John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, Image number: APE-082-0001-0007.
4. De Falbe, J (1988) My dear Miss Macarthur: the recollections of Emmeline Maria Macarthur (1828-1911), Kangaroo Press, Kenthurst,  NSW, p 44; Heritage Branch, Department of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation, Queensland Heritage Register entry for 600535 Canning Downs Homestead.
5. Heritage Branch, Department of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation, Queensland Heritage Register entry for 600535 Canning Downs Homestead.
6. Canning Downs station homestead, ca. 1859. John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, Negative number: 45425.
7. Homestead at Canning Downs Station, ca. 1875. John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, Negative number: 82998.
8. Canning Downs station homestead, Warwick district, ca. 1901. John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, Negative number: 1775.
9. Heritage Branch, Department of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation, Queensland Heritage Register entry for 600535 Canning Downs Homestead.
10. Gibbney, HJ (2006), John Donald Macansh (1820-1896), Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography at the Australian National University.
11. Heritage Branch, Department of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation, Queensland Heritage Register entry for 600535 Canning Downs Homestead.
12. Interior of the dining room at Canning Downs Station, Queensland, ca. 1900. John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, Negative number: 1778.
13. Evans, I, Lucas, C & Stapleton, I (1983) Colour schemes for old Australian houses, Glebe, NSW, The Flannel Flower Press Pty Ltd, pp 14-17.
14. ‘Art in the Home: Some Hints on Furnishing our Australian Homes, The Dining-Room’, Sydney Illustrated News, 17 April 1890, p 6.
15. Ibid; Evans, I, Lucas, C & Stapleton, I (1983) Colour schemes for old Australian houses, Glebe, NSW, The Flannel Flower Press Pty Ltd, p 67.
16. Interior of the dining room at Canning Downs Station, Queensland, ca. 1900. John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, Negative number: 1778. Image colourised using Google Gemini Nano Banana Pro.
17. Reconstructed wallpaper pattern ‘Canning Downs Homestead’, digital drawing by Anna Rowe.
18. Interior view of the living room at Canning Downs station, Warwick district, ca. 1895. John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, Negative number: 1779. Image colourised using Google Gemini Nano Banana Pro.
19. Glyn-Daniel, C (2006), Walter Howard Tunbridge (1856–1943), Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography at the Australian National University.
20. ‘Northern Social Gossip’, The Queenslander, 14 October 1899, p 745.
21. Dining room interior Wolverton, home of the Tunbridge family, Townsville, ca. 1895. 6282 Tunbridge Family Photograph Albums. John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, Image number: APE-082-0001-0008. Image colourised using Google Gemini Nano Banana Pro.
22. Parlour at Wolverton, Townsville residence of the Tunbridge family, ca. 1895. 6282 Tunbridge Family Photograph Albums. John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, Image number: APE-082-0001-0007. Image colourised using Google Gemini Nano Banana Pro.
23. Forge, S (1981) Victorian splendour: Australian interior decoration 1837-1901, Melbourne, VIC, Oxford University Press, p 43.
24. Murphy, P (1981) The decorated wall: eighty years of wallpaper in Australia, c. 1850-1930, compiled by Phyllis Murphy for the Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, p 24.
25. Wallpaper sample, ca. 1908-1910. 5475, Elizabeth Byrne Textiles. John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.
26. Ibid. 
27. Members of the Tunbridge family on the back verandah of Wolverton, Townsville, ca. 1900. 6282 Tunbridge Family Photograph Albums. John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, Image number: APE-082-0001-0011.
28. Glyn-Daniel, C (2006), Walter Howard Tunbridge (1856–1943), Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography at the Australian National University.
29. Heritage Branch, Department of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation, Queensland Heritage Register entry for 600927 Wolverton.