noosa-heads

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6.5                   HALSE LODGE
LOCATION                     2 Halse Lane, Noosa Heads

TENURE                       Freehold. 2RP865533

DATES                        1880, 1932

DESCRIPTION                  Halse Lodge is a large, double-storey residential building made of timber with a
                             corrugated iron roof and wide verandahs at both levels facing the sea. It is roughly ‘U-
                             shaped’ in plan, with a central courtyard space created between the two wings.




                                             1937 Halse Lodge situated under Noosa Lookout

6.5.1       BRIEF HISTORY
In June 1881 Walter Hay, grazier, bought Portion 171 at Noosa Village. It was a large rectangular block consisting of
eighty acres and had been granted to his cousin James Forsyth in December the previous year. 28 The block’s eastern
border abutted the 1300 acre Noosa Town Reserve. Both blocks had been part of the Aboriginal Mission Reserve, which
was opened for selection in 1879. ‘By 1880 the pair [Hay and his cousin James Forsyth] had built, and were living in, a
hardwood and pine dwelling house of 4 rooms, with a verandah front. Four acres of trees had been ring barked and they
had planted 8 acres of corn, potatoes and other crops.’29
By 1882 Hay had built Bay View House and advertised rooms to let in The Gympie Times.30 However, the great bank
collapse in the early 1890s forced the then lessee, R G Walker to relinquish his lease that was taken up by Heinrich
Wallman in 1894 for a term of seven years. Ten years later, ownership of the property passed to a Brisbane man who
had taken over Hay’s mortgage in 1888, and Charles Stafford Miles owned Bay View for six years. 31




 , Registers of Selectors 1868-1885, Gympie Land Agent’s District, Land Department Records, LAN/P22, QSA.
28

29
 Neil Priddy, comp. Walter and Mary Anne Hay (nee Eaton), unpublished c.1994 p. 23. It is thought that this house may have been
moved onto Hay’s Island in 1896.
30
     Gympie Times, 4 March 1882.
31
     Rosalind Butler, ’A History of Halse Lodge A Boarding House at Noosa Heads’, unpublished, p. 9.