Structure
Bellevue Homestead is located opposite the railway station in Coominya, close to the original entrance to the property. It consists of three interconnected dwellings with an attached service wing and separate farm buildings. The main farmhouse and guest house face northeast and are encircled by verandas, with a spine of kitchen, stores, servants' hall and laundry attached at right angles, forming a T-shaped plan. A cottage, previously a school house and governess’ residence, is attached on the south-east forming a southern courtyard, and a row of barns and stables is located on the southwest. All buildings, with the exception of the hay loft, are single-storeyed and sit on timber stumps.
The main farmhouse has projecting gable porches over the southwest and northeast entrances with decorative timber barge boards, trusses and finials. Timber shingles are visible under the corrugated iron sheeting. Its plan consists of three bedrooms and a drawing room or parlour with a central hall. The side verandas have been enclosed to expand the rooms through large archways, the northwest being enclosed with very wide cedar chamfer boards. Some rooms show different layers of the building's fabric, including pit sawn framing with mortice and tenon joints and hand finished lining boards. Decorative features include painted wood grain in the hall, hand painted wall paper, pressed metal ceilings in the drawing room, carved timber fireplace surrounds, casement windows, some of which have coloured glass inserts, step out bays and pressed metal window hoods.
The attached guest house has a projecting gable porch to the northeast with decorative timber arch brackets, barge board, finial and diagonally boarded gable. The verandas have dowel balustrades, lattice valances and timber arch brackets. Its plan consists of a large formal dining room, a smoking room and a two-roomed guest suite. These are accessed from an enclosed verandah entrance hall with entrance doors at both ends with sidelights and fanlight of etched coloured glass. All rooms have fretworked cedar ceiling roses. The dining room has a metal lined wine store cupboard and its walls are panelled in cedar with silky oak inserts to a dado with full length vertical tongue-and-groove hoop pine boards above and along the 30-foot (9.1 m) ceiling. The tiled fireplace has a carved timber surround, and all timber is oiled/stained. The dining room also has remnants of gas fittings from the time the Homestead made its own gas from carbide, and remnants of electrical fittings from the time the Homestead generated its own electricity. All rooms have step out bays and double French doors with timber shutters and all internal doors have fanlights.
The service wing consists of a kitchen that was originally a single roomed slab hut, now weather-boarded on three sides but retaining the original adze-trimmed split slab wall on the fourth side, to which have been added extensions of a store, food preparation room, servants' dining and entertainment hall and laundry. The kitchen has corrugated iron over the timber shingle gable roof with a verandah to the courtyard and a scullery attached to the back and three pressed metal ridge ventilators. The interior has single skin cedar board walls and a large brick fireplace with wood burning stove, hot water donkey and a charcoal grill with dripping collection tray. A modern kitchen has been installed in the food preparation room.
On the other side of the courtyard facing the service wing, the cottage has an L-shaped plan and consists of a series of rooms added at different times. The weatherboard building has a corrugated iron gable roof with a bay to the northwest, surmounted by a gable, and verandas northeast and northwest.
A row of weatherboard farm buildings with corrugated iron gable roofs is located to the southwest. The farm buildings consist of a meat room, coach house, tack room, five slip rail stables and a two storey hay loft. The stables have sawn cross cut timber and earth floors. The grounds include a circular drive with gardens to the north, overlooking a private dam positioned the same distance that the Brisbane River was from the house at its original location. The floor plan of the restored homestead is shown below.
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Become a verse? Is there in truth no beauty?
Is all good structure in a winding stair?
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Not to a true, but painted chair?”
—George Herbert (1593–1633)
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“The philosopher believes that the value of his philosophy lies in its totality, in its structure: posterity discovers it in the stones with which he built and with which other structures are subsequently built that are frequently better—and so, in the fact that that structure can be demolished and yet still possess value as material.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)