WHATEVER
HAPPENED TO BILLETT STREET?
 Billett
Street used go from Gregory Terace down and left towards Rodgers Street.
It dropped away from where the entrance to the Holy Family Chapel is today
to the level of the back entrance of the Campbell Centre. These days there
are a lot of steps from the Chapel down to the College Pool and then around
to the Rodgers Street entrance to the lower Car Park area.
The drop can be seen
in these two old photographs.
 This
photo shows a rear view of the old secondary school and the old Windsor
Pool area which was opened in 1927. The galvanised iron fence in the photo
was around the pool, then came Billett Street and then came the building
which was replaced by the new Chapel in 2000. This old building was a
variety of things: private house, private hospital, Miss Kate Smith's
residence and then became the College White House until 1999.
This photo shows a
drop of almost two storeys from Gregory Terrace to the present level of
the Canteen. This whole area is now covered by various elevated walkways
to the newer parts of the College. Towards the front of the picture scaffolding
can be seen - this is for the erection of the 1975 Library building. In
the middle of the picture is the almost bare slope where trees are being
planted. Into the left-hand end of this slope was built the 1995 Toilet
Block. (Part of GT1995). After twenty years there was plenty of vegetation.
 The
second Photo (left) shows the continuation of "Billett Street".
It became steps (used for class assemblies) in 1975 and shows the very
high walls which provided the school boundary for very many years from
when it was built about 1887 when the extra wing was added to the Brothers'
House which became "St Joseph's Boarding School" until the shift
out to Nudgee in 1892. Soil was added to build up and level of the school
area from land that the Archdiocese owned across Rodgers Street. (Br McCarthy
who attended the school until 1936 said that where the boundary wall along
Billett Street met Rodgers Street it "looked like the prow of a ship".
The College bought
Billett Street from the City Council in 1986.
The wall at the back
of the Campbell Centre shown in Picture 2 was removed in 1987 when the
built-up area was re-excavated and became the new College Pool covered
by Duhig Court. The Campbell Centre became an enclosed area and the rooms
at the back of the Campbell Centre became an area for Phys Ed teachers,
dressing rooms for the pool, catering areas and storage areas. Old Boys
who were here when Billett Street was a Spring Hill street find it difficult
to get their bearings now! Many people used live on the land the College
now occupies. Old pictures show up to twenty houses between Gregory Terrace,
Victoria Street, Water Street and Rodgers Street.
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