The high cost of preparing the steeply sloping land at Victoria Park for building made it a less than ideal site despite its central location and proximity to the Royal Brisbane Hospital.

Opinion was divided with Professor Steele and many members of the medical profession against St Lucia because of its isolation and lack of public transport.

Dr Lockhart Gibson, Chancellor Andrew Joseph Thynne and Archbishop Gerald Sharp were amongst those who voted for Victoria Park.

In 1930 the Senate handed over Victoria Park, less eleven acres reserved for a medical school, to the Brisbane City Council in exchange for the St Lucia site.

There was no prospect of building the new university until 1935 when the Premier, William Forgan Smith, announced that the Queensland Government would undertake construction at St Lucia.

This was one of the three major development projects initiated in the mid 1930s by the Queensland Government to create employment, the others being the Somerset Dam on the Stanley River and the Story Bridge.

Related outer buildings contained Engineering, Biology, Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, Geology, a museum and a teachers' training college.

Notable also in this respect are Professor Gareth Robert's master plan for the university which involved the closing of the circular drive and the placement of the Main Library and the Great Hall in front of the Forgan Smith Building.

Mrs Hinwood has since continued to carve numerous grotesques and coats of arms for the Court, as well as the two monumental figures at the main entrance to the Goddard Building.

[1] The Great Court Complex is set on the high ground in the centre of a site enclosed by Cemetery Reach, a bend in the Brisbane River, on the northern, eastern and southern sides, and St Lucia, a residential suburb, on the west.

The Court, approximately semicircular in plan with eight unequal sides, is an open grassed space planted intermittently with trees and shrubs and intersected by an axially placed path.

The perimeter of the court consists of a continuous colonnade that links five detached buildings, all clad in Helidon sandstone of varying colours ranging from rich purples through to creams and browns.

As the state's first university, it demonstrates the gradual evolution of higher education in Queensland, which was considered a low budget priority despite recommendations made to the Government as early as the 1870s.

Between 1942 and 1945 the university played an important role in the activities of the Second World War when General Sir Thomas Blamey, head of the Australian Defence Forces, established the Forgan Smith Building as the Land Headquarters.

The layout of the Great Court complex is the clearest and most intact example in Australia of a university set out in accordance with the innovative American collegiate planning principles introduced by Thomas Jefferson in the early 1800s.

The Jeffersonian concept of an academic village is clearly demonstrated in the complex by the large, open central courtyard that is surrounded by interspersed pavilions representing different disciplines, linked together by internal colonnades.

From its location on the highest rise of the land overlooking the surrounding campus buildings, the Great Court is regarded as an important visual symbol of and central core to the University of Queensland.

Built over a forty-year period between 1937 and 1979, the Great Court Complex is significant both architecturally and aesthetically as an extensive and distinctive example of Art Deco styling.

Uniformity is an important attribute of the complex, demonstrated not only by congenial characteristics such as monumental scale and form, strong horizontal and vertical lines, and materials but also the abundant sculptural work such as friezes, statues, and grotesques depicting significant individuals and events in the history of the State, the Commonwealth and the University.

From its location on the highest rise of the land overlooking the surrounding campus buildings, the Great Court is regarded as an important visual symbol of and central core to the University of Queensland.

[1] The Great Court Complex also has a strong association with the notable craftsman, John Theodore Muller, a German stonemason responsible for completing much of the Great Court sculpture between 1939 and 1953 including the statues, friezes on the Forgan Smith and Steele Buildings: the distinctive frieze of prehistoric life on the Richards Building; and about half of the grotesques, coats of arms, arches and roundels.

The sculptured works form an integral part of the Great Court Complex and represent an immense undertaking in stone.