The Hoop Pines are a heritage-listed pair of Araucaria cunninghamii trees at 34 Strathpine Road, Bald Hills, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

The Stewart family, along with their relatives the Duncans, were the earliest non-indigenous settlers in the Bald Hills area (known to Aboriginal people as Wyampa) and later established one of the district's most successful dairy farms.

[1] The prevalence of valuable logging trees such as hoop and bunya pines and red cedar was one of the principal attractions for the establishment of a penal settlement at Moreton Bay in the 1820s.

[1] The establishment of Bald Hills as a farming community in the late 1850s was closely linked to the move by Scottish squatters John and David McConnel of Durundur on the Upper Stanley River (south of the Conondale Range and west of the Glass House Mountains), and their pro-Brisbane, pro-John Dunmore Lang associates, to establish a port at Cabbage Tree Creek, Sandgate in the 1850s.

The McConnels were joined by a number of prominent Brisbane businessmen, including John Richardson, Thomas Dowse, Robert Davidson and George Raff, who in 1852 called for a port to rival Cleveland, and the development of a resort suburb, at Bramble Bay.

However, the lobby group did not give up hope through the 1850s, and the enticement of agricultural settlers to the Bald Hills area behind Sandgate in the mid-1850s may have been connected with move to develop a port at Cabbage Tree Creek.

[1] Thomas Gray, a Brisbane bootmaker, had emigrated to New South Wales in 1841/42 from the Black Isle, Scotland, to work for fellow highlanders the McConnels at Moreton Bay.

Stewart made a preliminary trip to the district c. 1855 to select suitable land, not just for himself and the Duncans, but also for a large number of Hunter River settlers who were equally interested.

These precautions proved unnecessary, for at the request of Thomas Gray and other settlers in the area between Cabbage Tree Creek and Caboolture, a detachment of Native Police was stationed at Sandgate from 1858 to 1862.

Under the command of Lieutenant Frederick Wheeler, the Native Police eliminated Aboriginal resistance to white settlement in the Pine Rivers, Cabbage Tree Creek and Caboolture districts by the early 1860s.

Through the 1860s, 1870s and 1880s maize, potatoes and some oaten and wheaten hay were the principal cash crops, and John Stewart had early experimented with arrowroot and cotton, for which he won bronze and silver medals at the London International Exhibition of 1862.

The residence located on this property and which now functions as the Administration Building at St Paul's Anglican School, appears to date to the 1890s or very early 1900s, but it has not been established whether it was erected by Stewart c. 1890 or a later owner.

A photograph dated 1906 shows the house prior to additions and verandah enclosures, with the two already mature hoop pines forming a natural frame to the front entrance.

In 1921 it was acquired by William John Hawkins of Bald Hills, who was a leader in Queensland dairying, credited with being instrumental in the establishment of the first milk supply cold store in Brisbane, at the Roma Street railway station, c. 1898.

[1] The two Hoop Pines (Araucaria cunninghamii) are located within the grounds of St Paul's Anglican School, Strathpine Road, Bald Hills.

The Hoop Pines at St Paul's Anglican School, Bald Hills are indicative of the pattern of Queensland settlement, being associated with the evolution of non-indigenous settlement in the Moreton Bay district in the 1850s, and with the earliest development of the Bald Hills district in particular[1] The place demonstrates rare, uncommon or endangered aspects of Queensland's cultural heritage.

The two early Hoop Pines at St Paul's Anglican School are of horticultural interest and are rare specimens of trees of this age surviving in the Brisbane area.