Newstead Gasworks is a heritage-listed former gasometer at 70 Longland Street, Teneriffe, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

[1] The Brisbane Municipal Council was anxious to provide street lighting, for which gas was seen as the only feasible system.

Earlier in the decade, the Colonial Government, supposedly for health reasons, refused permission for the Council to establish a gasworks on a site at Petrie's Bight.

Soon after, however, council's arrears of payment resulted in its gas being turned off, with the streets plunged back into darkness.

After the financial woes of the later 1860s there followed two decades of steady growth in Brisbane, reflected in an increase of demand for gas, for both lighting and for domestic and industrial fuel.

The company had outgrown the Petrie's Bight site, and acquired 22 acres (8.9 ha) of suitable land at Newstead, in 1883.

[1] The company's engineer for the shift from Petrie Bight to Newstead was JH Tomlinson, arriving in 1880 from a previous appointment in Birmingham.

The equipment, much of it imported from England, was landed at the company's wharf at the Brisbane River frontage of the site.

[1] As part of the shift to Newstead, the Petrie's Bight gasholder No.2, constructed in 1873 from puddled iron, was re-erected on the recently acquired land at Longland Street.

A price-cutting war lasted until 1889 when the companies, without any concerns about restrictive trade practices, carved Brisbane up into north and south of the river as their respective marketing territories.

A major retort augmentation planned for completion in 1950 finally came on stream in 1954, but not until an emergency measure had been taken to erect a Humphreys and Glasgow water-gas plant, for which coke was the feedstock.

[1] When the Queensland Railways were converted to diesel fuel in the 1960s, it was judged that there would be a risk of serious damage if a locomotive were to derail near No.2 gasholder.

Diesel locomotives were seen as a greater risk than their coal-fired steam counterparts that had used the same track, in the same proximity, for the previous half-century.

In 1999, so had No.3, and No.2 has been disabled by splitting a hole in the crown plating, leaving the inside of the gasholder exposed to a moist oxidising atmosphere, ideal conditions for rapid rust.

In 2002, approval was given to demolish the brick governor houses and to remove associated machinery and pipe work, to demolish the storage shed and concrete safety wall, and to construct new commercial buildings and an adjacent road surrounding the gasometer.

[1] All items of gas manufacture, such as retort houses, exhausters, condensers, gasification plants, scrubbers, washers, purifiers, have been demolished.

[1] Newstead Gasworks No.2 gasholder (remnants and guide framing) was listed on the Queensland Heritage Register on 24 June 2005 having satisfied the following criteria.

Town gas was among the earliest of innovations that significantly improved the quality of life in the burgeoning city of Brisbane, particularly in the boom periods of the 1860s and 1880s.

The remnants of the gasholder and guide framing represents the last of the frame-guided type remaining in Brisbane, and possibly in Queensland.

At the Newstead site, the remaining gasholder (remnants) and guide framing demonstrates some of these characteristics of the gasworks.

Large round structures are unusual and attractive, particularly in areas of predominantly angular commercial and industrial construction such as Newstead.

For over 100 years, passers-by along Breakfast Creek Road, Longland and Ann Streets, as well as residents of and workers in the area, would have seen No.2 gasholder in various states of filling, silently performing its important function of storing and feeding out the gas supply.

[1] The place has a special association with the life or work of a particular person, group or organisation of importance in Queensland's history.

The gasworks site has a special association with a vital public utility, Brisbane's gas supply, for over a century.