Zion Hill Mission

Despite limited success at converting the local Aboriginal Australians to Christianity, many of the missionaries later became pioneers and farmers in the district, shaping the social fabric of the North Brisbane area for decades to come.

The idea of establishing a Christian mission in the Moreton Bay district was the idea of John Dunmore Lang, who had ambitious plans to establish a series of missions along the Australian coast north of Sydney, ostensibly in order to bring Christianity to the Aboriginal peoples, but also to pacify them and prevent attacks on shipwrecked European sailors, as had happened in the case of the Stirling Castle incident some years prior.

[3][4] Although Lang was a controversial figure within New South Wales at the time, he did manage to convince the colonial government to reserve 650 acres (2.6 km2) of land for the missionaries' efforts, seven miles (11 km) north of the settlement at Eagle Farm.

It is likely that Lang borrowed even more money for the project, as £600 would not have been enough to arrange the passage of twenty people, and he remarked in 1839 that he still owed £350 in establishment costs for the mission.

The missionaries tried to engage Aboriginal peoples in constructing buildings and digging gardens to form a bond with them and recognize a benefit enticement from a nomadic life to being settled.

Governor George Gipps, who had visited the area in 1842, had indicated to the missionaries that to continue receiving government funding, they would need to move their mission to a new site, further away from Brisbane.

[5] During this expedition, Schmidt uncovered evidence that squatters living beyond the authorised settlement line were involved in poisoning Aborigininal Australian peoples, particularly in the area around the modern-day town of Kilcoy.