St Paul's Uniting Church, Mackay
[Photograph by Howard Baker (1990s)]
St Paul's Uniting Church, Mackay
[Photograph by Howard Baker (1990s)]
Historical and Technical Documentation by Geoffrey Cox
© OHTA 2011 (last updated March 2011))
The Presbyterian congregation in Mackay was established in 1872, and the first church was erected in 1875. The present timber building, designed by the Brisbane architect, Walter Carey Voller, was built in 1897-98. It was one of few public buildings in Mackay to withstand the 1918 cyclone. Clad in chamferboards, the building features steeply pitched gable roofs and an elaborately detailed timber belfry over one of the twin entry vestibules. It is a rare example of an intact nineteenth-century timber church in North Queensland.1
St Paul's Presbyterian Church, Mackay, c.1898
[Photograph: John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland]
The organ was built in 1953 by Whitehouse Bros of Brisbane at a cost of around £3,484.2 It is one of the later examples of the standardised pneumatic-action organs built by the firm from the early 1910s onwards. The specification is just one stop larger than that for the organ built in the previous year for the Presbyterian Church in Dalby, and there is a greater provision here of couplers than in Dalby. The inclusion of a Hohl Flute 8ft on the Great, rather than a Stopped Diapason 8ft, is unusual. The duplexing of the Swell string stop on the Great Organ had been a common feature on these instruments from the early 1930s onwards.
The church was refurbished around 2000, and the organ was cleaned and regulated at this time.3
| GREAT Open Diapason Salicional Hohl Flute Flute SWELL Violin Diapason Gedact Salicional Dulcet PEDAL Bourdon COUPLERS Swell to Great Swell to Pedal Great to Pedal Swell Super Swell to Great Super Swell to Great Sub |
8 8 8 4 8 8 8 4 16 |
[from Swell] |
Swell tremulant
Detached stop-key console
Radiating concave pedalboard
Balanced swell pedal
Tubular-pneumatic action
Compass: 61/30.4
St Paul's Uniting Church, Mackay, organ and console
[Photographs by Howard Baker (1990s)]
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1 Queensland Heritage Council, Queensland Heritage Register, location 600668; Richard Bardon, The Centenary History of the Presbyterian Church of Queensland (Brisbane: W. R. Smith & Paterson, 1949), pp. 239-40; Donald Watson & Judith McKay, Queensland Architects of the 19th Century: A Biographical Dictionary (Brisbane: Queensland Museum, 1994), pp. 200-01.
2 Whitehouse Bros Ledger (1940-1954), p. 236.
3 The Organ Voice, vol. 27, no. 1 (March 2001), p. 29.
4 Specification noted by G. Cox, July 1974.