Here in History – Electricity Comes to Gladstone

By Betty Laver

Electricity came to Gladstone in the early 1900’s but this was only at the meatworks. Lights were installed on the meatworks jetty in 1911, but this was from their own plant and the Brisbane Electrical Co lit up the Railway station in the same year. Three local men, Irvine and Ernest Crow and Walter Prizeman obtained permission to install an electric light plant for the town by December 1916. They erected their powerhouse on the Telecom Office site in Goondoon Street close to the Lincoln Theatre. It was claimed that the patrons of this theatre could hear the thump – thump of the motor during screenings. The supply came from two DC generators driven by gas engines, one of 47BHP single cylinder suction and the other of 27BHP.