The story of Joseph Fleming's Bremer Mills began in the early years of free settlement in the Moreton Bay District. Joseph was the son of Henry Fleming and Elizabeth Fleming (nee Hall) and he was born in Cumberland, New South Wales on 6 January 1811. Joseph's father was the first free child born in the colony and the first child to be given a land grant of 30 acres on the banks of the Hawkesbury River.

Joseph was educated in Sydney and he married Phoebe McGuinness of Wilberforce on 24th April 1831. He owned an inn and was involved in various other business enterprises. From 1842 to 1846 he was the Chief Constable of Wollombi and from 1844 to 1846 he was the Inspector of Distilleries. He acquired a property called 'Orrabar' in New England in 1846 and he moved to Queensland in 1848.

The population of Ipswich in 1846 was sixty-four males and thirty-six females. By 1860 there were eight hundred and six males in the electorate of Ipswich.

The correspondent for the 'Moreton Bay Courier' newspaper reported on 2 October 1847 that 'We understand that it is the intention of one of our oldest colonists to establish a flour mill at or near Ipswich, not certainly from any expectation that immediate profit will accrue from the undertaking, but from prospects in future'.

Joseph began taking up land on the Darling Downs before moving to Ipswich where he purchased the first of the properites to become part of the Bremer Mills. By 1850 Joseph Fleming and Jacob Gorrick had established a 'Boiling Down Works' in Ipswich. This establishment was capable of rendering down 1000 head of sheep or 100 head of cattle per day.

An advertisment appeared in the 'North Australian' newspaper on 27 September 1850 advertising prices for fine flour, sharps and bran. Two months later the paper announced that Joseph Fleming was 'now prepared to supply from his stores in East Street, flour and bran, of superior quality, at Sydney Mill prices, with freight added'. Joseph Fleming operated a store in Ipswich which he called the 'Bremer Mills' store.

In 1851 Fleming purchased portion 13 at Bundamba and this became the site of his boiling down works. In April of that year, Gorrick and Fleming began advertising in the Moreton Bay Courier that they were ready to receive and boil stock at their establishment from 12 May. The charges included six shillings per head for boiling horned cattle, six pence for boiling sheep and one shilling for salting and packing hides. The charges included drying and bundling skins and whenever practicable the tongues of the animals were supplied cured upon halves. Casks were supplied at cost price and goods were delivered in Brisbane free of freight.

On 1st November 1851 Fleming purchased additional land at Bundanba (now spelt Bundamba) where he established the Bremer Mills. Portion six consisted of seventy-six acres of land, portion seven was seventy-five acres and portion eight was fifty-seven acres. These purchases were entered on record in the Register of Land Purchases on 20 February 1852. The land was granted under the hand and seal of Sir Charles Augustus Fitzroy and Sir William Thomas Denison respectively, Governors of the Colony of New South Wales.

The Bremer Mills Estate was located at Bundamba, with a three nautical mile frontage to the Bremer River. The Estate included a steam flour mill, a steam sawmill, a melting down works, a seven room house with detached kitchen, serving quarters and store, stabling for 20 horses, a superintendent's house, cottages for 300 workers and their families, a church and school house, a fruit and flower garden, wharves and tramways.

In December 1859 Joseph Fleming was elected to the first Queensland Parliament as the member for West Moreton and he was appointed a Justice of the peace in 1860. In 1861 he was a member of the Provisional Committee of the Moreton Bay Tramway Company.

Further Information: for a personal account of life at Bremer Mills please refer to the section titled 'Memoirs of Janet Alexander Titmarsh (nee Adams)'.

Memoirs of Janet Alexander Titmarsh (nee Adams)

Janet Titmarsh (nee Adams) was a schoolgirl at the time of the 1857 flood and her father worked on the constuction of the Bremer Mills. In her memoirs written in Munbilla in September 1901 and dedicated to her grandchildren and great grandchildren she writes about the Bremer Mills. The following information is an extract from Janet's memoirs.

There came a terrific flood in 1857 on the 18th May - covered all the country and huts with all our books. The steamer 'Hawke' was getting repaired and the whole of the Mill men and families would have been drowned. They stayed in their houses till they were surrounded. There was a big swamp at the back of the huts and River in front. The bank on the north side was very high but there was no boat so the steamer took them off and tied to the top of a gumtree. She floated near the middle of the rise. Some of the people near us went and camped on the ridges while others took refuge in stable lofts. There were German, English, Irish, Scotch, blacks and chinamen and the rest colonials. I had a favourite dog. When I was carrying him aloft I slipped off and the dog jumped over my shoulder into the water and mud.

After the flood, most of the land was sown with wheat round the Bremer Mills. Mr. Fleming went to Adelaide and brought a shipload of wheat to start the mill. The wheat used to roll like waves on the sea, golden along the banks of the Bremer, but all this came to an end, the best equipped in Qld.

First they had six pots and then they added six more. They did not boil but steamed the pots. They got far more out of the meat this way, more tallow. The squatter gave the hide, horns, hoofs and bones and all the boiling meat for killing. The boiling master provided the tallow casks. At the busy time the coppers were kept day and night, but instead of knocking off when the killing was done, they stopped all the year round. The casks were made of cudergy and silky oak cedar staves, they got a flat sedge for a seam. At R.J. Smith's they knocked off on Saturdays but at Bremer Mills they worked Sundays as well. There were such a lot of men at the establishment, each got rations; 4lbs sugar, ½lb tea, 16lbs flour, ¼lb tobacco in the boiling time as much beef as they liked, at other times 24lbs. This was for the ones that were hired by the year. The huts were built in clumps. Here drunkenness was paramount.

The diggings were reckoned to be 100 miles from Ipswich. Fleming dispatched both horse and bullock drays loaded with supplies or else there would have been great starvation. The top gold was soon all got. I saw a piece like a shoulder of mutton in a shop when Sir George and Lady Bowen visited Ipswich for the first time. They came by road and went back by steamer. I went to Ipswich when the Governor was embarking, and this digger was also embarking in the following steamer. When his steamer was moving down the river he held up this piece, it was very bright. The people cheered again and again. He said he got more cheers than the Governor! When he got to Brisbane he exhibited it in Warry's grocery window and all that came to see had to pay 1/- He got £40 for the Brisbane Hospital. I was told he took it to the Melbourne Mint. He was dressed in a cabbage–tree hat, red flannel shirt and dark trousers. He pretended to throw it into the river after holding it for a time, standing on the paddle box of the steamer.

Fleming, Joseph: Pastoralist and politician. Established a boiling-down works, sawmill and flour mill on the banks of the Bremer River, and was part owner of the steamer Bremer. Was elected to the seat of West Moreton in the Legislative Assembly in 1860.

Fleming.. Henry Fleming 1791-1838 was colonial born and an early resident in Pitt Town. Was responsible for building several early buildings including "Blighton Arms". He also operated a number of businesses.

The Bremer Mills beside the Bremer River in the Bundamba area may have been the second sawmill established in Queensland if the date of 1852 for the establishment by Joseph Fleming of his industrial complex on 640 acres is correct. He erected wharf, steam flour mill, steam sawmill, boiling down works, brickworks, his own house and worker's cottages. The sawmill, adjoining the flour mill, had a vertical saw frame able to cut logs 4 feet diameter and two circular saw benches and other machinery, all driven by 25 horse power steam engine. An earlier source gives the earliest date as 1856, based on the memory of David Rodger, an engineer involved in erecting the flour mill. The mortgagees offered the complex for sale in 1862 and it would appear that the enterprise lasted only a comparatively small number of years.

An 1858 advertisement by Joseph Fleming dated 1 June 1858 states that from that date the Bremer Steam Saw Mill will be under sole management of John Blaine.

James Reilly established a sawmill at 1 Lamington Street, North Ipswich. After Reilly died, the Hancock Company, established in 1872 at Pine Mountain, took a lease of the North Ipswich mill, and Reilly's Rosewood Saw-Mills at or near Walloon. The mills resumed work. The mill then had a 35 horsepower engine with 18 inch diameter cylinder, the mill machinery made by Gray and Company of near Glasgow. It had two Cornish boilers, vertical iron saw frame and an incline or slip with chain was used to raise logs from rafts in the river and onto trolleys on which they ran to the first bench. There was also a steam-powered saw sharpener.

The sawmill burnt down in January 1885, just a year after a siding had been provided passing through the woollen mills. The mill was rebuilt and became a major plywood and veneer manufacturer, operating as Hancock Brothers Pty Limited. continues at this site. In 1995-96 it was acquired by Boral.

Company which had bought the mill from F.W. Adams (the owner in the 1947 listing) in 1948. Ownership of the company changed from the Walker families and Les Grey to G. Fleming and Wally Byers and eventually to the Gatton Sawmilling Company. The mill changed to electricity when the supply came in 1961.