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This house at 40 Isaac St, Spring Hill has been used to run the beloved Coffee Brigade charity for more than 30 years and will go to auction on March 19.
If you were sleeping rough on the streets of Brisbane around the time of the 1974 floods, chances are you would have been served coffee and food from a makeshift servery attached to the door of a 1954 Morris Minor.
The car belonged to Brisbane’s own Angel of Dawn, Louisa Toogood, who would be honoured for her support of Brisbane’s homeless community with an MBE in 1974.
Coffee Brigade founder Louisa Toogood serves coffee from her Morris Minor in the 1970s. Picture: Coffee Brigade
Nearly four decades later, history is repeating. The city is once again in flood and Miss Toogood’s army of helpers are still delivering mugs of coffee and food to the people of Brisbane who have no home.
In the 1970s, the whole operation was run out of Miss Toogood’s Gregory Tce Flat, but 30 years ago, a more suitable two-bedroom cottage on the corner of Rosa and Isaac sts in Spring Hill was found, and the Ecumenical Coffee Brigade of Spring Hill began.
The downstairs commercial kitchen at 40 Isaac St, Spring Hill.
“I don’t think, while I live, I will ever retire from my coffee brigade work,” Miss Toogood told The Courier-Mail in 1983 after recovering from a heart attack and being visited by a steady stream of homeless people who affectionately called her ‘Mum’.
She would live another 10 years, to the grand age of 89.
Mrs Toogood on May 5, 1974, after receiving her MBE at Government House for services to Brisbane’s homeless. Picture: supplied.
“She was the world’s greatest Mum to thousands … I mean thousands,’’ said one of her many ‘children’, at the 1993 funeral service in Nundah. Today, Melinda Clifton and an army of charity workers carry on the Coffee Brigade’s mobile street van work, delivering coffee and sandwiches to people with less than most.
But the charity has grown to the point where their Spring Hill home is no longer big enough, and they have made the decision to move.
“Thirty years ago, the property met our needs and we were able to operate effectively from this location,” Ms Clifton said. “Thirty years later, we have outgrown our Rosa Street home. It no longer meets our needs from both a size and compliance perspective.
The charity rented out the upstairs two-bedroom house and used downstairs to prepare meals.
“Legislation around workplace health and safety and food safety, for example, has changed significantly. We looked in to the option of refurbishing Rosa Street; however, we ultimately decided that the purchase of new, more suitable premises would be better for the longevity and effectiveness of the charity.”
The Coffee Brigade in action with their mobile van. Picture: Coffee Brigade
So while the Coffee Brigade is making plans to move to new premises further north of the CBD in Windsor, its Spring Hill home, where upward of 80,000 breakfasts a year were prepared, is getting ready for auction, with selling agency Space Property waiving their commission on the sale of the charity home.
“At the end of the day, every $5 we save is another person we can feed for one more day,” Ms Clifton said in acknowledging the offer.
40 isaac st spring hill
“The kind and generous support (Space Property) is providing is allowing the Coffee Brigade to undertake a cost neutral transaction in the sale and purchase of new premises.” The two-storey Spring Hill house on a 202sq m corner block has two-bedrooms, a lounge, bathroom and kitchen on the main upper level, with a large commercial kitchen downstairs and parking for five cars.
There is plenty of off-street parking at 40 Isaac St, Spring Hill
“We have been part of the Spring Hill community for decades, and whilst sad that we will be moving on, we are excited for the opportunities that our new premises will allow us to provide to people in need around Brisbane,” Ms Clifton said. Spring Hill’s median house price briefly passed $1m in 2017 but then took a dive in 2018 to a low of $801,250, CoreLogic data shows. The inner-city suburb began the pandemic with a median home value of $883,000 and the latest data from realestate.com.au shows the median house value is now $1.3m.
Sam Mayes and Matthew Purdy of Space Property will take 40 Isaac St, Spring Hill to auction on Saturday, March 19 at 11am.
