Floriana is a heritage-listed former private home and now guesthouse at 183–185 The Esplanade, Cairns North, Cairns, Cairns Region, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Edwin Roy Orchard and built in 1939. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 30 April 2010.
History.
Floriana at 183 The Esplanade, Cairns North (now known as Floriana Guesthouse) is the former city residence of Maltese migrants Paul and Paulina Zammit and their family. The two-storey rendered brick and chamferboard house was constructed in 1939 and originally comprised five bedrooms, a sitting room, dining room and kitchen on the upper floor; and a bathroom on each level; with the whole of the ground floor occupied as a large ballroom, which was converted into two flats and an entrance foyer in the late 1940s. Aspects of its design related to the prominent, central entry with a wide bay projection above and the building's address to the street were influenced by traditional Maltese housing. It stands adjacent to a set of Spanish Mission-style flats, also built by Zammit only a few years previous employing the same architect, Edwin Roy Orchard, and establishing a proud presence on the Cairns Esplanade.
Paulus Franciscus Michael Antonius Zammit was born in Birkirkara, Malta c. 1889. About 1911, at the age of 22, he married 19 year old Paulina Modesta Angela Aquiline from the same town. This small British Crown colony in the Mediterranean Sea had prospered through the nineteenth century, its population expanding but its economy dependent on British military spending, particularly in the development of the port at the capital Valletta. When military funding ceased in 1907 unemployment and poverty ensued. The Daily Malta Chronicle, which became the vehicle for discussion on emigration due to a lack of government action, campaigned for an emigration program and promoted Australia as a land of opportunity.
An earlier attempt at organised migration from Malta to Queensland in 1883, when 69 labourers were sent to the cane fields of the lower Burdekin River, had not proven successful. Overcrowding of the ship "Nuddea" and subsequent dissatisfaction with working conditions on the cane farms had deterred further emigration until the early twentieth century, when the Maltese government, unable to fund an emigration scheme, nonetheless concluded that its people would be welcomed by the Australian Government in solving the problem of labour shortages in its developing northern territories. Between 1905 and 1919, 2248 Maltese arrived in the southern states, many of whom moved north.
Paul Zammit immigrated to Australia in 1912 in the early phase of its renewal, ahead of his wife. He arrived in Melbourne in April and travelled on to Sydney before heading to North Queensland, where he worked in the Chillagoe mines and then cutting cane near the coast, before settling in Mooliba near Bartle Frere around 1919.
Paulina Zammit had arrived in Queensland by December 1913, with the couple's first child. Over the following 20 years they had nine more children, all born in Queensland. The Post Office Directories list the Zammits as farmers at Mooliba (later known as Pawngilly, now as Mirriwinni) from 1919, and nearby Bartle Frere from 1927. When the Bartle Frere State School opened in 1922, the elder children were on the attendance record and Paul Zammit was on the school committee. All of the Zammit children attended this school, the youngest being enrolled in 1936. Once established in Queensland, Zammit used his growing prosperity to support numerous migrants from Italy and Malta, either through sponsorship or provision of various forms of assistance. From 1919 to 1929 just over 3000 Maltese men immigrated to Australia. The "Orvieto", the first ship carrying Maltese migrants here following the end of World War I, arrived in 1920 reuniting a number of pioneering families in the Mackay and Innisfail areas. One such man was Joe Brincat who was later given employment by Paul Zammit cutting cane at Babinda, having initially worked at the Chillagoe smelters, as Zammit had done when he first arrived in Queensland. Family information has indicated that at least five other families were sponsored and assisted by Zammit over the course of his life.
Zammit's success and his community efforts were being recognised widely. In 1933 a branch of the Maltese Farmers and Settlers Association was formed in North Queensland during a visit from Dr Charles Mattel, a former AIF medical officer who was touring Queensland, meeting with Maltese migrants, forming the association, and drawing attention to the fact that the Maltese were law-abiding British citizens after the unrest that occurred in the wake of the 1927 strike at the South Johnstone Sugar Mill. During his Cairns visit Dr Mattel noted that Paul Zammit of Bartle Frere was one of the most successful sugar farmers in North Queensland, with property reputedly worth £65,000. In the 1934 Australia Day Address given by the Maltese Commission for Labour, Captain Henri Curmi, in Malta, his achievements were cited as a source of inspiration to prospective Maltese emigrants. He was further praised by the Roman Catholic Bishop of Cairns, Bishop John Heavey, at a 1936 function held at the Catholic Club Rooms in Babinda, where Paul was the president, for the work the family had done for the church in the region both financially and in facilitating pride in Maltese heritage. At this time he was also Far North President of the organisation that produced bi-lingual The Voice of the Maltese in Australia and Farmers' Advocate Weekly.
Paul Zammit had begun investing in residential property in Cairns, although the family was still resident on their Bartle Frere cane farm. In December 1932 two parcels of land at 183 and 185 The Esplanade (which included the later site of Floriana) were transferred to Paulina Zammit. These blocks were located on one of Cairns' premier streets, overlooking Trinity Inlet. According to family information, in 1934 the Zammits built the Spanish Mission-style flats, designed by former Sydney architect Edwin Roy Orchard, which are still located at 185 The Esplanade today. In mid-1935 they acquired 67 The Esplanade (later the site of the Continental Hotel, which Zammit also built). They also acquired another block of flats on The Esplanade in about 1935 (later known as Hayles Flats but no longer extant).
In October 1938 Orchard completed plans for a city residence for the Zammit family, which was to be built at 183 The Esplanade, adjacent to the c. 1934 flats. Orchard was an established Sydney North Shore architect who is credited with designing the earliest Californian Bungalow-influenced houses in New South Wales between 1913 and 1915 (three of his Sydney designs have been entered in the New South Wales State Heritage Register). He relocated to Mareeba during the Depression and was involved in the tobacco industry until 1933, when he established an architectural practice in Cairns. He registered with the Queensland Chapter of the Royal Society of Architects in 1936. Orchard's other projects in the Cairns region included: Tobruk Memorial Pool (in partnership with Jack McElroy), St David's Anglican Church at Mossman, motor showrooms and a hotel in Atherton, the Tinaroo Dam lookout shelter, the Great Northern Hotel at Mareeba, the remodelling of the Courthouse Hotel in Cairns, and the Australian Hotel in Mackay. Much of his north Queensland work was influenced by the work of Dutch-born modernist architect Willem Marinus Dudok, whose use of dramatic massing, asymmetry, and overhanging eaves achieved international recognition and influence in the 1920s and 1930s. Orchard returned to live in Sydney in 1963 and died within a week aged 72.
In his design for the Zammit Cairns residence, Orchard tempered the use of modern materials, hipped roofs with wide eaves, and the demands of the tropical north Queensland climate, with elements of traditional Maltese house design. The building was double-storey, with the ground floor constructed of rendered brick and the upper level timber-framed and clad with chamferboard. The multi-hipped roof was clad in Durasbestos. Internally the public rooms (sitting room, dining room, front balcony and rear verandah) occupied the core of the upper level, with five bedrooms and a kitchen encircling it on the northern and southern ends of the building. Most of the ground floor was one large, timber-floored ballroom. By elevating the main living spaces, maximum advantage was taken of views to Trinity Inlet and banks of casement windows opened to sea breezes.
A large, decorative, half-winding internal staircase, handcrafted by a Maltese timber sculptor Mick Farrugia, ascended from the centre of the ballroom to the upper level. Behind the staircase on the ground floor, doors led to an undercroft space with washing facilities and another plainer stair leading to the rear verandah on the upper level. A bathroom and toilet, enclosed with chamferboards, was located in the south-west corner on each level. The timbers used inside included maple, silky oak, and Johnstone River hardwood. Farrugia and his family were sponsored immigrants nominated by the Zammits. Apart from the staircase and curved walls installed in the entry when the ballroom became small flats, he also custom-made furniture for the main and guest bedrooms.
The key elements of traditional Maltese design employed in the Zammit house included the composition of the street facade dominated by a centrally-positioned, street-level entry consisting of glass louvers either side of a door, a projecting bay above imitating the Maltese stone balcony; and then internally a decorative winding staircase leading off an entry vestibule, inside the front door and leading to the public spaces on the upper floor; and a public ballroom occupying the whole of the ground floor.
The Zammits moved into their new Cairns home around the time of the declaration of World War II in Europe, in September 1939, naming it Floriana, after a portside suburb of Floriana near the Maltese capital Valletta.
From 1942 North Queensland became the base from which allied forces fought the war in the Pacific and south-east Asia. Cairns was inundated with American and Australian soldiers, who were accommodated in the city's hotels and guesthouses and in a camp established in 1943 along the seaward side of the Esplanade, from Kerwin Street to the end of Minnie Street and just over a block to the south-east of Floriana. Gun emplacements were installed along the Esplanade and a Catalina flying boat base was established near the hospital, almost adjacent to the south-east of the house.
The Zammit family, who were all proficient at a variety of musical instruments, regularly entertained top visiting US and Australian Army show bands and the ground floor ballroom hosted many social and fundraising events. Two of the Zammit daughters married American servicemen and left as war brides to live in the United States, and another married an RAAF serviceman. The wedding celebrations were held in the family home.
In 1946 the Zammits converted the southern part of the ground floor ballroom into a flat for one of their married daughters, and the northern half was similarly converted soon after. Curved timber-panelled partitions, constructed by Mick Farrugia, created a central foyer just inside the entrance vestibule and sandwiched between the new flats, from which the staircase rose to the upper level. The flats only ever accommodated visiting relatives and friends.
Both during and after the war Paul Zammit continued to run the cane farm at Bartle Frere. In 1947 he funded the construction of a small concrete church there, the Church of St Paul, which was opened on 31 August by the Catholic Bishop of Cairns, the Most Rev. J Heavey. Its concrete blocks were made on Zammit's farm by his cane-cutters in the off-season, and the small local community funded the furnishings. Paul was awarded the Bene Merenti Medal by Pope Pius XII in January 1948, in recognition of his work for the Catholic Church in Queensland.
At this time an article in the Maltese News, a publication of the Maltese Social Society in Melbourne, discussed Zammit's reputation as the biggest sugar cane farmer in the Cairns district and acknowledged the unfailing support he had given to Maltese settlers in the area over the years. In addition to the friends and family he had assisted, he also financially supported Father John Camilleri through his studies at the Capuchin Seminary in Italy during the 1950s. Camilleri was to go on to serve the Diocese of Cairns for more than forty years until his death in 2006.
From the late 1940s Paul Zammit expanded his business interests in north Queensland. Between 1948