City Libraries, City of Gold Coast

Veivers family in the garden at Talgai Homestead, Mudgeeraba, Queensland

Veivers family in the garden at Talgai Homestead, Mudgeeraba, Queensland

John Veivers was twenty when he arrived in Brisbane in 1859. He applied for Deeds of Grant for 80 acres on Worongary Creek, 207 acres on Mudgeeraba Creek and 386 acres "south of Nerang" into the Merrimac area. The Merrimac area was called "Talgai". He married Marion Ferguson. In 1879 he built a dwelling house of red cedar on the property...the floorboards were of wide huon pine without knots. The window frames and inner doors were made of silky oak. Inside the walls were three metre high tongue and groove, to keep them airy and cool and the rooms opened onto gracious wide verandahs that surrounded the house, providing sweeping views of the countryside. "Talgai" which is said to mean woody knoll was built for John and Marion by Mr. Anderson. John and Marion had 10 children- John, Walter, Maggie, Grace, James, Robert, William, David, Nellie and Norman. John Snr died in 1904. Marion died four years later at the age of 56.--Information taken from, W. Veivers, Pioneers of a trackless land: the Veivers family in Australia, 1988.Talgai homestead was constructed from local cedar for John and Marion Veivers and their ten children. The home was built on a ridge of high land facing out over the Merrimac Flood Plain to the coastline and was typical of its time. A rectangular single skim membrane of vertical tongue and groove emcompassed by wide verandas and covered with a corrugated iron roof. A series of small bedrooms and a parlour lay to either side of a narrow central hallway and the kitchen stood adjacent to but separate from the main house.--Reference source: Queensland Homes : Spring, 1993, p 64.