Roads and Highways, Published 5 February 2026
Whilst out on a recent walk, we discovered a ghost road with a smelly past!
Before sewerage came to Brisbane's north-side, the quiet suburb of Bracken Ridge was home to the region’s official Manure Depot - yep, the place where nightsoil carts rolled in to dump and bury the city’s waste.
A nightsoil cart was a horse‑drawn wagon (later replaced by a mechanical “dunny truck”) used in the days before modern sewerage to collect human waste from backyard toilets, usually under the cover of darkness. The men who did this work, known as nightmen, would haul out the heavy pans from outhouses, heave them onto the cart, and make their rounds through the sleeping suburbs before transporting the load to a sanitary depot for burial or treatment. It was tough, unglamorous work, but it kept entire communities functioning long before pipes and plumbing took over.
Back in 1923, the Bracken Ridge Manure Depot was called “one of the most up‑to‑date depots in Queensland” (fancy, right?). The site sat along Telegraph Road between the old Sandgate Racecourse and Bald Hills and after the nightsoil era ended, it became a rubbish tip… and then transformed again into the sporting fields and parklands locals use today.
Wild to think that the fields people walk their dogs on today were once Brisbane’s sanitation HQ!
Today, the only trace of the old depot is a small section of the original roadway that once led straight into the site. That forgotten path now sits quietly within the modern swimming pool and skate park complex, a hidden reminder of what the area used to be.
History is messy - literally - but it makes for a great story!
(The Ipswich cart shown didn’t operate in the Bracken Ridge area — it’s simply an example to show what an early night cart would have looked like.)
B&W Cart Photo - Public Domain - Ipswich Libraries / B&W Ariel Photo: Brisbane City Council - CC BY 4.0
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