In Townsville, Burns, Philp & Company Ltd had acquired approximately 200 metres of Ross Creek frontage, on which they erected wharves and warehouses, with their offices in an old building which had been erected in the 1860s for Robert Towns and John Melton Black, the founders of Townsville.
The two-storeyed section with frontages to Wickham and Flinders Streets housed the main offices: the shipping department on the ground floor and the manager's office and cashiers' and correspondence department on the upper floor.