One early local business was a brickworks located just outside the Cabbage Tree Creek boundary of what is now Fitzgibbon.

On 11 May 1885 Leopold Fiedler from Prussia became the new owner of Portion 345, and he set up a brickworks with his son Francis. Bricks from Fiedler’s brickworks are thought to have been used in building the replacement Sandgate Post Office, which opened in May 1887.

In early February 1893 a cyclone dumped 1,026 millimetres of rain at the Brisbane Regional Office, the highest monthly total recorded for Brisbane. The resulting flood was followed by heavy rains and two more cyclones by mid-February. These floods, the worst since free settlement began, submerged 128 hectares in north Brisbane, killed thirty-five people, and had a devastating effect on the economy. They also destroyed the Fiedler brickworks, bringing an end to this local business.