It is not known why Walter, after landing in Sydney decided to take his family to Brisbane - perhaps he thought Brisbane might have better prospects or maybe he had made arrangements to get a job there or to go into business. Eventually he rented a workshop at what was then known as Five Ways Albion, which was actually on the corner of Bimbil Street and Abbotsford Road, where the present day Sandgate Road and Collingwood Street meet. After Walter left, it was once occupied by a firm making taps, but in 1990, it had returned to its former use, being the premises of Brisbane Lace and Gates, who make reproduction iron lace work and gates, though these days they are cast in aluminium.

Walter's first trade advertisement appears in Pugh's Almanac for 1899 where Walter is shown under the listing of "Engineers, Machinists, Wheelwrights, Boilermakers and Mechanical Manufacturers". In 1900 there is a listing as well in Queensland Post Office Directory and the first mention of Motor Car Manufacturer as well as Boilermaker and Ornamental Ironworker. It was probably at Albion that the gates still in front of Department of Agriculture in William Street Brisbane and stamped BAILEY PATENT ALBION were made.

Some time about 1905 Walter moved to a much larger site in Montpelier Road Bowen Hills (sometimes called Valley in Walter's ads) which was called Bailey's Engineering Coy and was backed by a steep cliff. Walter's main offsider at that time was Albert, who used to go out and measure up the gates etc, and help Walter make them and then he and Walter would go out and install them. Perhaps the gates made for the then Catholic Archbishop of Brisbane, named Duhig and installed at his residence were made at Bowen Hills. They were originally painted green, with red rosettes and white arum lilies with yellow centres, but when the residence became Canossa Private Hospital, the gates were donated to All Hallows Convent (now St. Ambrose) in Newmarket Road and they were repainted, much to their detriment. There is also an old photo, taken about 1906 at Montpelier Road, of a magnificent pair of display gates emblazoned BAILEYS, with Walter and Albert on each side, completely dwarfed by their great height and in the background are various garden seats and sample fences and other products Walter made.

One of the garden seats is still in the family, having been given to Alfred’s son Maurice by his mother in law Maud Watson. It was not until Maurice was giving the rusty arms a good clean up prior to painting them, that he found they were stamped with the name BAILEYS

It seems that the name of Bailey is also associated with gates in England and it has been reported that one pair, made by "Messrs Bailey" were first shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851 and then installed at Brookwood Necropolis Station, near Westminster Bridge. The Great Exhibition was devised by Prince Albert and 14,OOO exhibits from all over the world (half of them British) were housed in a huge 'Crystal Palace' or glass house erected in Hyde Park London which covered 19 acres.

At one time there was also a set of Walter's gates at Marchant Park Kedron at the entrance to the land that had been donated to the community by George Marchant, from whom Walter had an order for Steam Trucks. Perhaps the gates were a sort of quid pro quo, but unfortunately they have been replaced by modern ones.

At the Old Museum, on corner of Gregory Terrace and Bowen Bridge Road, it is thought that the sign itself and the surrounding fence were both made by Walter and these are still standing. This fence is made of alternating square and round vertical bars, set into horizontal ones and locked in by a system of alternating pins. Ted Bailey says that first the knobs on tops of the vertical bars would be made in the forge and then a series of holes would be drilled in the horizontal bars, using Walter's steam operated drilling machine, or if there was no steam it would be turned by hand. The bars were heated until they were red hot and the holes then enlarged by driving in a special tool with a sledge hammer. This was repeated until the holes were the right shape and the vertical bars were then inserted and locked into place with the pins.

The great obsession of Walter's life, to which he devoted so much time and money was steam power. Even when Ted was still a child, Walter used to demonstrate the basic principles of steam to the family at mealtimes, using cutlery, bottles and anything else on the table to explain how they worked.

Towards the end of 1700s steam began to be used to power all types of machines and it was later extended to drive all sorts of vehicles. Starting with James Watt's Steam Carriage in 1769, there are numerous examples of Steam Coaches in England and America. A Steam Coach built in England in 1829 by James Anderson, which was the first to carry paying passengers and to make ten miles per hour and a Steam Wagon built by John Yule in 1875, were but two of the many vehicles driven by steam that were put into operation. In America in 1897, the Stanley brothers had already produced their famous "Stanley Steamer", which in 1906 broke a world speed record by travelling at 127 miles per hour.

Walter mentions a Steam Motor Car in a display ad in 1905 Post Office Directory, though of course it was not an original idea and no mention of a Steam Car patented by Walter Bailey could be found in Australian Patent Office records.

Like many of the Bailey men, Walter could be a very persuasive talker and about 1908 got together a company or syndicate which was called Bailey Motor Manufacturing & Carrying Co with himself as Managing Director and its Registered Office at 343 Queen Street Brisbane where Company Secretary David W I Anderson was in business. One of the company's main backers was George Marchant, whom Walter may have met because of their common interest in the Temperance movement. Marchant had started off as a soft drink carrier, but went on to invent bottling machinery which was used all over the world. Other subscribers are said to have been Charles Bernays (Walter's patent attorney), a Major Bland/Blunt, a Mr. Bushell and James Traction Co. According to Jane, there were also a lot of small subscribers who paid for their shares in sixpenny instalments, collected by Walter doing his rounds on a bicycle. Although the Steam Car was supposed to run on oil or coke, the small subscribers were to supply wattle logs for its fuel and make a return on their investment, but perhaps the logs were to be used to make charcoal as an alternative fuel.

The four Steam Trucks Walter was to build for Marchant were to take empty bottles up to Ipswich, where the water from Helidon spa (which was a vital constituent of the famous "New Drink") was bottled in Marchant's factory and on the return journey, the trucks would take the filled ones back to Brisbane from where they would be distributed all over Queensland. To seal the bottles, Marchant is said to have designed a special ebony stopper, but Ted believes the design was Walter's - a fact that Marchant never acknowledged.

Even had the trucks ever been finished, they would have been very expensive to run up to Ipswich. Like many other Governments, the one in Queensland had passed a regulation requiring steam vehicles travelling within 4 miles of Post Office of any large town to be preceded by a man carrying a red flag and ringing a bell and be in possession of a permit which was to cost one hundred pounds.

Despite all the stories of a Steam Car and the order for Steam Trucks, what Walter actually started to build at Montpelier Road was a Steam Bus - the fuel was to be wood and it was to run from Brisbane to Redcliffe via Petrie and return, with the passengers having to pay two shillings and six pence for the whole journey. There was, in the beginning enough money to employ two helpers, one of whom is said to have been an Alf Foulkes of Hamilton. There is even a photo, taken about this time showing Walter at the forge, with his helpers in the background with a big flat bed lathe used during its construction. In the end, not even the engine was ever finished as there were problems with faulty cylinders and gear castings that broke when being machined and the whole project collapsed. It is said that Secretary Anderson sold up the Company without even consulting Walter and perhaps even took the Steam Car patent to America, but there are no records to prove whether this was true or not. When the family moved to Enoggera, Walter took some of the Steam Bus parts with him and Ted says he remembers that some of the brass bevel gears were still around when he was a boy.

Walter had, as his patent attorney, one Charles Bernays, who according to the full page advert in Pugh's Almanac for 1904 was a Consulting Engineer - this ad also mentioned "Patents Applied For in Any Country. Inventions Examined and Reported Upon. Oppositions Prosecuted and Defended." At a time when workers, under the Harvester judgment, were paid forty two shillings for a six day week, the fee for a Provisional Patent, lasting for six months was five pounds. After this, the patentee had to apply for a full patent, which cost twenty pounds and lasted for twenty years. When the cost of Bernay's services was added to these fees, it was no wonder Walter had very little money left for the family's living expenses.

In his listing in Post Office Directory for 1908, Walter states "Proprietor of the following Patents viz Steam Motor Cars (Oil or Coke fuel), Ornamental Iron Gates & Water Tube Boilers, Wrought Iron Wheels for all Purposes &". The latter was the only full patent Walter ever held - it was for the wheels with S-shaped spokes and was probably the one registered in the name of Bailey Motor Manufacturing & Carrying Co in 1910 No. l5578.

In 1928 there was a Provisional Patent accepted and issued as l4934/28 for a Grass Cutter, but because a full patent was never taken out, the document and drawings are not available to the public.

The Grass Cutter was actually a new type of lawn mower, which instead of using knives around a cylinder, cut the grass by means of knives attached to 2 revolving plates. It seems to have been on the lines of an early "Victa" mower, but instead of having a motor, the power was provided by the operator. According to Ted, it had an eighteen inch cut and was operated by turning a handle attached to a wire rope which passed around grooved pulleys, thus rotating the wheels and spinning the cutting knives - as well there was a lever on the handles to disengage the clutch and stop the mower. The framework was made of one inch by quarter inch mild steel bar and the shafting of half inch steel pipe and the mower was light enough to be picked up by one man. A site was booked at the Brisbane Agricultural Show about 1928 so the new machine could be demonstrated and it was to cost five pounds. The "grass" was the stems of some weed Ted gathered daily on a vacant block near home and the stems were pushed into rows of holes drilled into a set of boards made for the occasion. There would be demonstrations on the hour and as Walter worked the mower, Ted would hand out business cards, take any orders and when the demo was over, refill the boards ready for the next time. However, no one ever got a chance to buy the mower, because the provisional patent lapsed and the story goes that it fell into the hands of company secretary Anderson, so Walter could not manufacture any more machines.

Walter's next invention, provisionally patented in 1929 No. 24263 was for a Wire Strainer, which he sold out to the engineering firm of Lysaghts, but nothing ever came of this invention either.

The only patent that ever made any money for Walter was for his wheels in eight, ten and twelve inch sizes, made entirely by family labour. According to Ted, Walter only charged eight shillings for his eight inch wheels, which seems little enough, seeing the steel alone at that time cost five shillings. No account seems to have been taken of all the special machinery Walter built to bend the spokes and make various other parts, and whatever small profit was made on the wheels was put into buying more machinery or registering new patents, so in the end there was no capital left. The wheels would be delivered around Brisbane by horse and sulky, but sometimes a full load of wheels and the axles to go with them would be picked up by the local fuel merchant on his model T Ford and taken to Brisbane to be put on the train to go to places like Rockhampton.

As Ted grew up, the Depression deepened and it was very hard to sell anything for cash, so he and Joe would each take a pair of wheels to Brisbane to try to sell them for four shillings. The bus fare to Brisbane was more than a quarter of that, but if they sold any wheels the boys would use the balance of the money to buy some more steel to make another pair. After Walter died and Jane had to leave because she could not pay the overdue rates, she and Peter took some of the machinery with them, but no one knows where it is today - probably sold long ago for scrap or maybe rusting quietly away in the grass in some forgotten paddock. Like Walter's hopes of making his fortune, all that effort was for nought.