Over the past twenty years I have gathered information about place names in South East Queensland and I set out here the results of my research. The area extends from Gin Gin and Eidsvold in the North and out to the west as far as Saint George, Surat, Miles and Taroom.

They are presented alphabetically. Click on any of the letters below to see the list of names starting with that letter:

[su_tabs] [/su_tab][su_tab title=”H“] [su_accordion] [su_spoiler title=”Haden” style=”fancy”] This was the maiden name of Mrs Paget the wife of the Minister for Railways. In the days of early settlement the area was known as Little Gomoron and when the railway line came through the station was originally called Wahoon but after a load of Christmas perishables was delivered to Walloon near Ipswish by mistake the name was changed to Haden. Walter Trueman Paget married Alice Elizabeth Ruth Haden 11 April 1889 about 4 or so years after the death of his first wife only a few months after their marriage. He became prominent in sugar industry affairs entered parliament and was minister for railways and agriculture and after the portfolio was split he continued with railways. On retirement from politics he grew fruit at Mooloola where he died as the result of a farm accident 1930 leaving his wife to survive him. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Haigslea” style=”fancy”]The school was opened 5 July 1875 as the Walloon Scrub State School but nine years later it was given the German name of Kirchheim This reflected the national origin of many of the district’s settlers. However it was changed during the First World War when anti-German sentiment ran high to Haigslea after Sir Douglas Haig Commander-in-Chief of the British Army fighting against the Germans. Douglas Haig’s military service took him to India the Sudan the Boer War India again and back in Britain as Director of Military Training. When he was promoted to the rank of major-general he was the youngest officer of that rank in the British army. During the First World War he became commander-in-chief of the British Expeditionary Force in France and Belgium. After his retirement in 1921 he was made Earl Haig and then Baron Haig of Bernersyde. He died in 1928. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Hamilton” style=”fancy”] The Aboriginal name for the area was Yerrool and a long sandy reach in front of this area was called mooroo-mooroobbin meaning long nose. The name of Hamilton was first given to a hotel built by Gustavus Hamilton solicitor of Toowomba about 1867 and later owned by Sam Hamilton. The suburb gained its name from the hotel.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Hampton” style=”fancy”] When the railway line to Crows Nest was opened the name given to the rail stop here was Perseverance Siding but during the following year the name Hampton was in use. It is not known why this name was used although it is assumed that it harked back to a town in Middlesex England.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Happy Valley” style=”fancy”] The term Happy Valley at Caloundra was probably coined by Robert Bullcock whose house overlooked the area.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Hardgrave” style=”fancy”] Joshua Peter Bell in Moreton Bay and How to Fathom It speaking of Stradbroke Island says “The island’s highest point (Bippo Oyerpunya) was given the name of Hardgrave after John Hardgrave the Chairman of the Brisbane Board of Waterworks at the time.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Harristown” style=”fancy”] Named after the Brisbane businessman George Harris[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Harrisville” style=”fancy”]Twentv years separated the brothers John and George Harris but they set up in partnership as shipping agents in Brisbane in connection with the wool trade. When the older brother went off to London to look after the interests of the company there George diversified and took the business into cotton growing among other activities. He married Jane a daughter of George Thorn of Ipswich and for some years owned Newstead House but he lost it in bankruptcy proceedings. The Harris brothers opened a cotton gin on part of Robert Dunn’s selection to handle the cotton coming off the Ipswich Agricultural Reserve. This land had been specially set aside in 1860 by the newly formed Queensland Government for the purpose of growing cotton when Briton’s usual supply dried up due to the American Civil War. Other businesses established themselves nearby. The gin closed when the cotton-growing venture collapsed on the return of the United States to the cotton market but the name of Harrisville lived on at the suggestion of Robert Dunn’s youngest daughter. Her first suggestion was Harristown but there already was a Harristown near Toowoomba so her second choice was accepted. She later married Luke Wheeler Smith.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Hawthorne” style=”fancy”] Hawthorne in Brisbane is named indirectly after Hawthorne in Melbourne. When the Baynes family moved from Victoria around 1875 they called their house here Hawthorne House. The name then came to be used of the locality from the 1880s. William Henry Baynes was born in England in 1833 the son of a butcher. He purchased a Brisbane butchery in 1859 then with his brothers established the Graziers’ Butchering and Meat Export Company in 1880. This was liquidated in 1897 but they started up another business 1898. From 1878 to 1883 he was a member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly. They say that he grew hawthorn hedges on his property another reason then for calling his place Hawthorne House.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Hays Inlet” style=”fancy”] It’s Aboriginal name was Tungulba meaning a place for fish-poison.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Heathwood” style=”fancy”]Heathwood This area between Oxley Creek and Blunder Creek was named after one of its early settlers. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Helensvale” style=”fancy”] The Helensvale railway siding served a sugar plantation of the same name around the end of the 19th century. The sugarcane was transported from there to the Nerang Central Mill for processing. Later the area was given over to dairying but in the 1990s it was transformed into a residential area. The Helen in question was Helen Simpson White daughter of William Duckett White whose brother together with Anthony Arthur Robinson gave the plantation its name.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Helidon” style=”fancy”] The town grew up around the railway station. The name came from one of the earliest runs taken up by squatters during the great land rush of the early 1840s. The run was originally spelt Hellidon after the town of that name in Northamptonshire England. It was Henry McDermott of Sydney who claimed the run and it was Peter Murphy and James Pearce who drove the first sheep to stock it.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Highfields” style=”fancy”] Known once as Kooljarewon (top of the range) it developed as a timber town serving the Highfields Sawmilling Company mill.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Highgate Hill” style=”fancy”] Surveyor James Warner gave this densely wooded range the name of Sierra Madre but it never took on. The Wilson family who settled there in the mid 1860s seem to have been the first to use the name of Highgate Hill. A.B.Wilson was a leading Brisbane architect. Aboriginal name was Beenung-urrung frilled lizard.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Highvale” style=”fancy”] The name of Highvale near Mt Nebo came into use in 1943. It was suggested by The Highlands station from which the area had been subdivided into soldier settlement blocks after the First World War. The Highlands was a model dairy farm at one time owned by the McWhirters of Fortitude Valley.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Highworth” style=”fancy”] This area near Nambour is supposed to have been named after a township in England.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Hillcrest” style=”fancy”] Gazetted as a place name June 1987.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Holmview” style=”fancy”] Holm is Old English for river flats. It was supposedly given this name because it gave excellent views of the old ferry crossing at Loganholme.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Howard” style=”fancy”] In 1882 the township was named after William Howard born in Tasmania 1839 who after his arrival in Maryborough 1857 explored the district for minerals.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Howells Knob” style=”fancy”] This hill in the Reesville district near Maleny is named after Robert Howell who settled in the area.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Humpybong” style=”fancy”] When the German missionaries Eipper and Hausemann visited the abandoned site of the first European settlement at Moreton Bay its flimsy and derelict buildings were described by their Aboriginal acquaintances as Umpieboang – dead houses.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Hunchy” style=”fancy”] This is a shortening of the earlier name Hunchback for the area at the foothills of the Blackall Range near Montville.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Hussey Creek” style=”fancy”] T. and M. Hussey after whom the creek is named owned land in the area between Toorbul Point and Ningi.[/su_spoiler] [/su_accordion] [/su_tab][su_tab title=”I“] [su_accordion] [su_spoiler title=”Ilkley” style=”fancy”] Joseph Kitson named the area after the town in Yorkshire were he was born.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Image Flat” style=”fancy”] Several suggestions have been made as to the origin of this name for a district near Nambour but perhaps the most probable is that when mist fills the hollows in this hilly country it creates the image of being flat land.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Imbil” style=”fancy”] This was an Aboriginal word referring to a scrub vine that contained a lot of drinkable water. The name Imbil Imbil was in use 1851 when John David Mactaggart took up the properties known as Bluff Plains and Bunya Creek. When they were consolidated into one by Paul and Clement Lawless in 1857 the name of Imbil was used. Then in 1914 part of the property was subdivided into town allotments.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Inala” style=”fancy”] This was an Aboriginal word referring to a scrub vine that contained a lot of drinkable water. The name Imbil Imbil was in use 1851 when John David Mactaggart took up the properties known as Bluff Plains and Bunya Creek. When they were consolidated into one by Paul and Clement Lawless in 1857 the name of Imbil was used. Then in 1914 part of the property was subdivided into town allotments.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Indian Head” style=”fancy”] James Cook 19 May 1770  referred to the Aboriginal people he saw there as Indians and hence gave it the name of Indian Head.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Indooroopilly” style=”fancy”] The Aboriginal word for the area yinduru-pilly meant gully of leeches. The area where the railway bridge was built across the river was called mirbarpa while the pocket downstream from it was called tu-wong meaning black koel bird.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Inglewood” style=”fancy”] Some say that the town was named after a forest in England while others say that ingol was an Aboriginal word referring to the cypress pine. It was first known as Brown’s Inn after the hotel there but when a town was surveyed in 1862 by L. F. Landsberg it was called Inglewood. When the railway came through the sign put up on the station announced Parriegana however the locals objected and it was taken down the day before the Governor came to open the line.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Inskip Point” style=”fancy”] The British Admiralty Hydrographer named Inskip Point in 1849 after Captain George Henry Inskip of HMS Rattlesnake born in Plymouth around 1824 the son of a sailor. He also had a brother in the navy Captain Peter Inskip. Reference: Richard Walding http://home.iprimus.com.au/waldingr/inskip.htm.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Inverlaw” style=”fancy”] The area was known as Four Mile Gully until the Postmaster General’s Department requested a different name for a receiving depot to be established there and the members of the local progress association chose Inverlaw by a majority of 9 to 16, 27 August 1910.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Ipswich” style=”fancy”] The city was named by Sir George Gipps Governor of New South Wales after Ipswich in England in honour of Captain J.H.Rous who came from there. The English Ipswich way back in 993 AD was known at Gipeswic and meant Gip’s port or landing place. The Aboriginal name for the area was Tulmur but it gained the name of Limestone when Captain Patrick Logan established a kiln there to process the locally mined limestone for his building projects around Brisbane Town. He stationed five convicts and an overseer with a corporal and three soldiers there. A farm was later developed too. The first free settler was George Thorn formerly of the 4th (Queen’s Own) Regiment who came to Moreton Bay with his wife and baby son to work as a surveyor. He was appointed Superintendent of the Limestone Settlement. The son became a Premier of Queensland. Governor Gipps was not sure that it was the right site for a permanent town but it went ahead anyway and with the influx of free settlers became a major commercial centre. At the head of navigation on the Brisbane and Bremer Rivers it was nicknamed the Squatters’ Capital.. Even as far back as 1828 Allan Cunningham found coal in the vicinity. This helped it become an industrial and railway city. It was declared a city 3 December 1904.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Ironpot” style=”fancy”] One feels that there must be an interesting story behind the name of this district in the South Burnett area of the State but one can only surmise as others have done that the name was given to the creek by some shepherds of Henry Stuart Russell’s Burrandowan station when they made the mysterious find of a three-legged iron cooking pot on its banks.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Ironside” style=”fancy”] In 1885 William Alexander Wilson subdivided land on the east side of Ryans Road and named it Ironside Estate after his wife’s maiden name (Lydia Matilda Ironside). In 1905 the local school was renamed Ironside State School although it was not actually on the original estate. Ironside is now a neighbourhood within the suburb of St Lucia.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Isis” style=”fancy”] Named after a river in England.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Ithaca” style=”fancy”] .Governor Bowen named Ithaca Creek after the Greek island of that name about which he had written a book. Ithaca in 1850 (Published in London 1851). He was for some years political secretary to the government of the Ionian Islands and married (1856) Diamantina daughter of Count Candiano di Roma President of the Ionian Islands Senate. The local authority area and suburb subsequently gained its name from the creek.[/su_spoiler] [/su_accordion] [/su_tab][su_tab title=”J“] [su_accordion] [su_spoiler title=”Jacobs Well” style=”fancy”] There are a couple of stories about how Jacob’s Well got its name. One is that Jacob was an engineer on a steamer working between Brisbane and Southport when they ran out of water for the boilers. Jacob went ashore dug in the sand and found good water. The well was then cased with timber and used by various boating people. The other story is that in the early 1800s J. C. Appel Snr with his men was attacked by Aborigines and while they were struggling home with one of their number badly wounded they noticed a wet patch on the sand and on digging found good clear water. Regarding this discovery as an act of God’s grace Appel named the well they dug after the biblical well of the same name.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Jamboree Heights” style=”fancy”] This was the site for the Eighth Australian Scout Jamboree held December 1967[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Jandowae” style=”fancy”] The Aboriginal name for a waterhole there. Over the years the name has taken different forms. In a petition to the Secretary of Lands in 1862 it was called Jindowie. When John Dowaie set up a camping area the name Jondowaie was used by settlers in correspondence. When the railway came through 1914 it was Jandowae.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Jeebropilly” style=”fancy”] This area near Ipswich derives its name from a Yuggera (Aboriginal tribe) word translated as flying squirrel gully.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Jimboomba” style=”fancy”] The first license for Gimboomba run was issued to Thomas Dowse 1845. It passed into the hands of Sydney publican Robert Towland and later to Andrew Inglis Henderson. The name is of Aboriginal origin. It could mean echo or it could refer to an edible grub found in the locality. Tom Dowse had been transported to Sydney as a youthful convict where he worked as a clerk eventually marrying gaining his ticket-of-leave and then a pardon and moved to Moreton Bay on its being opened up to free settlers in 1842. Start on the baring off with a ferry business across the river he diversified his business interests among which were those of auctioneer and commission agent. He took out the lease on Gimboomba run but trouble with Aborigines and financial difficulties forced him to sell it in 1847. He was the Moreton Bay correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald active in Brisbane’s business and community affairs a strong critic of convict transportation and an ardent promoter of Brisbane. His diary leaves us with a unique picture of life in early Brisbane. He died 1885.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Jimbour” style=”fancy”] The name Gimba meaning lush grass was given by Henry Dennis acting on behalf of Richard Todd Scougall to a creek when he selected the Jimbour run in 1840. He had been sent north by his Liverpool Plains employer a family relative to secure land for Scougall and two of his neighbours Charles Coxon and Lieutenant Irving. Together with his Aboriginal associate Warraby he accomplished his task but Coxon and Irving beat him to the land that he wanted for himself. He took possession of Jimbour on behalf of Scougall in 1841 although it was not stocked until the following year and Scougall and Dunn had to sell it upon the collapse of the Bank of Australasia 1843. Thomas Bell bought it and it flourished under the management of Joshua Peter Bell the youngest of Thomas Bell’s three sons. Dennis was part of a group that explored the Boyne and Burnett rivers was involved in opening up the route through Hodgson’s Gap successfully pioneered Warra Warra on behalf of Irving after the first flocks had been scattered and the shepherds killed by Aborigines. He eventually secured a grazing run for himself and was engaged to one of Thomas Bell’s daughters when he was drowned in the capsize of the paddlewheel steamer Sovereign in the South Passage out of Moreton Bay on his way to the wedding in Sydney 1847.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Jindalee” style=”fancy”] The name which has been is use from the 1960s is an Aboriginal word plucked out of a published list of Aboriginal words and means bare hills. It did not belong to any local dialect.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Jondaryan” style=”fancy”] The waterholes were known by the Aboriginal people around the Condamine River as Yondaryar meaning a long way off. Henry Dennis who got on well with the Aboriginal people was the first to select this land for a grazing run however Henry Coxon on behalf of his uncle Charles Coxon beat him to it and it was officially taken over by Charles Coxon in 1842 as Gundarnian. However the pastoral property came to be known as Jondaryan so when the railway came in 1868 the township that developed there was also called Jondaryan. It developed as an important centre around the railhead but declined after 1912 when the branch line was constructed out from Oakey rather than from Jondaryan. The name was retained for the newly constituted shire in 1913.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Jones Hill” style=”fancy”]This locality near Gympie is named after Richard Jones who struck gold there on the hill over which he had taken out a Prospecting Lease 1 May 1863.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Juleen Island” style=”fancy”] I have been reliably informed that Juleen the name of an island just north of the Never Fail Islands in the southern section of Moreton Bay commonly refers to the Giant Nautilus Shell.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Jumpinpin” style=”fancy”] Before the sea broke through in 1898 North and South Stradbroke Islands formed one whole. The narrow ridge through which the sea broke was known to the Aboriginal people as Dhuleen or Tuleen. Oumpinpin from which Jumpinpin is derived was the Aboriginal name for the root of the pandanus palm which they chewed to a pulp and soaked in honey and which grew along that ridge making it an important tribal meeting place.[/su_spoiler] [/su_accordion] [/su_tab][su_tab title=”K“] [su_accordion] [su_spoiler title=”Kaimkillenbun” style=”fancy”] This name is thought to be derived from an Aboriginal language and is said variously to mean rim of the moon coming over the horizon or open mouth possibly associated with a male initiation ceremony. Early settlers spelt it as Cumkillenbun and later as Cumkillenbar[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kalbar” style=”fancy”] In the 1870s settlers began to take up land in the Fassifern Scrub part of the old Fassifern Station. In 1876 August Engels started trading from his farmhouse but in the following year sold off most of his land to concentrate on running a store he built there. The township which developed was known as Engelsburg but the name was changed in 1916 under the anti-German sentiment which prevailed during the First World War and when the railway line came through. An Aboriginal word was used. Kalbar is said by some to mean a place of brightness or a star but by others to mean dry dead trees.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kalinga” style=”fancy”] Kalinga sounds as though it could be an Aboriginal word but it is believed to have been the name of an Indian town which Judge Lutwyche came across in his reading of The Exploits of Genghis Khan.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kallangur” style=”fancy”] The area was once part of Redlands belonging to Mrs Griffin of Whiteside and which was acquired by Tom Petrie in 18gur55. The name comes from the Aboriginal word kalangoor meaning a goodly or satisfactory place.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kandanga” style=”fancy”] The railway station was named after a nearby creek. which in turn was named by the Aboriginal people Kandanga or Koondangoor literally meaning belonging to a mountain ridge. However it is suggested that the term had a deeper significance referring to the magic pebbles that were supposed to exist inside certain dynamic individuals . The word kananngur was used for a deceased person whose proper name could never be spoken. Another explanation given by some is that the word referred to the cabbage tree.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kangaroo Point” style=”fancy”] When John Oxley first saw the area now known as Kangaroo Point it was a jungle fringed with mangroves by the river and on the higher ground open forest covered with thick grass. Doubtlessly it was this grass which attracted the kangaroos thus giving the place its name. Back in the early years of free settlement Main Street was merely a track through the wattle and tea-tree scrub used by bullock teams. The crossing to Brisbane Town was at Petrie’s Bight. The area was quarried for building stone. John Campbell established a boiling down works there in the 1840s.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Karana Downs” style=”fancy”] Karana is of Aboriginal origin but it is not known from which language group it was borrowed. It is supposed to mean a quiet place or a pretty place beside the water. It was proposed by the developer possibly originating with the owner of the land being subdivided Rick O’Sullivan.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Karrabin” style=”fancy”] Aboriginal word for carbeen tree (Eucalyptus tesselaris) or the bush mahogany (Geissois benthamii)[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Karragarra” style=”fancy”] This Moreton Bay island was called Rabbit Island on a map dated 1884 but it has retained its indigenous name.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Karralee” style=”fancy”] Said to mean pretty hill beside the water.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kawana” style=”fancy”] The name for this group of communities between Currimundi Lake and the Mooloolah River is said to mean wildflowers in its Aboriginal origin. It was chosen by Alfred Grant the original developer in 1960. In 1977 it was one of Australia’s largest real estate developments. When the canals were first opened they almost drained Lake Currimundi until corrective measures were taken.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kedron” style=”fancy”] The normally dry sunbaked gully which runs between the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives is today called Wadi en-Nar but in the Bible is referred to as the Brook Kidron. This biblical name in the form of Kedron was used by the German missionaries who settled at Nundah for the stream which ran by the hill on which they established their station in the late 1830s. The hill they called Zion’s Hill reminiscent of the hill on which Jerusalem was built. Later the suburb of Kedron gained its name from Kedron Brook.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kelvin Grove” style=”fancy”] The personality behind the name of Kelvin Grove is that of the distinguished Brisbane medical practitioner and scientific researcher Joseph Bancroft. He said that he called the house that he had built for himself and his wife Ann Kelvin Grove to remind him of the many happy hours he had spent in those Glasgow gardens. He was twenty-eight years of age when they arrived in Brisbane with their children to begin life in a warmer climate. After graduating as a Doctor of Medicine from St Andrews University in Scotland and practising for a few years in Nottingham he decided to come to Queensland where his first task was to build this house along by Enoggera Creek. He set up his medical practice in the city but it is for his many scientific researches and interests that he is best remembered today. He did research into the prevention and treatment of typhoid fever; discovered the worm which causes filaria and determined that it was carried by mosquitoes; sought to develop better strains of wheat grapes and rice; investigated the properties of the Duboisia which has proved to be so commercially valuable to the South Burnett district; was involved in unsuccessful attempts to control Australia’s rabbit plague; invented a process for drying and canning beef but as a commercial venture at Deception Bay it failed. He was quick of mind and of temper. Could be most abrupt but because of his public spirited actions and his many achievements was admired by many. He died suddenly at the age of fifty-eight in 1894. An hotel built by F.G.Walker on Bancroft land was also called Kelvin Grove.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kenilworth” style=”fancy”] Mrs Smith was reading Kenilworth by Sir Walter Scott when her husband Richard Joseph Smith made application for land on the east bank of the Mary River in 1850 and this suggested the name for the property. Under a number of different spellings it has also been known by the name of the creek nearby Obi Obi. The Smiths sold Kenilworth in 1858. The town that grew up on nearby Cambroon station property then took the name Kenilworth. The area had been known by the Aboriginal people as Hinka-Booma meaning native apple tree.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kenmore” style=”fancy”] Kenmore meaning big headland in Gaelic is the name of a Scottish town on Loch Tay to the west of Perth. The name was transported to Queensland when Andrew Todd named his property Kenmore Park. From the property came the name for the suburb. Colin Campbell built an inn by Lock Tay in 1572 believed to be the oldest in Scotland and then a later Campbell built a number of whitewashed cottages nearby allowing his tenants to live in them rent-free provided they kept them clean. This was the beginning of the Scottish Kenmore. Taymouth Castle was built there in the 19th century.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kent’s Lagoon” style=”fancy”] Named after someone with the name of Kent. The question is which one. John Kent Deputy Assistant Comissary General at Brisbane succeeded George Thorn as superintendent of the Limestone Plains grazing establishment in 1839. John Kent (1809-1862) journalist and magistrate was editor of North Australian newspaper Ipswich 1861. William Kent in partnership with Edward Weinholt owned Fassifern station in the 1870s.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Keperra” style=”fancy”] If it is assumed that the Railways Department used a word from the local Yuggera language it could mean a young man or a ceremonial ground. But if as some historians claim the Railways Department selected a name from a list collected in the Gilbert River area around the turn of the century it meant tomahawk[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kessels Road” style=”fancy”] Named after Marie-Christine Kessels who acquired the property in 1868 and lived and farmed there with her son for many years.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kiamba” style=”fancy”] Geyambin its root referred to black cockatoos in the Gubbi Gubbi language.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kiels Mountain” style=”fancy”] The spelling has been changed but it was named after Henry August Keil who settled on its slopes in 1880.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kilcoy” style=”fancy”] The brothers Evan and Colin Mackenzie arrived in Sydney in September 1840 to increase their fortune and they followed the Leslies in the great land rush for the north in 1842. They called their property in the Upper Brisbane Valley Kilcoy after their ancestral home in Scotland. Evan had been educated on the Continent and spoke several European languages. He is reputed to have built the first house in Ipswich. Two years after laying claim to the Kilcoy land he bought land at Kangaroo Point and established a boiling down works and a small settlement there for his workers. In that same year he married Sarah Parks of Londonderry. When his father died in 1845 he succeeded to the baronetcy sold up and returned to Scotland where he became a magistrate. He travelled to America and other places and died in London in 1883. Colin was less dominant than his elder brother and steadily developed his grazing interests until he returned to Scotland in 1857 to live on the independent means he had been able to amass for himself. It was at Kilcoy station after Sir Evan left that the notorious poisoning of Aborigines occurred. Angered by the thefts of flour from the station someone laced some with arsenic and left it out where intruders could easily take it. Several Aboriginal people died as a result. It was not the only incident of this kind to occur in the times of early settlement in Australia but it did gain considerable public attention. It appears that Colin Mackenzie was not at Kilcoy when it happened and he pleaded his innocence. The town came to adopt the name of the Mackenzies’ station but it was for a time known as Hopetown after Captain Louis Hope another aristocratic landowner in the area. The Aboriginal name for the area was Bumgur meaning blue cod.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Killarney” style=”fancy”] This Queensland town borrows the name of the Irish town which David Malouf says “its founders mean to honour and were piously homesick for” – Killarney in Kerry Ireland where the name derives from the Celtic Cill Arne (church of the shoes).[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kilkivan” style=”fancy”]Kilkivan is one of those towns which got its name from the station property on which it was situated.. The station was pioneered by John David MacTaggart when as a young man he drove sheep across from Maryborough and settled there. He had come out to Australia to work for Ben Boyd of Twofold Bay but wanted to get hold of some land for himself so came north. He named the property after a town in his native Scotland. he first township developed when gold was discovered by six New Zealanders. They called it West Coast Creek after the area of New Zealand that they came from. This alluvial gold ran out but the town shifted when Rise and Shine Reef was discovered nearby. The town was known as Mount Neurum for a while but Kilkivan soon came to be preferred. The town relocated itself when the railway came through re-forming around the train station but when the line was extended in 1902 the town was moved to its present site. Dulcie Logan in Where Two Rivers Run says that Kil meant church and Kivan beloved and that the Scottish name derived from an ancient custom instigated by the local priest. Any couples who were dissatisfied with their marriage partners could come to the church once a year when the church was darkened and try their luck in grabbing someone else in the dark but when the lights were brought in they had to stay with the chosen partner irrespective of whether that person was hunchbacked bowlegged or otherwise disfigured. Well that’s the story ! [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kinbombi” style=”fancy”] Meaning: aboriginal woman coming.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”King Island” style=”fancy”]Its Aboriginal name was Yerubin or Erobin. It is only an island at half tide or less linked as it is to Wellington Point. In the 1880s it was eleven acres in extent but has been gradually shrinking over the years. It was known as Wynnum until that name was given to the area that now bears the name.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kingaroy” style=”fancy”] The town’s name probably goes back to C.R.Haly original owner of Taabinga Station. It seems that the name is derived from the Aboriginal word for red ant kinjerroy although some claim that it was named after an early settler by the name of King..The name prededed the town. When Taabinga station was being divided up for closer settlement 1878 the Markwell brothers took up adjoining leases which in 1883 were converted to freehold. These blocks were referred to as the Kingaroy paddock. Again when Daniel Carroll appied for land in 1891 it was described as being “on the northern side of Kingaroy Paddock”.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kings Beach” style=”fancy”] Kings Beach Caloundra is named after the King family who moved there in 1893 and established a guest house in a house that had been moved from Campbellville on Coochin Creek after James Campbell moved his sawmilling business from there to Brisbane.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kingsholme” style=”fancy”] This area forming much of what used to be Upper Ormeau is named after James Murtha’s property selected in 1869. He came from County Cork Ireland. Later on it was owned by Sir Charles Holm.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kingsthorpe” style=”fancy”] The township was originally known as Gowrie for it grew up as part of the original Gowrie Station. It was later known as Gowrie Crossing or as Gowrie Creek but by 1905 the name had been changed to Kingsthorpe in honour of George King (1814-1894) of Gowrie Station. The King family were associated with Gowrie station from 1866 on.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kingston” style=”fancy”] The first settler here was James Trahey but he did not stay long. It was Charles and Harriet Kingston who gave their name to the area. They arrived out from England in 1857 with two young children and lived at Redbank Oxley Eight Mile Plains and Tygum before building their house here a slab construction located on a slight rise above the flood levels. They called this place Oakwood. They experienced tragedy when one of their children aged one year and ten months drowned in a nearby creek but they had a number of children and as their sons grew up and married they built their homes around them so that there came to be a cluster of Kingston homes on the property. As they prospered William and Harriet were able to take a trip back to England and on their return built the house they called Kingston House. Since this could be clearly seen from the railway line it became a prominent feature of the landscape. Charles died in 1904 and Harriet in 1911. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kin Kin” style=”fancy”] The name Kin Kin is derived from the Aboriginal kauin kauin meaning red soil. The school was previously called Bellbird Creek Flat School. The creek has sometimes been called King King Creek.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kinleymore” style=”fancy”] This district was named after old residents. In fact the name was put together by George Smythe by combining the names of three early settlers of the region: Jack Kinnear Andrew Ley and Don Morey[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kippa-Ring” style=”fancy”] A kippa-ring is more widely known as a bora ring but using the more local dialect the name came to be used of the Redcliffe suburb where one of these major centres for Aboriginal ceremony was located. This kippa-ring actually consisted of two rings about 300 metres apart joined by a pathway. The name was adopted by the Queensland Place Names Board 12 October 1959.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kirra” style=”fancy”] The railway station was so named by the Railway Department in 1932 after Kirra Hill surveyed in 1883. The Aboriginal meaning of kirra is not clear. It could mean white cockatoo or boomerang or fire.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kleinton” style=”fancy”] Named after an early German migrant by the name of Martin Klein.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Klump Road” style=”fancy”]The road is named after Fred and Henry Klumpp and their sister Sophie (Anger) who were the first farmers in what is now Upper Mount Gravatt taking up land in 1875. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kolan” style=”fancy”] Aboriginal for very good[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kondalilla” style=”fancy”] Appropriately the name for these falls in the Aborginal language means sound of rushing waters. When they were part of Skene’s property they were known as Skene’s Falls but after his request that the Home Secretary’s Department declare the 80 acres of his land that included the falls a reserve they were for a time called Bon Accord Falls[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kooralbyn” style=”fancy”] The Aboriginal name means the place of the copperhead snake. It was the name given to the pastoral property owned in turn by William Barker John Haygarth the Bundock family and the Gordon family. It formed part of the Tamrookum Run taken up by John Tinker Campbell in the early 1840’s.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Koolangoor” style=”fancy”] Literally the name means good like: kalang meaning good and gnur meaning like. Used to be part of the Maroochy Plains Cattle Run and was opened up for closer settlement in the 1890s[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kulpi” style=”fancy”] In its original Aboriginal usage locals claim kulpi was used for charred logs but the Queensland Railways says that the name refers to timber from the box tree. It was given this name when the railway came through. The positioning of the railway meant the demise of the nearby township of Evergreen[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kuluin” style=”fancy”] This was the local Aboriginal name for the black swan. Andrew Petrie borrowed foreign Aboriginal words in naming the Maroochy River after the black swans there.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kumbia” style=”fancy”] This area which had earlier been part of Taabinga station gained its name from the Aboriginal term for a small vine growing in the forest. It first appears as Coombia in the Land Court files of 1890 when Arthur Youngman applied for permission to ringbark 1400 acres of this block.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kunda Park” style=”fancy”] The name is believed to come from an Aboriginal language where it could have meant a dog, a decorated digging stick or the cabbage tree palm.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kunkala” style=”fancy”] Means running fresh water.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kuraby” style=”fancy”] The name adopted by the Railway Department in 1885 was the name of a creek in the area. It was the Aboriginal word for a place of many springs or small creek.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kureelpa” style=”fancy”] In the Aboriginal language of Yugurabul kuril-ba meant place of mice or rats.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kurilpa” style=”fancy”] This Aboriginal name for the area later known as West End in Brisbane was Kurilpa place of rats or mice[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kurwongba” style=”fancy”] The Aboriginal name for the creek which Europeans called Sideling Creek was revived by the Queensland Place Names Board 13 August 1959 when it was given to the lake formed by the dam on that creek.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Kybong” style=”fancy”] The meaning is obscure but some say that it means dead cow. When application was made for a school it was in the name of Seven Mile Brisbane Road Provisional School but by the time it became operational it was called Kybong State School.[/su_spoiler] [/su_accordion] [/su_tab][su_tab title=”L“] [su_accordion] [su_spoiler title=”Labrador” style=”fancy”] It seems that Robert Muir gave the name to the creek and general area after Labrador in Canada. But it was its use by Frederick Shaw the General Manager of Cobb & Co. in Queensland for his residence Labrador House and for the Labrador Hotel that fixed the name more permanently in the minds of people. The Labrador State School opened 1921.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Lacey’s Creek” style=”fancy”] John Lacey was an early settler who took up Portion 117 in 1879. Before that the creek had been known as Bullon Creek. Some early maps show it as Leacy’s Creek.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Laidley” style=”fancy”] Allan Cunningham reported to Governor Darling his discovery 22 June 1829 of a fine patch of timbered plainland which he said he had named Laidley’s Plain as a compliment to the Deputy Commissary-General in Sydney James Laidley. He was sure this country would produce fine crops of maize or other grain. James Laidley was born in Perthshire Scotland and had served in army commissary stores in several parts of the world before arriving in Sydney 12 May 1827 with his wife Eliza and five children. In Sydney they lived a social and public-spirited life. He was involved in local newspaper affairs the Australian Racing Club and the Agricultural and Horticultural Society. When he died at the age of 49 leaving a wife and eight children but no will he was buried with full military honours. J.P.Robinson occupied the Laidley Plains in 1845 but the first grant of land was made to R.J.Phelps 1848. The town gained its name from the plains.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Lake Clarendon” style=”fancy”] Originally Wingate’s Lagoon.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Lake Manchester” style=”fancy”] Cabbage Tree Creek Dam was renamed Lake Manchester in December 1916 when the dam was opened. It was named after E. J. T. Manchester engineer President of the Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Lamb Island” style=”fancy”] Charles Lamb the English poet and essayist after whom Lamb Island is named was a close friend of the poet Coleridge. During most of his long writing career he held the position of public servant clerk in India House and for much of that time he looked after his sister Mary who had been entrusted to his care following her killing of their mother in a manic attack in 1796. He renounced marriage to look after her. Some of his writing was done in conjunction with her. He signed the essays that he wrote for the London Magazine with the pen name of Elia. He died 1834 at the age of 59. The island was known by the Aboriginals as Ngudooroo.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Lamington” style=”fancy”] The Lamington National Park and perhaps the great fund-raising cake of Australia is named after Charles Wallace Alexander Napier Cochrane-Baillie better known to us as Lord Lamington who was Governor of Queensland from April 1896 to 1901. He had got himself elected to the House of Commons in England but when his father died he inherited the title of Baron Lamington and transferred to the House of Lords. An arch-conservative he feared federation as opening the gate to socialism. After leaving Queensland he and his wife Mary went to Bombay where he was Governor for four years. He died at Lamington House Lanarkshire Scotland in 1940 at the age of eighty.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Lander’s Camp” style=”fancy”] This spot on Bribie Island is named after Edmund Lander an early cattle grazier. When the Unoccupied Crown Lands Occupation Acts of 1860 opened up lands for grazing and timber getting Edmund Lander a migrant from Devonshire England moved cattle to Bribie Island by swimming and walking the cattle across Pumistone Passage at low tide.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Landers Shoot” style=”fancy”] Edmund Landers’ interests were in both grazing and in timber getting. He had one of the shoots down which timber getters would send rom the slopes of the Blackall range.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Landsborough” style=”fancy”] The district was first known by the creek there Mellum Creek but in 1889 the railway line came through and the Railways Department decided to call the station Landsborough in honour of William Landsborough who had only a few years earlier died at his home in Caloundra. William son of a Scottish clergyman followed his older brothers to Australia in 1841. After learning about life in his new land by working on stations in the New England district and by joining the gold rush at Bathurst he came north where he and his brothers took up Monduran station on the Kolan River. He made many exploratory journeys through the North and West of Queensland the most famous of which was the first crossing of the continent from the Gulf of Carpenteria to Melbourne on his officially appointed search for Burke and Wills. For a while he was Police Magistrate and Land Commissioner for the newly opening up Carpenteria area of Queensland. He had a home at Toowong. After his first wife Caroline died he married Maria a widow. The Queensland Government gave him a reward for his services through exploration and with it he bought the property Loch Lamerough at Caloundra.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Lanefield” style=”fancy”]The area was named 1887 after John and Clara Lane, pioneer settlers.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Larapinta” style=”fancy”] The name is of Aboriginal origin but not local to the area. It is said to mean flowing water or flat country.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Lawnton” style=”fancy”] Stephen Lawn after whom Lawnton was named when the Railways Department acquired land from him for the building of the railway in 1888 had taken up land in 1862 just two days after landing in Brisbane on board The City of Brisbane. Born 1836 he came from Helmsley Yorkshire and was a blacksmith by trade. Together with John Atkinson Thompson he took up land for farming but he also set up a small smithy. After traffic increased following the discovery of gold at Gympie he concentrated on his blacksmithing business. In 1873 he bought better land to the south of the river and moved his business there. It was some of this land that was acquired for the construction of the rail line. He died 1917.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Leichhardt” style=”fancy”] The birth of a sixth child to a small-time farmer and peat cutter in the small Prussian town of Trebatsch in the year of Napoleonâ??s retreat from Moscow 1813 might not seem to have much to do with modern Australia but the name of that child Ludwig Leichhardt is written large across the Australian story. He has fascinated writers and painters poets and historians musicians and botanists and his name is known to every Australian school child as one of the great explorers of this continent. His name lingers around South East Queensland in Leichhardt Terrace Brisbane and in a suburb of Ipswich and is scattered extensively throughout the rest of Queensland. Yet he was only in Australia for seven years. His full name was Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Leichhardt and he proved to be a clever although erratic scholar. He suffered from depression and was short-sighted yet he had a forceful personality and was given to great enthusiasms. For some years he sponged off a wealthy young Englishman by the name of William Nicholson with whom he travelled around Europe and he it was who financed his trip to Australia in 1841 to do research into the strange flora and fauna of that distant land. If he had gone home he would have been in trouble with the authorities for he had neglected to do the year’s compulsory military training required by young Prussian men. In Australia Leichhardt travelled around the country staying with hospitable settlers and collecting botanical specimens. For over a year he was in Brisbane and surrounding districts cutting a strange figure with his chimney-pot hat adorned with creepers and leaves and beetles. He heard talk about Sir Thomas Mitchell’s proposal for an overland exploratory expedition to Port Essington and touted for financial support so that he could mount an expedition himself. He was thirty-one years of age when he led his nine companions off from Jimbour station on the Darling Downs singing God Save the Queen. Two of them turned back but the rest pressed on. His fellow botanist John Gilbert was killed by an Aboriginal spear in the Gulf Country but Leichhardt and party arrived at their destination sixteen months after leaving Brisbane. Some say it was more luck than good management but they got there and it brought him fame and financial reward. After an abortive expedition in 1847 he set out in the following year on his attempt to cross the continent from east to west. His disappearance led to several expeditions but the fate of his party has never been resolved. The Ipswich City Council named the suburb of that city after the explorer 20 July 1953.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Leslie Dam” style=”fancy”] Patrick Leslie was the first of the squatters to take up land on the Darling Downs following their discovery by Alan Cunningham. He was later joined by his brothers Walter and George. They called their run Toolburra meaning quivering spears in an Aboriginal language. From an Aberdeenshire family of some standing Patrick arrived in Sydney May 1835 and immediately became part of the colonial in-group. He married Kate Macarthur. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Leyburn” style=”fancy”] Originally a settlement that grew up around Leslie’s Crossing on Canal Creek this township derives its name from Leyburn in the Yorkshire Dales. Named by the Surveyor General 1 February 1853 it gained prominence when gold was discovered in the area in the 1860s.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Limestone Ridges” style=”fancy”] The locality is named after a limestone outcrop mined for dolomite[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Lindum” style=”fancy”] This was an abbreviation of Lindum colonia the old Roman name for Lincoln England. The Romans took over a Celtic name which meant a pool or lake when they settled their veteran legionary soldiers near the marshy pools and fens of what was to become Lincolnshire in the East of England. The name was given to his farm in the area by Edward Kekl and later adopted by the Railways Department as the name for the railway station. Edward Kelk came from Lincolnshire in the 1850s and with his two brothers bought land that they named Lindum-mere. His brothers did not stay long in the area but Edward married Mary Elizabeth Brooks 1869 and built a new house on the property. They grew sugarcane and established Kianawah Sugar Mill during the 1860s.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Linville” style=”fancy”] When Colinton run was in the hands of the Balfour brothers a small private township grew up at a place called Nine Mile Yards. When it came to be properly surveyed the locals suggested the name of Linton for the town. This simply involved dropping the first two letters of Colinton. but since there was another town of that name in Victoria it was not approved. Linville was accepted as a compromise 1905[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Lockyer” style=”fancy”] In 1825 Major Edmund Lockyer 57th Regiment was sent to Moreton Bay by Governor Brisbane to investigate a report that John Gray during an expedition out from the settlement had come across a tribe of white-skinned people who carried bows and arrows. He had with him Thomas Robinson a sailor who had been in Gray’s party earlier that year and Robinson was able to lead them to the place in the Brisbane Valley where the sighting was supposed to have occurred but no light-skinned tribe could be found. While on this expedition up the Brisbane river by boat Lockyer came to a large creek running in from the west and marked this on his map. Cunningham later referred to this as Lockyer’s Creek and the name became official. He also gave Lockyer’s name to a plain which he discovered on his travels in the area. Edmund Lockyer had been in the army about twenty-two years most of it spent in India and Ceylon at the time of this expedition. He had come to the New South Wales colony earlier that same year. In the year following his visit to Moreton Bay in a move that was to forestall the French he was sent by the Governor to choose a site for a settlement on the South-West Coast of the continent. The harbour where he landed the Brig Amity (on 26 December 1826) is known as Princess Royal Harbour. The Princess Royal Harbour opens out into King George Sound. The settlement that was established circa 20 January 1827 was originally named ‘Frederickstown’ in honour of the Duke of Albany at that time but was later changed to ‘Albany’. as Police Magistrate and Superintendent of Police at Parramatta Sergeant-at-arms in the Legislative Council and Usher of the Black Rod in the NSW Parliament. He married Dorothea Agatha de Ly 12 August 1806 in Ceylon. They had one child. When he came to Australia he was accompanied by his second wife Sarah Morris. She had eleven children. After Sarah died in 1854 he married Eliza Colston and she bore him three children. He died 1860 at the age of 76.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Loders Creek” style=”fancy”] The Aboriginal name for Loder’s Creek at Southport was Biggera meaning ironbark. The Loder family were early farmers in the area.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Logan” style=”fancy”] What sort of man was Captain Patrick Logan third Commandant of the Moreton Bay Penal Settlement? Lean physically fit energetic determined a heavy drinker smoker of cigars aloof class conscious reckless. Drove himself hard so not surprisingly drove others similarly. Both critics and supporters agreed on one word – indefatigable. He and his wife like the other officers and their wives took great interest in building up their collection of local insects. He maintained a running quarrel with the chaplain who refused to fit into the system of military command. In his thirties he was a veteran of the Napoleonic and American wars and had served in Ireland where he met and married Letitia O’Beirne of County Sligo. He had been an officer in the British Army for 16 years when he was sent by Governor Darling to pull the 18-month-old subsidiary settlement at Moreton Bay into shape. When he arrived there were no permanent buildings in Brisbane Town only buildings of slab construction. He built in brick and stone and saw the beginnings of a town plan. He made the settlement agriculturally self-sufficient. He expected his orders to be carried out and had no hesitation in administering discipline to see that they were. This included floggings for the prisoners who did not put in the work demanded of them were insolent tried to escape or committed a crime. When available he also used solitary confinement the treadmill and reduction of rations. He won the admiration of the Governor and his peers for his administration of the settlement and for his exploration of the surrounding country. It was in the course of these explorations that he discovered a major river to the south which he called the Darling after his boss the Governor of New South Wales. The Governor re-named it the Logan in his honour. From the river has come the names of Logan City Logan Village Loganholme and Loganlea. His term as Commandant was almost at an end his successor had already arrived when he was killed while exploring in the Brisbane Valley October 1830. Officially he was killed by Aborigines but a rumour has persisted that it could have been done by aggrieved convicts.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Loganholme” style=”fancy”] When William Castles migrated from Northern Ireland he went to Kyneton in Victoria. After the death of his first wife he married Isabella and they came to live in Queensland where after a time in Brisbane they moved to Pimpama. After being badly affected by flood there they moved to new land on the Logan River in 1879 to which they gave the name Loganholme. The ferry that crossed the river nearby had from the late 1860s been known as Holme’s Ferry. It is said that Castles was a ‘big and blustery fellow’ stern but kind an active layman in the Methodist Church and while not a qualified doctor had some considerable skills in medicine. He had to sell Loganholme land on which he had build a substantial home he called Castledean after costly court action. He died during the 1917 influenza epidemic.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Long Pocket” style=”fancy”] The Aboriginal name for Long Pocket in Brisbane was Tuwong meaning koel cuckoo[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Lota” style=”fancy”] Lota The pioneer pastoralist William Duckett White and his wife Jane started building the house at Manly which they called Lota after her home in Cork Ireland in 1855. They occupied it in 1863. Both William and Jane were Irish. They came to Sydney with two children in 1840. He had several positions over the next few years including that of school teacher and property manager but it was the move north to manage Beaudesert Station for his cousin J.P.Robinson that brought them into the Moreton Bay area. He bought Beaudesert and then went on to acquire a vast area of land between Beaudesert and the coast. Later he expanded his pastoral interests into North Queensland where he successfully pioneered the Devon Shorthorn cross. He was a foundation member of the prestigious Queensland Club sat for a short time on the Legislative Council but was not really interested in politics. He died in August 1893 at the age of 86 six years after his wife. He was a staunch supporter of the Anglican Church at Tingalpa. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Lowood” style=”fancy”] The name was suggested by the low brigalow scrub in the district and was given to it by the Railways Department in 1884. The area had previously been known as The Scrub and the school as first Upper Tarampa and then Cairnhill.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Luggage Point” style=”fancy”] Luggage is said to have been some sort of corruption of the name Uniacke who accompanied Oxley and Stirling on their voyage to Moreton Bay 1823. John Fitzgerald Uniacke was Sheriff and Provost Master of New South Wales. He it was who took down Pamphlet’s statement after being found at Toorbul Point. He died two years later at the age of 27. It was named Uniacke Point before it acquired the name of Luggage Point.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Luscombe” style=”fancy”] Luscombe was the name of Frederick Shaw’s property on the Albert River. He was at one time the manager of Cobb and Co in Queensland. He was a sugar grower and became a member of parliament. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Lutwyche” style=”fancy”] Alfred James Peter Lutwyche a strong advocate of democratic reform was called ‘the poor man’s judge’ and he crossed swords more than once with the conservative forces in early Queensland. He took up his position as a judge of the New South Wales Supreme Court only months before Queensland became a separate colony but chose to stay on and so became Queensland’s first judge. On his arrival in Moreton Bay he bought a tract of land bordering on Kedron Brook where he built Kedron Lodge and here he entertained bred racehorses wrote articles for the newspapers and was active in work for the Anglican Church. Yet some regarded his wife Mary as insufficiently refined for the position of Administrator’s wife so he was not made Administrator during the absence of the Governor as might have been expected. The son of a London leather merchant he had been educated at Charterhouse and Oxford. To his career as a lawyer he added the profession of journalism working at one time on the same staff with Charles Dickens. He came to Australia to report on Australian affairs for the Morning Chronicle but took up his legal profession. He served on the NSW Legislative Council for some years before coming north.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Lytton” style=”fancy”] Lytton district and holding was named by Sir George Bowen in 1859 after Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer the first Baron Lytton 1803-1873. This flashy young man around London was the son of an army general and a wealthy mother who cut off his money supply when he married against her wishes so he turned to writing novels to get an income. However his relationship with his wife deteriorated to the point that he gained a legal separation in 1836 years earlier. He alternated between writing and politics throughout his life. He was Secretary for the Colonies in Lord Derby’s ministry 1858-1859 at the time Queeensland was separated off from New South Wales. He became Baron Lytton of Knebworth in 1866. He is more famous for his writing than he is as a parliamentarian. He was more skillful with the written than with the spoken word. Following the publication of a report on Queensland’s defences in 1877 a fort was established at Lytton to protect Brisbane from naval attack. The Aboriginal name for the area was Gnaloongpin.[/su_spoiler] [/su_accordion] [/su_tab] [su_tab title=”M“] [su_accordion] [su_spoiler title=”Macalister” style=”fancy”] This township on the Western line was named after ‘Slippery Mac’ or rather the Hon. Arthur Macalister three-times Premier of Queensland. Born in Glasgow Scotland (1818) he came from a poor family but studied law and came to Australia with his wife in 1839. During the 1850s he practised law in Ipswich but from 1859 to 1876 he was prominent in the Queensland parliament. He has been called the father’ of Queensland railways. In 1876 he became Queensland Agent-General in London. The deficiencies in his understanding and practise of economics lead to difficulties for the Queensland government and landed him in bankruptcy more than once.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Macgregor” style=”fancy”] William MacGregor was a bright young shoolboy from a poor family in Aberdeenshire whose intelligence was early recognized by the local schoolmaster minister and doctor. They encouraged him to undertake further studies but his studies for the ministry were cut short when he got a girl pregnant. He married her and went on to study medicine. He joined the colonial service as a doctor but Sir Arthur Gordon in the Seychelles encouraged him to take up administrative work and when Gordon was sent as Governor to Fiji MacGregor accompanied him. His first wife died while they were in Fiji and he married again. Both wives had the same name Mary. He was knighted while serving as Administrator of British New Guinea and he then served as Governor of Lagos then of Newfoundland and (1909-1914) of Queensland. He retired to Scotland and died there 1919. He studied the classics and languages and always encouraged education and scientific research. He was the first Chancellor of the University of Queensland. His attitude toward native peoples has been described as that of humanitarian paternalism.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Macintyre River” style=”fancy”] Allan Cunningham named the river after Captain Peter Macintyre of the Hunter Valley who had provided horses and drays for his 1827 expedition.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mackenzie” style=”fancy”] The name commemorates Colonel W. Mackenzie who had a sugar mill on Scrubb Road.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Maclagan” style=”fancy”] The name of the Scot Major-General Ewen George Sinclair-MacLagan replaced the name of Prince Otto Edward Leopold von Bismarck (1815-98) first chancellor of the German Empire as the name of this township during the First World War. cheese was marketed under that name. MacLagan was wounded during the Boer War (1899-1901). He married the daughter of Major General G. A. French. He was seconded to work with the Australian forces both before and during the Second World War. He was involved in the Gallipoli landing 25 April 1915 and in the Flanders campaigns 1917-1918. He retired in 1925 and died in Dundee Scotland 24 November 1948.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Maclean” style=”fancy”] May have been named for Peter Maclean a local dairy farmer during the 1860s.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Macleay Island” style=”fancy”] According to Archibald Meston this island was known to the Aboriginal people as Jencoomercha. For a while it was known to the whites as Tim Shea’s Island because a convict by that name managed to live on the island for nearly fourteen years without detection. It was given its current name by surveyor Warner 1839 thereby giving recognition to Alexander McLeay who was the Colonial Secretary in Sydney from 1825 to 1837. Alexander Mcleay was 58 years of age when he came to Sydney with his wife Elizabeth to become the civilian assistant to the Governor a position he held for eleven years first under Darling and then under Bourke. He made full use of his entitlement to land grants and bought up as much land as he could. He was an enthusiastic horticulturalist and entomologist and became the first President of the Australian Museum in Sydney. He was President of the Public Library as well and in that capacity laid the foundation stone for the building in 1843. He was over eighty when he was involved in the carriage accident which claimed his life.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Maidenwell” style=”fancy”] John King sank the first well in the district so his family called it Maidenwell. King had come to Australia from Oxfordshire England with his parents. He married in 1875 at Ipswich and took up his selection on what had been part of the Tarong station holding in 1882.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Malabar” style=”fancy”] Many and varied are the sources of inspiration for place names. Malabar came from a variety of sugarcane.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Maleny” style=”fancy”] It has generally been understood that the name derives from a Scottish village Maleny Bank today part of the Edinburgh suburb of Balerno although sometimes reference is made to the Malleny Hills south-west of Edinburgh. An 1866 map shows Malleny Mountain on the Blackall Range. However Catherine Rees in her recollections of pioneering days says that she understood it was named after the surveyor (maybe Maloney) who laid out the property boundaries for the settlement.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Malling” style=”fancy”] Originally named Box Gully this district became Malling in 1921.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Maloney’s Island” style=”fancy”] Named after Thomas Maloney who owned oyster leases on two small islands opposite the mouth of Bell’s Creek a fish cannery on Bribie Island and a shell grit business which carried shell grit from Caloundra to Brisbane by barge through the Pumistone Passage.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Ma Ma Creek” style=”fancy”] Named by Europeans using words derived from Aboriginal mia mia (however not in local language) referring to bark huts.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Manchester Falls” style=”fancy”] The poet and writer George Essex Evans said that Manchester Falls were named after the Duke of Manchester who probably visited the Bunya Mountains around 1880.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Manly” style=”fancy”] The bayside suburb of Manly borrowed its name from Manly in Sydney when the Arnold Brothers developed Manly Beach Estate in 1882. It is said that Manly in New South Wales got its name from the impression the manly appearance of the Aboriginal warriors there made on the white people who first saw them. The earlier name for the Manly area came from a property called Wyvernleigh owned by Thomas Jones. This house was purchased by the Arnold brothers in the 1880s. It later became Tingalpa House. The Aboriginal name for the area was Narlung.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mansfield” style=”fancy”] Named after Sir Alan Mansfield born at Indooroopilly 1902 like his father before him prominent in the legal fraternity married to divorcee Beryl he was appointed as a judge on the Supreme Court 1840 of which he became Chief Justice in 1956. He was chief Australian prosecutor at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East following the Second World War. Knighted in 1958 he was Queensland’s Governor 1970-1972. He was Chancellor of the University of Queensland and held office in many charitable cultural and sporting organizations. He died 1980 at Benowa Gold Coast.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Manyung” style=”fancy”] According to Tony Matthews in Landscapes of Change it meant a mountain in the local aboriginal language.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mapleton” style=”fancy”] T. D. and W. J. Smith settled in the area in 1889 and when a few years later a meeting of the settlers was called to select a name for the settlement previously called Luton Vale or simply Blackall Range W.J. (William) suggested Mapleton. He had recently come across reference to a pretty little place on top of a hill named Mapleton in England in a book that he was reading and that he thought would be an apt name for the settlement. It became official when recognized by the postal authorities 13 April 1894. It is not known whether the book reference was to a real or to a fictitious town. Mapleton Falls was earlier known as Baroon Falls. It was changed at the request of Mapleton people 30 January 1915. Pencil Creek which flows over the falls gained its name from the pencil pines which grew along its banks.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Marburg” style=”fancy”] The name of Marburg reminds us that German settlers took up land in what was called the Rosewood Scrub in the 1870s. It was named by J.L.Frederick an early storekeeper after Marburg in Germany. Prior to that the district had been known as Sally Owens’ Plains. During the First World War the name was changed to Townshend after General Townshend of the British army but after the war the residents urged that the German name be reinstated and so it was in 1920.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Marcus Beach” style=”fancy”] (See Peregian)[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Margate” style=”fancy”] This made it a more attractive place to develop as a seaside resort than some other places around Moreton Bay. Add to this that surfing was not regarded by the upper crust as the proper thing to do. Bathing in still water was preferred. Then when the railway line was opened to Sandgate in 1882 it was anticipated that the next area on the north side to be serviced by rail would be Humpybong. An 1878 map shows Redcliffe Point Woody Point and Reef Point as physical features. They were not at that time residential localities. But it was not long before the developers started selling land around the peninsula foreshores and they cashed in on the popularity of English seaside resorts in the names that they chose. Margate was one of these. It is suggested that Margate in Kent got its name from a horse shaped rock off the shoreline for it means a gap in the cliffs near the mare.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Maroochy, Maroochydore” style=”fancy”] The thing that struck Europeans about swans in Australia was that they were black. They were used to seeing white swans. What struck the Aboriginal people most was that they had orange-red beaks. So the Aboriginal word for the black swan used by the tribes around the early Moreton Bay settlement was muru-kutchi sometimes written as marutchi meaning red-bill. When the early Brisbane builder Andrew Petrie came across a river populated by these birds on his 1842 expedition to the north of the settlement he had with him two Aboriginals from the Brisbane area and from them he borrowed the words from which he manufactured Marootchy Doro the Black Swan River. The local name for the black swan was kuluin. Maroochy is today the name of the river and of a township in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland. Dha meant place of so Murukutchi-dha means the place of the black swan but eventually this became standardized as Maroochydore the thriving commercial and tourist centre of the Sunshine Coast. Through Andrew Petrie’s son Tom we learn that the Aboriginal people used to go out in bark canoes and catch the swans when they were moulting and could not fly. The women used to use the feathers for decoration in their hair while the men kept the down in their dillies to use when dressing for a corroboree.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Maroon” style=”fancy”] John Rankin the first settler on this run called it Melcombe but when in the hands of Captain Robert Collins and his son James Carden Collins the name Wahl-maroon was used. This became shortened to Maroon. Actually the name Wahl-maroon was used by the Aboriginal people for what is now called Mount Ballow.In the 1860s Europeans called another mountain Mount Toowoonan Mount Maroon but eventually they used the name meaning sand goanna for the mountain that now bears this name.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Marsden” style=”fancy”] Violet Marsden whose name came to be given to the area was active in the Kingston Park Progress Association when this area formerly regarded as part of Kingston was being given a new name.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mary River” style=”fancy”] Europeans first called it Wide Bay River but in 1847 it was officially named Mary after the wife of Sir Charles Fitzroy Governor of New South Wales. She was accidentally killed later that year while her husband was driving a carriage through the grounds of Government House at Parramatta. His aide-de-camp also died as a result of that accident and the Governor injured his leg. As Lady Mary Lennox the eldest daughter of the Duke of Richmond she had married FitzRoy 11 March 1820.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Maryborough” style=”fancy”] Surveyor Burnett sailed up what was then called the Wide Bay River in 1847 and expressed his opinion that it would one day become an important port. Mary wife of the Governor of New South Wales Sir Charles Fitzroy was killed in that same year when the horses drawing her carriage bolted and it collided with a tree. When Burnett’s report came in the Governor decided the river should be renamed after his wife. So it became the Mary River. The Aboriginal people had known it by several names: Moonabula Mooraboocoola Numabulla Goodna and Yabon. White settlers came into the area almost immediately. George Furber opened a wool store on the south side of the river 1847 and Edgar Thomas Aldridge with Henry Palmer settled on the north side 1848. The town site was surveyed by Hugh Labatt 1849-50 it was gazetted a port of entry in 1859 the year that Queensland came into existence and the municipality was declared 1861[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mary Cairncross Park” style=”fancy”] Surveyor Burnett sailed up what was then called the Wide Bay River in 1847 and expressed his opinion that it would one day become an important port. Mary wife of the Governor of New South Wales Sir Charles Fitzroy was killed in that same year when the horses drawing her carriage bolted and it collided with a tree. When Burnett’s report came in the Governor decided the river should be renamed after his wife. So it became the Mary River. The Aboriginal people had known it by several names: Moonabula Mooraboocoola Numabulla Goodna and Yabon. White settlers came into the area almost immediately. George Furber opened a wool store on the south side of the river 1847 and Edgar Thomas Aldridge with Henry Palmer settled on the north side 1848. The town site was surveyed by Hugh Labatt 1849-50 it was gazetted a port of entry in 1859 the year that Queensland came into existence and the municipality was declared 1861[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Maryland” style=”fancy”] When the three young gentlemen Matthew Marsh Charles Marsh and Charles Perrot imbibed too heavily in rum to bolster their courage against an expected Aboriginal attack which did not in fact occur they gave to the place the name of Merrylands. Matthew Marsh later changed it to Maryland. Barrister Matthew Henry Marsh came to Sydney at the age of thirty and acquired properties in New England – Salisbury Plains Boorolong and Maryland – which he left his brother Charles to manage. He became a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council and on his return to England a member of the House of Commons. Through out the rest of his life he retained his interest in Australian affairs visiting several times. Died 1881.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”McDowall” style=”fancy”] The suburb is named after Ambrose McDowall (1853-1911) a landowner in the area. McDowall gave the name of his house Everton to neighbouring suburbs.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”McPherson Range” style=”fancy”] The range which forms part of the border between New South Wales and Queensland was named by Logan Cunningham and Fraser while on their 1828 expedition. Major Donald McPherson after whom they named it was an officer in the 39th Regiment.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Meadowbrook” style=”fancy”] Meadowbrook was gazetted as a place name in October 1991 although the estate had been marketed under the name of Meandowbank.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Meeandah” style=”fancy”] The name is formed from the word meander which in turn comes from the name of a river in Turkey. An aerial view of the Brisbane River twisting and turning on its way to Moreton Bay well illustrates the meaning of the word.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Melawondi” style=”fancy”] This was the name of an Aboriginal tribe in the Dawson River district.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Meldale” style=”fancy”] The area now called Meldale was once owned by Major Mellish and the name derives from the first syllable of his name.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Memerambi” style=”fancy”] The meaning is given by Queensland Railways as scrubby tree. The South Burnett Times of 1927 said that it is sugargum tree.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Meridan Plains” style=”fancy”] Richard and William Westaway named their property Meridan Plains in the 1860s. It may have had some connection with their father’s home county of Devon.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Meringandan” style=”fancy”] The name is a corruption of the Aboriginal words Moorin Gandan meaning fire clay. The name referred to a bank of ochre used by the Aboriginal people for the ceremonial painting of their bodies. The Meringandan pastoral holding was part of Gowrie station until closer settlement following on from the passing of the Land Act of 1868.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mermaid Beach” style=”fancy”] This part of the Gold Coast was named after the cutter Mermaid which carried Oxley Stirling and Uniacke from Sydney in 1823.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Merrimac” style=”fancy”] Behind the name of Merrimac stands the Stephens family. Thomas Stephens had made his money out of newspapers and wool when he took up a large tract of mostly low-lying land along by the Nerang River in 1876. He had been the second Mayor of Brisbane and for the last two years of his life was a member of the Queensland Legislative Council. He died the following year at the age of 58 leaving the property to his wife Anne but it was his son William who was mainly instrumental in developing his dream of draining the swamps and turning them into good agricultural land. The first dairy established by the family was called Hill View but the second was called Merrimac thought to mean merrily running waters. It was on reclaimed land. William like his father became involved in community and political affairs. All of the Stephens Estate except 300 acres was sold in 1901 and subdivided and it was then that the area came to be known as Marrimac Estate.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Merthyr” style=”fancy”] Samuel Griffith’s rise from poverty in Merthyr Tydfil Wales to wealth and prominence as a Queensland judge Australian statesman and Father of Federation is represented by the name he gave to his Brisbane house with its spacious riverside grounds Merthyr. His father was a Congregational minister who migrated to Australia when Samuel was eight years of age. He distinguished himself at Sydney University went into law and entered politics in a by-election for the Queensland seat of East Moreton in 1872. The speaking and argumentative skills which made him a good barrister made him a prominent politician. He was Premier for a total of about eight years. He has been called ‘Lean ascetic cold clear collected and acidulated.’ He was thorough in his attention to detail. He became the Chief Justice of Queensland and after federation Chief Justice of the High Court. This latter position took him to reside in Sydney but he returned to Merthyr on retirement. The Welsh name means the burial place of the saint Tydfil. Tydfil was a Christian woman who was killed for her faith in that area of South Wales in the 5th century.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Messines” style=”fancy”] Named after an Allied victory in the First World War.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Miami” style=”fancy”] The Miami Shore development took place prior to the Great Depression in the 1920s. The Hotel Miami opened 1925.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Middle Ridge” style=”fancy”] The teamsters who camped at The Swamp (became Toowoomba) used to graze their beasts in the area between East and West Creeks known from the 1860s as Middle Ridge.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Milbong” style=”fancy”] Some people called the area One Eye after an Aboriginal shepherd who had only one good eye but the Aboriginal term for one-eye came to be accepted.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Miles” style=”fancy”] Leichhardt named Dogwood Creek and the little settlement which grew up nearby was called Dogwood Crossing. The name Miles used since 1879 commemorates a local landholder William Miles who owned nearby Dulacca station either in partnership or on his own account from 1857 until 1875. He was born at Slateford near Edinburgh in 1817 and came to Australia with his wife in 1838. He gained experience in the pastoral industry by working on a number of properties where he gained the reputation of having a sympathetic attitude toward the Aboriginal people. He became a member of the Queensland Parliament in 1865 and remained in parliament until his death in 1887.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Millmerran” style=”fancy”] The name comes from the Aboriginal meel translated as eye and merran meaning to look out. A site nearby was apparently used as a lookout by Aboriginal people. When the area around here was first thrown open for closer settlement it was simply known as Back Creek part of the vast Yandilla station. For a while it was called Domville but in 1895 it became Millmerran.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Milton” style=”fancy”] If some Brisbane suburban names testify to royalist sentiments Milton points to a famous anti-royalist writer of the 17th century. John Milton better known as a poet the author of Paradise Lost spent much of his life writing pamphlets against episcopacy and monarchy. He was a Puritan in the days of Oliver Cromwell in England. The suburb was not named directly after the blind poet but rather after a property there. Two names are associated with the development of this property – Ambrose Eldridge and John Frederick McDougall. Ambrose Eldridge a pharmacist who had gone bankrupt in Sydney before moving north had married Mary Holmes 1846 in Sydney came to Brisbane in 1847. Two years later he took over the Queen Street pharmacy from John Taggart. He built Milton House in 1852 or 1853 when he pioneered cotton growing there. When Mary died 1856 he married another Mary this time Mary Cannon soon afterwards. He died at Ipswich in 1860 at the age of 45. Eldridge sold the property to McDougall who also grew cotton on the Milton Estate. It was sold for subdivision 1885 but by then the railway station had already secured the name for the suburb.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Minden” style=”fancy”] At the suggestion of early German settlers the town was in 1879 named Minden after a town of that name in Westphalia Germany. During the First World War it was re-named Frenchton but the name of Minden was restored in 1930.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mission Point” style=”fancy”] Named after missions established on Bribie Island for the Aborigines. The first was set up in 1877 under the supervision of Thomas Petrie a second in 1890 brought together people from various inland tribes and lasted only two years.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mitchelton” style=”fancy”] Mitchelton was named after Nicholas Mitchell whose farm purchased in 1875 was subdivided in 1894 as Mitchelton Estate.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Miva” style=”fancy”] Acording to the Queensland Railways in one dialect this Aboriginal word meant stony knob but in another dialect referred to the Moreton Bay chestnut. It was originally used by Gideon Scott for his pastoral run.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Moffat Beach” style=”fancy”] James C. Moffat after whom the headland and beach are named was a Brisbane chemist who established a holiday home there in 1883 and who through a syndicate of investors in 1887 opened the area up for development[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Moffatdale” style=”fancy”] The Murgon Centenary booklet says that â??The district and school was firstly known as Barambah then Barambah West. Moffatdale was first noticed in the committee records on 24th July 1917 however the origin of the name Moffatdale remains a mystery.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Moggil” style=”fancy”] The suburban area gets its name from the creek said to mean home of the Easter Water Dragon Maggil in the Yugarubal language of the Jagara people. However Archibald Meston said that Mohgil was the word used for a head in the language of the Brisbane River Aborigines. John Williams mined for coal on the bank of the river there in 1849 but it was John Dunmore Lang who promoted the area as a most favourable locality for settlement with the result that some of his immigrants who came out on the Fortitude settled there on Pullen Pullen Creek.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Molendinar” style=”fancy”] George Hope was familiar with Molendinar Burn that flowed through Glasgow and so named his property by that name in Queensland. When a railway station was built on his land in 1891 it was called Molendinar [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mondure” style=”fancy”] Aboriginal in origin. Refers to the greenhead ant. It was the name given to his pastoral run by Richard Jones in 1844.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Monkland” style=”fancy”] It seems that the name was given to this part of the Gympie goldfield by Scottish miners who had come from the Parish of New Monkland in Lanarkshire Scotland.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Montville” style=”fancy”] This town on the Blackall Range was named after the town of Montville in the American state of Connecticut. Originally known as Razorback it was re-named by Henry and Edward Smith on the request of their mother giving recognition to the town she as Emma Irons had come from.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Moogerah” style=”fancy”] The name which was originally given to a pioneer licensed holding is derived from the Aboriginal name for the locality. It was an appropriate name for the area meaning land of thunderstorms. The Department of Public Instruction gave the name to the school in 1908. Moogerah Dam has more recently been formed by a dam built across Reynolds Creek.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Moola” style=”fancy”] The Aboriginal name for this district once covered in dense brigalow scrub was one which meant the shady place.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mooloolaba” style=”fancy”] Ba meant place of but what did Mooloola mean? It seems there may have been two very similar Aboriginal words one meaning red-bellied black snake the other meaning schnapper fish. In 1862 the name for the cattle run here was Moolooloo. The township was originally referred to by white people as Mooloolah Heads. Mooloolaba was adopted in 1910 when Thomas O’Connor subdivided some of his land.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mooloolah” style=”fancy”] The name is said to have been derived from an Aboriginal word for the red bellied black snake. The town on the main railway line was surveyed 1884 by J. E. Palisser.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Moore” style=”fancy”] The township was named after the Moore family who owned Colinton station. The town site known locally as Stanley Gate was surveyed by F. M. Waraker as the town of Moore 1910-11. Some people called it Mooretown although its official title was always Moore. The mail receiving office was called Moore from 1903. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Moore’s Pocket” style=”fancy”] The Moore after whom this part of Ipswich was named was a Thomas Moore blacksmith and wheelwright who lived in Ipswich around 1846.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Moorooka” style=”fancy”] The name is Aboriginal but there is no evidence to suggest that the local Aboriginal people called the area by this name. However it is thought to refer to Toohey Mountain which looked like a big nose. One meaning of Moorooka is big nose. It possibly also meant ironbark. But the suburb of Moorooka largely occupies land that was known to the whites in early days at Pegg’s Paddock.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Morayfield” style=”fancy”] George Raff of Brisbane bought some of the land held by the failed Caboolture Cotton Company and called it Moray Field although it was often writtan as Morayfields. Eventually from 1881 it became Morayfield. The neighbouring property was owned by the ex-military man Captain Whish. Morayfield was derived from Raff’s native Morayshire in Scotland. Raff employed kanakas and grew sugar here. The Rev.J.D.Lang commended him on his humane treatment of the islanders. For nearly twenty years rum was produced on the property. His wife Harriet was the daughter of a retired missionary he met while working in the Gippsland area in the years soon after his migration to Australia in 1839. After their move to Brisbane in 1851 he became a leading businessman who worked strongly for the separation off of the new colony Queensland. The house they built at New Farm they called Moraybank and it was the centre for their happy family and social life up until Harriet’s death in 1879 but when George married a forty-year-old widow with a family of her own most of his seven sons became somewhat estranged from him. He died in 1889 at the age of 74.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Moreton Island” style=”fancy”] The Ngugu who lived on the island prior to the coming of Europeans called it Mulgumpin or something like that. It meant a strange fish. Lieutenant James Cook HMS Endeavour 17 May 1770 named a shallow bay on the eastern side of the island Moreton Bay and the cape nearby Cape Moreton after James Douglas Earl of Morton the Past-President of the Royal Society in England. The present spelling was introduced when John Hawkesworth published the account of Cook’s voyage in 1773. Lord Morton’s ownership of the Orkney and Shetland Islands brought him some publicity when it was contested and he was assaulted but he eventually sold these islands to the north of Scotland. With his wife and child he spent three months in the French Bastille in 1746. However he is best known for his work in astronomy and his promotion of science. He was very much involved in the program to make observations of the transit of the planet Venus which resulted in Cook being sent to Tahiti. Cook did not realize that the cape was on an island. It was Matthew Flinders who made that discovery in 1799 and he named the island. John Bingle in the Sally was the first to refer to the large bay on the western side of the island as Morton Bay using Cook’s original spelling.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Morningside” style=”fancy”] Place names sometimes have their origin in marketing strategies. Moringside is one of these. It was coined in the 1880s for the marketing of a large subdivision as Morningside Estate on the eastern or morning side of the city. It also is the name of a town in Scotland.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mothar Mountain” style=”fancy”] A rather doubtful interpretation is that Mothar was the Aboriginal word for a white man and that it got the name because a white man was found there.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mount Alford” style=”fancy”] This rural district was named after Thomas Alford the manager of Coochin Coochin station in the early 1870s. The township was earlier called Rockumpilla.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mount Barney” style=”fancy”] Lieutenant-Colonel George Barney Royal Engineers came to the colony of New South Wales in 1835 with his wife and three children and except for a short stay back in England made Australia his home for the rest of his life. At one time he was given the task of setting up a convict settlement in North Australia but the attempt to do this at Port Curtis was a failure. He held several positions in New South Wales including that of being the Surveyor-General who succeeded Sir Thomas Mitchell. Captain Logan mistook Mt Barney for Cook’s Mt Warning until 1828 when he climbed it and saw Mt Warning from its slopes. This was on the expedition by Logan Cunningham and Fraser during which it was named Mt Lindesay. There was a later re-allocation of names to these peaks so t[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mount Beppo” style=”fancy”] The name is supposed to be derived from the Yuggera language word bippo being their word for mountain. It is not however in the Yuggera language area but may have been used by an Aboriginal person accompanying one of the early explorers out from the Moreton Bay settlement[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mount Blaine” style=”fancy”] John Blaine after whom it is named took up land near Peak Crossing 1869[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mount Booker” style=”fancy”] Named after Edward Booker who sold Curra station to the Lindley family.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mount Coo-tha” style=”fancy”] From as far back as the 1860s this forested area of the Taylor Range has been a popular picnic and scenic spot for Brisbanites and visitors. It was once known as One Tree Hill because when the summit was cleared a single bluegum tree was left conspicuously on the skyline. The reserve was gazetted 1880. The present name comes from the Aboriginal word kuta which was applied to a particular kind of dark honey once plentiful in the area. The tiny native bees used to leave small particles of dirt around the base of the tree and this was what the Aboriginals looked for. They would carefully blow the leaves aside to find these telltale signs and when they found them would climb the tree with the help of a vine rope. They wiped the hollow limb out with chewed bark and then soaked it in water to make a sweet refreshing drink. There is another story that the Acting Clerk of Parliament went to an Aboriginal they called King Sandy to find out the Aboriginal name for the hill. Angered at broken promises this man whose real name was Gairballie gave him a rude word instead of the right word and so what should have been Gootcha the honey bee became Cootha.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mount Cordeaux” style=”fancy”] Alan Cunningham named the mountain on the northern side of Cunningham’s Gap after William Cordeaux who worked in the Commissariat Department in New South Wales from his arrival in 1818 until he became one of the land commissioners given the job of dividing New South Wales into counties hundreds and parishes. He prospered through land grants and established his home on his estate at Leppington near Liverpool southwest of Sydney. The Aboriginal people called this mountain Niamboyoo. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mount Cotton” style=”fancy”] Surveyor Robert Dixon named the mountain after Major Cotton Commandant of the Moreton Bay settlement July 1837 to May 1839. Its Aboriginal name was Tungipin meaning the west wind. Sydney Cotton was an engineer in the British army who went on to become a Lieutenant General and was knighted for his services during the Indian Mutiny. His wife Marianne was the daughter of a British army officer. He spent much of his military life in India and Burma but had two tours of duty in New South Wales one in the 1820s and again in the period between 1835 and 1842. He died 1874 at the age of 81. Constance Petrie said that the old Moreton Bay hands regarded him as the colony’s best governor. Others referred to his gentlemanly manner and urbanity. Sir John Lawrence called him a master of all technical details in every arm of the service. He wrote books on army drill and on India. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mount Crosby” style=”fancy”] When John Oxley climbed this hill 22 September 1824 with Lieutenant Butler he called it Belle Vue Hill. While Alan Cunningham who was part of the exploration party with them used this name in his journal he called it Station Mountain on his map. It was close to their last campsite or ‘station’. However when settlers moved into the area they named it after Crosbie-on-Eden on the English-Scottish border. Somehow the spelling came to be changed. There is another theory that the name came from a George Crosby who was prospecting in the area for a while.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mount Dunsinane” style=”fancy”] Charles Fraser was the colonial botanist who accompanied Cunningham and Logan on an expedition in 1828. He was born near the towns of Dunsinane and Birnam in Scotland. He gave the Dunsinane name to part of Mt Mahomet but it was later given to the hill he called Birnam Hill.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mount Eaton” style=”fancy”] Mount Eaton and Mount Eaton Creek in the Gunalda district were named after Mr John Eaton. The mountain was part of his large grazing run in the 1850s.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mount Edwards” style=”fancy”] Alan Cunningham named it Mt Edward.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mount Elliott” style=”fancy”] Robert and Margaret (nee Coulson) Elliott took up land in the area in 1868.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mount Glorious” style=”fancy”] The early settlers referred to the area as Gentle Breezes but it gained its permanent name when T.C.Beirne as Minister for Lands was visiting the Patricks’ home there about the time of the First World War and while discussing a suitable name for the place the eldest daughter of Charles and Alice Patrick said something like ‘It will have to be a good name with a view like this. Isn’t it glorious!’ And the name was decided upon there and then.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mount Gravatt” style=”fancy”] Kaggar-mabul (place of the echidna) may have been the Aboriginal name but the whites called it Mount Gravatt. Lieutenant George Gravatt was in charge of the Moreton Bay settlement for three months in 1839. This was the time of run-down for the penal settlement. There were only 94 convicts there when he arrived in May as a 23-year-old junior officer. He died at the age of 28 while serving in India possibly through contracting cholera.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mount Lindesay” style=”fancy”] There has been considerable name swapping among the border mountains. In 1828 Logan Cunningham and Fraser gave the name of Lindsay to what later became Mt Barney and they called the present Mt Lindesay Mt Hooker after the Regius Professor of Botany in the University of Glasgow. The name Lindesay came from Patrick Lindesay the officer commanding the 39th Regiment then serving in the colony of New South Wales. A military man and son of a military officer he was Acting Governor for six weeks or so between governors Darling and Bourke in 1831. On returning to Britain 1836 he was made a major general and became Sir Patrick Lindesay. During his nine years in Australia he promoted the study of the flora and fauna and encouraged exploration.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mount Mellum” style=”fancy”] Mellum is reported to be an Aboriginal word for volcano[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mount Mort” style=”fancy”] Formerly Gehrkevale this locality was named after the Mort family who took up land there in 1849.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mount Mowbullen” style=”fancy”] This part of the Bunya Mountains carries a name of Aboriginal origin meaning bald head a reference to the balds or treeless areas in the forest there. Archibald Meston said that the Waccah speaking people of the Bunya Mountains called it Mow-bullam while the Aboriginal tribespeople from the Brisbane River area called it Mohgilahn with the same meaning.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mount Nebo” style=”fancy”] The Mt Nebo community developed after the subdivision of Highlands Station 1919 into soldier settlement blocks. According to the Bible Moses who led the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt did not lead them into the Promised Land but he did get a look at the land from the top of Mr Nebo in Moab on the eastern side of the Jordan River. Mt Nebo was a place with an excellent view of the Promised Land. It has been in use at least since 1872.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mount Ninderry” style=”fancy”] Formed from the Aboriginal word nyindur meaning leeches.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mount Ommaney” style=”fancy”] John Oxley while on his initial journey up the Brisbane River camped nearby and climbed this hill that he called Green Hill and took bearings from its summit. But it gained its present name and hence so did the suburb from the young man whom Dr Stephen Simpson of Wolston House hoped would inherit his property. Having no children of his own Simpson hoped that his sister’s son would inherit it but it was not to be. Young J.M.Ommaney RN mounted a spirited horse one day and galloped across the open country toward this hill on the property but the animal threw its rider when it put its foot in a hole in the ground and the young man was killed.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mount Perry” style=”fancy”] Mount Perry in the Ipswich area was named after Thomas Perry and family[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mount Petrie” style=”fancy”] Named after Andrew Petrie[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mount Tarampa” style=”fancy”] Tarampa meant place of wild lime trees in its Aboriginal original. The name was first used by white settlers as the name for a homestead.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mount Tyson” style=”fancy”] Mount Tyson on the Darling Downs is named after James Tyson. His mother had been transported to the colony as a convict but when he died at the age of 79 he left an estate valued at 2.5 million pounds. Together with his brother William he made a fortune from a slaughter yard and butcher’s shop they set up on the Bendigo goldfields and then invested in property. He came to own huge tracts of land in New South Wales Victoria and Queensland. He was a member of the Queensland Legislative Council 1893-98 and at one time offered the Queensland Government a loan of a million pounds for the construction of a transcontinental railway. It was not taken up. In December 1898 at his Felton property he died a bachelor without a will.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mount Walker” style=”fancy”] In 1824 John Oxley called it Mount Forbes after the Chief Justice of New South Wales. But by 1865 it was known as Mt Walker. It has been suggested that Walker was a shepherd on Franklyn Vale station.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mount Warren Park” style=”fancy”] This suburban area near Beenleigh gains its name from the nearby Mt Warren which in turn takes its name from William Stanley Warren a sugar grower in the area from around 1867.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mountain Creek” style=”fancy”] At one stage the name Wicky Up was suggested for the development in this area but it has taken its name from the creek that flows from Buderim Mountain into the Mooloolah River.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mowbray Park” style=”fancy”]Rev. Thomas Mowbray was one of Brisbane’e early Presbyterian ministers. He was born at Hamilton Scotland 1812 went to University of Glasgow came to Australia in 1841 went first to a charge in the Port Phillip District and then to one in Sydney. Following a breakdown in health he came to Brisbane. He acquired extensive lands and established a school in the grounds of his home Riversdale now Mowbray Park. He died at the age of 55 but his wife lived on there until she sold the land to Josiah Young 1884 for subdivision as Mowbraytown Estate.[/su_spoiler

][su_spoiler title=”Mudgeeraba” style=”fancy”] The name is Aboriginal in origin but there is no agreement as to its meaning. According to the Queensland State Railways it means low-lying ground but other suggestions refer to infants’ excrement sticky soil or the telling of lies. The township grew up around the hotel in the 1890s. It was on the old Murry Jerry lease issued 1852 to Alfred William Compigne who held other runs in the Albert River area. Compigne a native of Hampshire England had come to Queensland in 1846 at the age of 28.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mud Island” style=”fancy”] The Aboriginal name for Mud Island was Bungumba. Matthew Flinders simply called it the first island as he numbered from one to six during his exploration of Moreton Bay aboard his ship the Norfolk.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mudjimba” style=”fancy”]The Kabi Kabi name for the small bush myrtus tenuifolia that bears edible sweet white berries with a green spot on them which grows along sandy areas near the sea was mudjim or midyim. And when the suffix ba meaning place of is added to it you have a word meaning the place of the mudjim bushes. This was the Aboriginal name for the island which is also called Old Woman Island off Mudjimba Beach north of the Maroochy River. There is an Aboriginal legend about how the moon came into existence. It includes an account of some women becoming stranded on the island. They lived on into old age but people from the mainland ever only saw one woman at a time so thought there was only the one there.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Muirlea” style=”fancy”] John and Andrew Muir owned land in the vicinity of the new railway station opened 1884 and this suggested a name for an area that had previously been called Brassall.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mulligan Creek” style=”fancy”]Surprisingly this Mulligan is probably not Irish but Aboriginal meaning ironbark[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mundoolin” style=”fancy”] This was first used as the name of a pioneer grazing run 1842 and means the place of death adders.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mundubbera” style=”fancy”]E.P.Bouverie took up the Mundubbera run in 1848 across the river from the present town. It seems that the name came from two Aboriginal words: munda meaning a foot and burra meaning a step and referred to the practice of making cuts in trees to make climbing of them easier. However some give the meaning as ‘the meeting of the waters’.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Murphy’s Creek” style=”fancy”] It’s hard to imagine it today but in the latter part of the 19th century Murphy’s Creek was a thriving business centre with tannery and bootmaker blacksmith bacon factory woolscour brickyards pit sawmill stone quarries two stores a butcher two hotels and a bakery a police station court house and three churches. There were over a hundred children in the school. The settlement grew up when the railway line was being built through to Toowoomba. It was at first called Fingal but was later known by the name of the nearby creek and the creek had been named after Peter Murphy who had built his out station on the Helidon run there in 1841.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Murarrie” style=”fancy”] Murrarie is one of those districts that got its name when the railway came through. An Aboriginal word meaning sticky or muddy was adopted.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Murrumba Downs” style=”fancy”]Tom Petrie’s acquisition of the property after which Murrumba Downs is named was unusual in that it involved the consent of the local Aboriginal people. Dalaipi of the local tribe offered him land along the North Pine River when he learnt that Tom was looking for a place to which he might bring his young wife Elizabeth daughter of John Campbell of John Campbell and Sons timber merchants. This was not in the first wave of European settlement so the land already belonged in the white man’s system to someone else. Tom had to see whether the owner Mrs Griffin of Whiteside station would sell. This she was only too happy to do because the hostility of the natives made it virtually impossible for her to run cattle on that part of her property. Tom had no such trouble for he was loved and respected by the Aboriginal people so he successfully worked the property that he called Murrumba using an Aboriginal word meaning good. He had the assistance of his Aboriginal friends in splitting slabs posts and rails for his humpy and stockyards. Later he built a fine house overlooking the North Pine River with views out to Moreton Bay and here Elizabeth gave birth to each of her nine children. The extension of the railway line to North Pine in 1888 helped to open up the country but it cut through the best part of the Murrumba farming land. Tom lost some of his property to the banks when drought ran him into financial difficulties in 1902. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Musgrave Park” style=”fancy”] Named in 1890 to honour the memory of Sir Anthony Musgrave Governor of Queensland 1883-1888. He had come to Queensland after 33 years in the British diplomatic service. He died in office and is buried in the Toowong Cemetery. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Mutdapilly” style=”fancy”] The present name is the Aboriginal name for the area. It means sticky gully.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Myall Creek” style=”fancy”] Frank Brennan in 1865 named this Darling Downs creek after the Myall Scrub a name said to be derived from the Aboriginal myalla meaning big talk.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Myora” style=”fancy”] The freshwater springs of Myora on Stradbroke Island were at one time used by the Helidon Spa Water Company for its drinks and they have provided many people both of the Noonuckles and of the white newcomers with cool refreshing water. It appears that in Aboriginal usage the name Moongalba was applied to these springs. It is now used for another site nearby. Myora meant a gathering.[/su_spoiler] [/su_accordion] [/su_tab] [su_tab title=”N“] [su_accordion] [su_spoiler title=”Nambour” style=”fancy”] The town derived its name from Naamba cattle station selected by William Samwells in 1870. It was the Aboriginal name for the red flowering tea tree (callistemon viminalis) which grew plentifully in the area. The Aboriginal people used the paper bark for warmth. As early at 1872 Mr Samwells used the name Nambour in a communication with the Lands Department. The settlement though was originally called Petrie’s Creek after Tom Petrie who came with his Aboriginal timber-getters to collect timber in the area but it officially became Nambour when the railway came through in 1891.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Nanango” style=”fancy”] Some say the word from which the name is derived meant waterhole in the Aboriginal language. Jacob Goode established a hotel and hostelry by the waterhole in 1848 and the address for the district then became Goode’s Inn. John Bright took over the hostelry after Goode died and called the establishment Burnett Inn. The waterhole was called Bright’s Waterhole. This was on part of the Nanango run that was originally taken up by W.E.Oliver. Oliver and the Aboriginal people ran a virtual guerrilla war between them but on one occasion the Aboriginal leader Old Nanango saved Oliver’s life by preventing him from diving into a spear-lined waterhole. The relationship with the Aboriginal people improved greatly when George Clapperton took over the station. It was Clapperton who promoted the laying out of a town by surveyor Hector Munro. The first sale of land in the township took place 13 October 1870. Some say that it was from the Aboriginal man called Nanango that the location got its name.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Narangba” style=”fancy”] Narangba in its Aboriginal origin meant small ridge and that describes the area where the railway station with its associated township was situated. Earlier it was part of an area referred to as Stoney Creek. The railway station was first called Sideling Creek Station. Only later was it changed to Narangba.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Nashville” style=”fancy”] James Nash was born in Beanacre Wiltshire England 1834 and migrated to Australia at the age of 22. For some years he prospected on and around the goldfields of southern Australia but in 1867 moved to Queensland going first to Calliope near Gladstone and then to the Nanango district. He crossed the Jimna Range to Yabba Station carrying his pick pan and bedroll. The next night he stayed in a hut with a couple of young men who were working cattle in the area and they directed his attention to Bella Creek. He thought the area looked promising so after going to Brisbane to get a horse and supplies returned to pan there but it proved disappointing. He went on to Imbil Station and the next morning after leaving there met up with a timber getting by the name of Denman on Amamoor Creek. Denman and his mate Wannel directed his attention to an area where he said gold was to be found. Soon Nash was working an area out on the edges of the Widgee run with mounting excitement as it became apparent that he was onto a very rich source of gold. He went to Maryborough to report his find and Police Magistrate Sheridan sent a police sergeant to check the claim and mark it out. Within three days the rush was on. People left Maryborough and Brisbane in their droves many of them unemployed at the time but many giving up their businesses to try their luck on the new goldfield. The diggings were called Nashville and an area of 25 square miles around Nashville was declared the Upper Mary Goldfields. The name continues as a suburb of Gympie today. Nash made a fortune but lost it in bad investments. He died in 1913 an embittered man caretaker for an explosives magazine near Traveston.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Nathan” style=”fancy”] After a career in the British army Royal Engineers Matthew Nathan served as a colonial governor in Sierra Leone the African Gold Coast Hong Kong and Natal as well as holding a number of public positions in England and Ireland. In 1920 as Sir Matthew Nathan he became the Governor of Queensland and during his five years in that position promoted British migration to Queensland and research into the Great Barrier Reef. He was Chancellor of the University of Queensland. He was sixty-three years of age when he left Queensland for years of semi-retirement in Somerset England and he died there in 1939. He never married but it was well known that he had affairs with a number of women. He was Jewish.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Natural Bridge” style=”fancy”] The area gets its name from the geological formation on Cave Creek known ever since its first discovery by the timber-getters Sandy Duncan and Din Guinea as Natural Bridge.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Nerang” style=”fancy”] The Aboriginal name for the river was Nerang meaning little but Robert Dixon of the Surveyor- General’s Department did not like Aboriginal names so he called it the River Barrow after Sir John Barrow who was Secretary of the Admiralty in England for many years. Later the Aboriginal name was resumed and made official. The township grew up because of the coach and river traffic which passed that way. Later the railway came through. The first families came with the Manchester Cotton Company in the early 1860s. It also served as a centre for the sugar farming areas like Helensvale.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Neurum Creek” style=”fancy”] Originally Neurum Neurum Creek. Neurum Neurum meant sores warts or pockmarks on the skin.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Never Fail Islands” style=”fancy”] Originally only the largest of the group in Southern Moreton Bay was known by this name. It was named by H. Tippler because it was said that if one went there looking for oysters one would never fail to find some.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”New Chum” style=”fancy”] This name which refers to a recent arrival in the country was the name of a coal mine. It was the mine then that gave its name to the Ipswich suburb.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”New Farm” style=”fancy”] The Aboriginal people called the area the place of the land tortoise and used to catch these freshwater tortoises there in a net or by hand. Then they roasted them on their backs with the carapace serving as a dish. The Aboriginal name was Binkin-ba but Europeans altered the pronunciation to Pinkenba and gave it to another place. As the name suggests it was developed as a new farm for the convict settlement. It was surveyed by Dixon in 1839.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=“Newmarket” style=”fancy”] The original stockyards for Brisbane were near the Normanby but when they were relocated a little further out to an area known then as the Three Mile Scrub they were called the New Market. Hence with English precedents the name was given to the suburb that developed there.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Newstead” style=”fancy”] The Aboriginal name for the area where Newstead House stands was Karakaran-pinbilli (Petrie) and for the whole district Burudabin (Booroodabin) place of oaks but the suburb derives its name from the house built for Patrick Leslie who with his brothers Walter and George was an early settler on the Southern Darling Downs. Writing to his father back in Scotland 1845 Patrick Leslie wrote We called the place Newstead since Watty liked the name so much. Watty was his brother Walter. Patrick Leslie son of a Scottish laird married into the famous Macarthur family of New South Wales. He might have been a good bushman but was not the best at looking after financial affairs and this saw him in difficulties more than once. Politically he was an archconservative and was for a short time a member of the NSW Legislative Assembly just before separation. He was pugnacious and argumentative a vigorous critic of Rev. John Dunmore Lang and others. He took up breeding racehorses. Captain John Wickham RN Patrick Leslie’s brother-in-law who owned land nearby bought the property in 1847 and since he was the Government Resident in the years leading up to separation Newstead House was like a Government House during those years. The track which Wickham established by riding his horse to and from Brisbane Town eventually became Wickham Street. He left Australia and retired to the South of France when both the New South Wales and Queensland governments refused his application for a pension[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Newtown (Ipswich)” style=”fancy”] John Rankin put allotments belonging to the Newtown Estate subdivision in Ipswich on the market around 1865.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Newtown (Toowoomba)” style=”fancy”] When the subdivision went on the market in 1865 it was the first area outside of the main Toowoomba centre to be developed.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Ngungun” style=”fancy”] In the Undanbi language this one of the Glasshouse Mountains had a name meaning charcoal.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Nikenbah” style=”fancy”] Originally called Aalborg by the early Danish settlers the name is said to have been a composite from the names of two men although it has also been identified with a particular kind of bloodwood tree growing in the area and as an Aboriginal terms meaning the place of the emu.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Ninderry” style=”fancy”] To the Gubbi Gubbi people this mountain was Nyandur meaning leeches[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Nindooinbah” style=”fancy”] This is one of the initial pastoral runs taken up in the early 1840s. The name means a place marked by the remains of a fire and has been in use since about 1842. The homestead was built by A. W. Compigne about 1880.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Ningi” style=”fancy”] (See Toorbul)[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Nobby” style=”fancy”] There are several theories as to how Nobby on the Darling Downs got its name. One is that it was the name of a racehorse another that it was the name of the lead bullock of an early bullock team or that it derives from the nob of a hill. Yet another theory is that it was named after Nobby Carter a railway worker with a big appetite. Take your pick. The town situated on King and Sibley’s original Kings Creek run was surveyed as Davenport but always known locally as Nobby.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Nobby, Nobbies (Gold Coast)” style=”fancy”] According to the excellent website of the Gold Coast City Council these hillocks and the neighbourhood and beach gained their name from the head bullock in Frederick Fowler’s bullock team. This timber getter and bullocky is said to have grazed his lead bullock along these headlands.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Noosa” style=”fancy”] The Aboriginal people called Noosa Head Wantima meaning rising up or climbing up (Petrie). The name first used by white people was Bracefield’s Head or Cape Bracefield. This was as a result of an exploratory party involving Andrew Petrie and others finding the runaway convict Bracefield living with the Kabi Kabi people in the area in 1842. However it came to be given a permanent name of Aboriginal derivation meaning shade or shadow. Forget about any silly stories which have been current claiming that the name Noosa originated with an Aboriginal’s attempt to say ‘No sir!’ The village which grew up at The Spit was known as Noosa Heads as far back as 1905 when there were five houses there two of them guest houses. The road was put through to Laguna Bay Beach and Noosa Heads village in 1929. Another holiday resort area developed on the southern shores of the Noosa River at what came to be called Noosaville. At one time so many mine managers from the Gympie goldfields had holiday houses there that the road along by the river came to be called Gympie Terrace. It was in 1972 that approval was given for the canal development on Hays Island in the river but the development of Noosa Sound was delayed for some years as a result of the collapse of Cambridge Credit in 1974. The area south of Noosa Headlands was known early on as Golden Beach but was rarely visited prior to the 1920s. W.Pilcher J. Woodrow and others had land there. In 1928 Thomas Marcus Burke did a deal with the Noosa Shire Council whereby he gained land in exchange for building roads and bridges from Tewantin and he started marketing the new town of Noosa. It had to wait though until after the Depression and the Second World War for these blocks to sell and then it was marketed by T.M.Burke’s son Marcus as Sunshine Beach. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Norman Creek” style=”fancy”] The Aboriginal name was Kulpureen. At one time it was named Gorman’s Creek in honour of Lieutenant Gorman the last Commandant of the Moreton Bay Penal Settlement but even earlier 1825 it appears on Major Edmund Lockyer’s map of the Brisbane River as Norman’s Creek although it is not known to whom this name refers.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Norman Park” style=”fancy”] Norman Park was named after General Sir Henry Norman Governor of Queensland 1 May 1889 to 31 December 1895. He arrived in Brisbane at the age of 63 having spent over forty years in India although just prior to coming to Queensland he had been Governor of Jamaica for six years. His third wife Alice accompanied him. His previous wives had died. He died 1904 by this time having been awarded the rank of Field Marshall in the British Army.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”North Arm” style=”fancy”] Originally called North Maroochy the district gained its name from the north arm of the Maroochy River about 1890.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Northgate” style=”fancy”] Northgate is a railway name. When a name had to be coined for the junction of the North Coast Line with the Sandgate Line the first part of North Coast was combined with the second part of Sandgate to become Northgate.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Norwell” style=”fancy”] This is another of those places which gained its name from a local property. Norwell plantation was operated by William Pidd in the 1870s.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Norwin” style=”fancy”] When the westerly winds are blowing across the plains anyone in Norwin would think it aptly named ‘windy place’..[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Nudgee” style=”fancy”] Aboriginal in origin it seems that this is a corrupt form of Nar-dha meaning the place of black ducks (anas superciliosa).[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Numinbah” style=”fancy”] In the 1880s Frank Nixon selected land in what he called Numinbah Valley. He got the name from one of his Aboriginal tree-fellers they called Numinbah Johnnie. Numin in the Aboriginal language referred to the walking stick palm tree. But it has also been claimed (J. G. Steele) that Numinbah comes from nyummin meaning tight a reference to the Aboriginal belief that the valley held the mountains tightly together. Another interpretation is that it means place of devils.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Nundah” style=”fancy”] When the Railways Department called the station Nundah in 1884 they made use of the Aboriginal name for a creek in the area or some feature of that creek a name meaning mouth or waterhole. Prior to that it was called German Station after the German missionaries’ establishment at Zion Hill. See also Toombul.[/su_spoiler] [/su_accordion] [/su_tab][/su_tabs]

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