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=”O“] [su_accordion] [su_spoiler title=”Oakey” style=”fancy”] If every Oakey creek around the countryside had a town named after it we would have towns of this name all over the place but it fell only to this town on the Darling Downs to carry the name of its adjacent Oakey Creek. Leichhardt noted the she-oaks growing in the creek bed. The township developed after the railway line came through in 1867[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Obi Obi” style=”fancy”] It is generally thought that this name is a variant of a local Aboriginal leader’s name although it could also refer to evil spirit.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Ocean View” style=”fancy”] Views of Moreton Bay are obtainable from this upland area between Dayboro and Mt Mee. J.L. Zillman and Kenneth McLennan selected large areas of land here in 1873. It was noted for its timber. The Ocean View State School was there from 1922 to 1963.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”One Mile” style=”fancy”] You don’t have to be a genius to work out that the name arose because it is one mile (1.6 kilometres) from some significant landmark. The landmark in question was the centre of Ipswich.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”O’Reillys” style=”fancy”] Eight O’Reilly men took up blocks on the Roberts Plateau in July 1911 : Tom Herb Mick Norbert and Ped of one family and Luke Pat and Joe of the other. Four years later the Lamington National Park was proclaimed largely as a result of the urgings of two men Robert Martin Collins and Romeo Watkins Lahey. As a result no further blocks were opened up and the O’Reillys’ land formed an isolated pocket surrounded by National Park. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Ormeau” style=”fancy”] Major A.J.Boyd after his army career acquired land on which he grew sugar and established a sugar mill. To this property he gave the name of Ormeau for his wife had lived on Ormeau Road Belfast when a girl. When the railway was put through it passed right through his property. He ran a private school on Pimpama Creek for a while.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Ormiston” style=”fancy”] Captain the Honourable Louis Hope the seventh son of the first Earl of Hopetoun has been described as a man of style. He purchased land overlooking Raby Bay and built Ormiston House there. Expecting Cleveland to be developed as the port for the Moreton Bay region he thought that the area where he built would become an exclusive part of town. The first house planks of pit-sawn cedar later became the kitchen. The main house itself was built by Scottish tradesmen brought out especially for the job. Bricks were baked in a kiln on the property. He also built a small chapel and rectory there. Hope established here Queensland’s first commercial sugar plantation. He started the practice of bringing South Sea Islanders over to work on the Queensland sugar plantations and this led to what was called blackbirding in the islands. The area took its name from the house while the house took its name from the family’s ancestral home in Scotland.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Oxenford” style=”fancy”] The Oxenford name came to the Coomera region with the arrival of William Robert Oxenford around 1869. He grew sugarcane and later rice and flax. He introduced Ayrshire cattle to the area owned the first cream separator and was a champion ploughman.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Oxley” style=”fancy”] John Oxley as the Surveyor-General of Lands in New South Wales was given the job of locating a site for a new convict settlement in 1823 and as a result of his recommendations Governor Brisbane decided that it should be situated at Moreton Bay. He came with the first party of soldiers and convicts located the first temporary settlement at Redcliffe and made recommendations about suitable sites for the permanent settlement up along the banks of the Brisbane River. John Joseph Molesworth Oxley to give him his full name had first visited Sydney in 1802 as a nineteen-year-old naval officer but he returned to settle there ten years later. He planned the town of Bathurst explored the Lachlan River discovered the Liverpool Plains and helped in the establishment of the penal settlement at Port Macquarie. But for the years that he was visiting Moreton Bay he was not well and he died just a few years later at his country home of Kirkham near Camden aged 47. On his first exploratory trip up the Brisbane River he named the creek where Parsons Finnegan and Pamphlett had found a canoe to take them down the river Canoe River but this was later officially changed to Oxley Creek. Along with the suburb of Oxley it continues to perpetuate his name. He has been described as hasty in judgment jealous of others’ achievements and resentful of criticism but he certainly left his mark on the opening up of Eastern Australia to European settlement. He was jealous of Hume and Hovell’s success and resentful of the fact that they proved his predictions about the inhabitability of the country wrong. He was angered by Lockyer’s suggestion that the real discoverers of the Brisbane River were Finnegan Parsons and Pamphett. He claimed that credit for himself.[/su_spoiler] [/su_accordion] [/su_tab] [su_tab title=”P“] [su_accordion] [su_spoiler title=”Pacific Paradise” style=”fancy”] Pacific Paradise Development Pty Ltd gave this promotional name to their Sunshine Coast development in 1959.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Paddington” style=”fancy”] When Europeans first started to live in this area it was referred to vaguely as ‘back of the gaol’ being on the other side of the prison from Brisbane Town. Mr B.Clay called his farm Paddington after his birthplace in England and when the farm was subdivided in the 1860s the name was given to the estate. Paddington in London which goes back at least as far as 1045.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Pallara” style=”fancy”] Originally part of The Blunder region this Brisbane suburb has been given a name of Aboriginal origin however it was probably not from the locally spoken language. Some say that it means flat country.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Palm Beach” style=”fancy”] The Palm Beach Company Ltd bought William Wood’s property south of Tallebudgera Creek around 1921 and the first allotments from this subdivision were available the next year.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Palmwoods” style=”fancy”] The Kuskopf property of Merriman’s Flats gave the area its first European name then when the railway came through 1891  the station was called Palmtree the reference being to the piccabeen palms growing in the area. This was later changed to Palmwoods.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Parkinson” style=”fancy”] Henry Waterworth Parkinson was a railway engineer. His book From Capitalism to Freedom published in 1924 argues the case for what he called guild socialism.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Park Ridge” style=”fancy”] Originally part of the area known as Logan Ridges the Post office took the name of Park Ridge in the early 1890s[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Paschendale” style=”fancy”] Passchendale Ridge was one of the places where Australian soldiers fought against the German armies in 1914 and was then chosen for the highest point on the Amiens branch line when the land was opened up for soldier settlement after the war.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Peak Crossing” style=”fancy”] .Matthew Flinders marked a peak on his map which subsequent explorers and settlers referred to as Flinder’s peak or Peak Mountain. A property in the area held by W.Wilson and later by William Winks was called Peak Mountain Station. When part of this area was turned over to cotton growing the settlement which grew up at a crossing on Purga Creek was called Peak Crossing.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Peachester” style=”fancy”] The area was part of the Archers’ Durandur run. At a spot near the Stanley River where bullockies and timber getters used to camp a number of peach trees came up so that it came to be known locally as Peach Trees. From this came the name of Peachester for the town that grew up around Grigor’s sawmill from 1899.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Pechey” style=”fancy”] This Darling Downs settlement carries the name of E. W. Pechy a timber merchant surveyor and early settler. Edward Wilmot Pechey had been born in Colchester England 1841 and on his arrival in Brisbane 1859 worked as a surveyor on the Darling Downs. While still in his twenties he joined Degen and Haege in the Victoria Steam Saw Mill at Highfields. This burnt down but he built Albert Saw Mill in the area that now carries his name. He married Ellen Bond in 1872 and built his homestead on a hill overlooking the mill.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Peel Island” style=”fancy”] Matthew Flinders simply called this island Number Five. It was John Oxley who gave it the name of Peel’s Island naming it after the Secretary of State for the Home Department in England Sir Robert Peel. This son of a wealthy cotton manufacturer entered parliament as a Tory in 1809. His anti-Catholic attitude earned him the nick name of Orange Peel when he was Secretary for Ireland. As Home Secretary he reorganized the London police and they came to be called ‘bobbies’ from that time on. As leader of his conservative party he became Prime Minister of Great Britain. He died in 1850 after being thrown from his horse. The Aboriginal name for this Moreton Bay island is variously given as Turkoorooa or Chererooba. Over the years it has served as a quarantine station a leprosarium and a home for alcoholics.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Peranga” style=”fancy”] Prior to becoming the name of a township on the old Oakey-Cooyar railway line Peranga was the name of an outstation on the great Rosalie Plains holding.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Peregian” style=”fancy”] T.M.Burke Pty Ltd opened up the coastal strip between Coolum and Noosa when it was granted land in exchange for the building of roads. T.M. Burke himself started the Noosa Beach Estate project in 1928 but it floundered until revived by his son Marcus (after whom Marcus Beach is named) as Sunshine Beach. Peregian Beach was opened up from 1958. It took its name from Mount Peregian nearby. In the Kabi Kabi language it meant emu and there is nearby Emu Swamp so the place probably got its name from the presence of a large number of emu in the area. Another theory is that it is derived from perridhan/jan mangrove seeds. Later the same firm opened up the strip from Peregian to Coolum.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Perry (Point Perry)” style=”fancy”] T.M.Burke Pty Ltd opened up the coastal strip between Coolum and Noosa when it was granted land in exchange for the building of roads. T.M. Burke himself started the Noosa Beach Estate project in 1928 but it floundered until revived by his son Marcus (after whom Marcus Beach is named) as Sunshine Beach. Peregian Beach was opened up from 1958. It took its name from Mount Peregian nearby. In the Kabi Kabi language it meant emu and there is nearby Emu Swamp so the place probably got its name from the presence of a large number of emu in the area. Another theory is that it is derived from perridhan/jan mangrove seeds. Later the same firm opened up the strip from Peregian to Coolum.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Perry’s Knob” style=”fancy”] According to the Ipswich City Council website the area was named after the Perry family who owned the western slopes and the knob itself.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Perwillowen” style=”fancy”] The name of this district near Nambour comes from the Yugumbir people and refers to a species of pigeon. Barbara Ward in Nambour Street Names Their Origin and History quotes from an article in the Chronicle reporting the opening of the Perwillowen Creek Provisional School in 1916 The name generally adopted for it is Perwillowen but older residents claim that it should be something like Pillawillamon being the name got for it from the aboriginals thereabouts. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Petrie” style=”fancy”] Of the Petrie family Tom is perhaps the best known today for his reminiscences were written down by his daughter Constance Campbell Petrie. The fourth son of Andrew and Mary he was only a baby when they sailed for Australia in the Stirling Castle in 1831. He was an eight-year-old boy when they arrived in Brisbane Town after some years spent in Sydney. He mixed with the convicts not always with his parents’ approval but from boyhood he also mixed freely with the Aboriginal tribes-people around Brisbane learning their language and respecting their customs. He came in turn to be respected and trusted by the Aboriginal people. It was because of his good relationships with the natives that he acquired property in the North Pine area. He had recently married Elizabeth Campbell and was looking for a place where he could settle down when Dalaipi headman of the local tribe offered him some of their tribal territory and his son as a stockman. The land had already been taken up by white settlers but when Tom approached the owners he found that they were only too willing to unload that part of their property for they could do nothing with it on account of hostile attacks by the blacks. Tom built Murrumba homestead overlooking the Pine River and Yebri Creek with the help of his Aboriginal friends. Following the discovery of gold Tom and Elizabeth had many callers looking for postal and shop facilities and accommodation on their journeys to and from Gympie so in 1870 he decided to provide these through a hostelry built for the purpose. This became Cobb & Co.’s first change of horses out of Brisbane. Around this a township developed. He was a bushman and explorer bred cattle and horses and developed a dairy herd. He blazed the trails for several roads around South East Queensland. But his name is perpetuated in that area named after him and where his statue is still to be seen. The township was known simply as North Pine until the year after Tom’s death when 8 June 1911 its change of name to Petrie was announced in the Queensland Government Gazette.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Petrie Bight” style=”fancy”] The Rev. J. D. Lang of Sydney was convinced that what Australia needed was hard-working Protestant free settlers so he went to Britain to recruit suitable migrants and among those who came out in 1831 were Andrew and Mary Petrie with their young family. He was engaged principally to help in the building of the Australian College in Sydney another of Lang’s schemes for the improvement of Australian society. After seven years in Sydney the Petries moved to the Moreton Bay Penal Settlement where Andrew was Clerk of Works. At first they lived in the building formerly used for female prisoners a large building with 5 metre high walls around it but as soon as they had the opportunity they built their own house out in the bush at a place the Aborigines used to call Tumamun but which from then on became Petrie’s Bight along the river. In 1838 while exploring with the Commandant Major Cotton he climbed a hill on the south side of the Brisbane River to get his bearings and this hill then came to be marked on maps as Mount Petrie. The suburb of Belmont has grown nearby. The Petries stayed on in Brisbane when the penal settlement was closed and the area thrown open to free settlement in 1842. Andrew became Brisbane’s first builder and his family played a very important part in the development of early Brisbane. Although he went blind at the age of 50 he continued to keep control of the business until just a couple of years before his death at the age of 74. His granddaughter described him as kind although strict. He never smoked. In later life he frequently suffered pain in his leg the result of a youthful horse-riding accident back in Scotland but he did not complain about it. Could get angry but his anger was short-lived. He helped many with food and work when they were caught in hard times. Their home became one of the social centres for Brisbane. Out-of-town squatters and visitors like Ludwig Leichhardt found accommodation there. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Pialba” style=”fancy”] Although Tom Petrie said that the name comes from pilba a butcher bird it seems likely that it could come from barilba a small green crab with red claws or bagilba diamond-shaped fish scale which was used in decoration on shields or bagill place of mullet.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Pie Creek” style=”fancy”] Pie Creek near Gympie bears no relationship to steak and kidney nor to mushy peas but to a surveyor by the name of Pye who drowned in the creek. Somewhere along the way the spelling was changed.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Pikedale” style=”fancy”] The Pikedale pastoral run was registered to Captain John Pike 1843-44. His manager H. B. Fitz was called Murdering Fitz because he killed a disobedient shepherd.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Pilton” style=”fancy”] Named by Joseph King. When Sibley and King dissolved their partnership 1845-6 Joseph King kept that portion of the run that was already being called Pilton for a year or two and then sold it to David Forbes and Phillip Pinnock. His wife Mary and Thomas Alford’s wife were sisters.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Pimpama” style=”fancy”] The name comes from Peempeema Aboriginal word meaning place of the peewee. Some suggest that it comes from bimbinbah place of the mickey birds.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Pine Mountain” style=”fancy”] In September of 1824 Oxley Cunningham and Butler were impressed by the Araucaria tree species which grew on the hills around here and so united in using the designation Pine. They referred to it variously as Pine Ridge Pine Hills and the Pine Range but it is Pine Mountain that has stuck. Oxley spoke of ‘the Pine Hill being clothed with an almost impervious vegetation to its very summit.’[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Pine Rivers” style=”fancy”] Under instructions from the Governor to look for a suitable site for a convict settlement John Oxley sailed north from Sydney in the cutter Mermaid toward the end of 1823. He sailed as far as Port Curtis and on the way back explored Moreton Bay. There he was surprised to find a white man living with the natives on what later came to be called Bribie Island. This was Thomas Pamphlett. The next day he met up with John Finnegan another of the castaways who lived with the natives around Moreton Bay for seven months. They told him of a very large river flowing into the bay but when Finnegan tried to take Oxley there he mistakenly directed him up a smaller river to the north of the big one. This mistake was only realized after rowing some considerable distance upstream. This mistake prompted Oxley to call it Deception River and others to refer to it as the Blind River but after Alan Cunningham and John Oxley twelve months later travelled up it to procure spars cut from the hoop pine trees growing along its banks it came to be called the Pine River. These trees (Araucaria cunninghamii) drew much attention from the early maritime explorers. Governor Darling like Cunningham and Oxley was intrigued by their size and shape. They were valued as a useful source of timber especially for the topmasts of ships. The first export from Brisbane Town was a consignment of pine logs sent out in 1825. Since there are two major arms to this river they came to be known as the North Pine and the South Pine Rivers and Pine Rivers is now the name for the local government authority.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Pinjarra Hills” style=”fancy”] The name is clearly of Aboriginal origin but its Aboriginal meaning us not known.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Pinkenba” style=”fancy”] On occasions the later inhabitants have misplaced Aboriginal place names. This happened to Pinken-ba the place of tortoises. It originally referred to what we now call New Farm and the Aboriginal people referred to the area now known as Pinkenba as Dumben a kind of tree fern.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”[su_spoiler title=”Pittsworth” style=”fancy”]In 1876 Tyson Doneley built the Beauaraba Hotel and the township was at first known as Beauaraba but in 1915 the name was changed to Pittsworth in honour of a family by the name of Pitts. C. W. Pitts owned several grazing properties[/su_spoiler]” style=”fancy”] On occasions the later inhabitants have misplaced Aboriginal place names. This happened to Pinken-ba the place of tortoises. It originally referred to what we now call New Farm and the Aboriginal people referred to the area now known as Pinkenba as Dumben a kind of tree fern.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Plainland” style=”fancy”] Some places got their names from a description of the countryside given by an early explorer. Plainland was one of these. Alan Cunningham remarked on the flat wooded country and plain land in 1829 while exploring the Lockyer Valley country.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Point Arkwright” style=”fancy”] This headland on the Sunshine Coast is named after Sir Richard Arkwright inventor of cotton spinning machinery 1769.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Point Cartwright” style=”fancy”] This point was named Point Raper by Lieutenant Heath 1861 but was subsequently named after Edmund Cartwright the inventor of weaving and combing machinery back in 1786.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Point Danger” style=”fancy”] Point Danger was so named by Lieutenant (later Captain) Cook on his 1770 journey up the east coast of Australia to warn later mariners of dangers to be encountered from the rocks and shoals in the area. He was forced to make a sharp turn toward the east to avoid these. The distant mountain he called Mt Warning.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Point Lookout” style=”fancy”] In naming Point Lookout Lieutenant James Cook 1770 drew attention to the dangers of sailing along that coast and indicated the need for navigators to be on the lookout for a reef away to the north. The reef proved to be a rock and in 1799 Lieutenant Matthew Flinders sailed between Point Lookout and the small flat rocky island that he marked on his chart as Flat Rock. There was some discrepancy between the bearings given by Cook and those given by Flinders for Point Lookout but there is no doubt that they both saw the same point of land. Neither realized that it was on an island. They thought it was part of the mainland.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Point Perry” style=”fancy”] Point Perry at Coolum was named after William Perry-Keene who with his wife Maud and family moved to Coolum in 1905. For about seven years in the 1920s when the main transport used by visitors was by converted cane train they ran the Green Hills guest house and kiosk there. They came from England after he fought in the Boer War in South Africa. Green Hills was burnt down in 1929.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Poona” style=”fancy”] [su_spoiler title=”Pomona” style=”fancy”] Lieutenant Bligh took up land in this area in 1860 and called it Caroora. For a couple of years after the railway line was built the rail stop was called Cooroora siding. The nearby mountain is still called Cooroora Mountain. The railway and postal authorities found it confusing having Cooran Cooroora and Cooroy so close together so the Railway Department changed the name to Pinbarren Siding. This lasted until 1906 when the Pinbarren Progress Association was invited to suggest a new name and they chose Pomona. Pomona was the Roman goddess of fruit and fruit trees. This name was being promoted well before it was officially adopted. The Under Secretary for Lands used it as far back as 6 March 1900[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Potts/Patts Point” style=”fancy”] The most northerly point on Macleay Island is named after an early island settler by the name of Potts but to many boating enthusiasts it is known as Patts Point.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Poziers” style=”fancy”] The name was given to this area on the Granite Belt when land was opened up for soldier settlement in 1918. The name was transplanted from northern France where it had become well known to many Australian soldiers as a battleground during the First World War.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Pratten” style=”fancy”] The settlement was known as Darkey Flat until it was surveyed and proclaimed as the centre for the short-lived Talgai goldfield with the name of Pratten. The survey work was done by G. L. Pratten and the name most likely commemorates his father Thomas Pratten who had settled in the area.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Prenzlau” style=”fancy”] As the name would suggest this area was settled by German farmers some of whom came from Prenzlau north-east of Berlin[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Priestdale” style=”fancy”] . There are a couple of different explanations given for the origin of this name. One suggests that it was named after a Catholic priest Father Enright who while on his way to visit some of his parishioners became lost in the area which came to be called Priest Gully. The other is that it was named after a timber-getter by the name of Priest.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Proston” style=”fancy”] Aboriginal word for bottle tree. It was the name of a grazing property before it became the name of a town.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Pullenvale” style=”fancy”] Pullenvale gained its name from Pullen Pullen Creek of Aboriginal origin.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Pumicestone Passage” style=”fancy”] Matthew Flinders did not realize that what we now call Bribie Island was an island. On 16 July 1799 he proceeded up the opening which he called a river leading towards the Glass House Peaks and found a quantity of pumicestone lying along the highwater mark on the eastern shore of the ‘river’ but was not able to proceed further upstream because of the rush of water with the ebb tide. He called the passage Pumice Stone River because of this find. In 1822 both John Bingle in the Sally and William Edwardson in the Snapper sailed separately into the passage. Mangroves sandbanks and mudflats prevented them from travelling right through it but Bingle believed it was not a river while Edwardson thought that it was. John Oxley in the following year also visited the area and spoke of Pumice Stone River.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Purga” style=”fancy”] Comes from an Aboriginal word meaning meeting place.[/su_spoiler] [/su_accordion] [/su_tab] [su_tab title=”Q“] [su_accordion] [su_spoiler title=”Queensland” style=”fancy”] The 18-year-old Victoria came to the English throne at a time when the future of the convict settlement at Moreton Bay was under question (1837) and when the possibility of free settlement was being advocated. By the time the colony was separated from New South Wales (1859) Queen Victoria and Albert her Prince Consort were held in high regard and affection by her subjects around the world. In spite of John Dunmore Lang’s advocacy of Cooksland as the name for the new colony patriotic fervour won out and Queensland in honour of Queen Victoria it became. Victoria’s reign can be viewed in four stages. Initially she was an excitable emotional and impulsive young woman who had to rely heavily on her uncle King Leopold of Belgium and her Prime Minister Lord Melbourne. But she took her position seriously and showed herself strong willed even obstinate at times. Her marriage with the German Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha proved to be a very happy one. His gentleness patience logicality and kindness complemented her qualities admirably. His quiet consistency and self-control helped her through her rages of temper and periods of irritability. In spite of the initial British objection to having a foreigner so close to the throne he came to be her private secretary and advisor as well as her lover and the father of her nine children. The period from 1851 to his death in December 1861 was a period of popularity both for Victoria and Albert and for the institution of the monarchy. After Albert’s death she went into a long period of mourning which really was a severe depression. This ten year period of seclusion saw a decline in her popularity but from around 1871 onwards to her death in January of 1901 she was by now plump but still diminutive the highly respected and much loved sovereign of her people.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Quinalow” style=”fancy”] The Daly Brothers (James Patrick and John sons of John Daly of Brymaroo) took up land here and named the creek and the township surveyed in 1897 Quinalow after a small town in Ireland.[/su_spoiler] [/su_accordion] [/su_tab] [su_tab title=”R“] [su_accordion] [su_spoiler title=”Raby Bay” style=”fancy”] If you go far enough back into history you will find that the name Raby comes from the Danish ra meaning a secluded corner and by meaning a village but its transportation to this side of the world is due to its association with the English duke after whom Cleveland is named. The first Lord Raby seems to date from the reign of King Cnut (1017-1036) whose kingdom included England Norway and Denmark. At the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II in the 17th century the owner of Raby Castle was executed but his grandson later married the grand-daughter of the king. Their grandson William Harry Vane born 1766 inherited the Raby castle and honours and was later raised to the dukedom of Cleveland. Politics did not take up all his time. He was called by J.W.Carelton The Confucius of Gambling in all its branches. So Raby was both the family seat and a title for the Duke of Cleveland.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Raceview” style=”fancy”] Ipswich developed as the squatters’ town and these men who lived with horses every day soon started holding race meetings. The first were held along the creek flats at a place which they called Sandy Gallop but when the first proper racecourse the Grange was built it gave the name of Raceview to the suburb which was developed nearby.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Rainbow Bay (Coolangatta)” style=”fancy”] In 1925 the Coolangatta Town Council gave what had popularly been called Shark Bay the name which commemorates HMS Rainbow which under the Hon. Henry John Rous as captain had surveyed the Point Danger area in 1828[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Rainbow Bay/Beach” style=”fancy”] The rainbow name was suggested by the tall multi-coloured sand cliffs along the coast here.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Rainbow Channel” style=”fancy”]Named after HMS Rainbow.[/su_spoiler]

[su_spoiler title=”Rainworth” style=”fancy”] The suburb of Rainworth gained its name from the house built by Augustus Gregory, the explorer who was appointed Queensland’s first Surveyor-General. [/su_spoiler]

[su_spoiler title=”Ransome” style=”fancy”] M.C.H.Ransome ran a firewood business at Lota and procured his supplies from the area which since 1975 has been officially known by his name. The railway siding put in 1910 as the Sixteen Mile Siding two years later was renamed Ransome’s Siding because he was the principal user of it loading his firewood for transport for sale in Brisbane.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Rathdowney” style=”fancy”] Queensland’s Rathdowney is named after Rathdowney in Ireland north-east of Kilkenny. The name was given to the pastoral property by Thomas Lodge Murray-Pryor who purchased it in 1876. He named it after his family estates in Ireland. Later about 1880 it was acquired by William Collins and Sons Still later about 1910 the township was formed.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Raymonds Hill” style=”fancy”] Named after early settlers J and R. Raymond.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Redbank” style=”fancy”] Charles Fraser Colonial Botanist accompanying Captain Logan and his fellow botanist Allan Cunningham on journeys of exploration out from Brisbane Town in 1828 wrote that some lightly wooded black soil country they came across between the Bremer River and Six Mile Creek was of the richest description. A sheep station was established there under the convict settlement administration and coal was extracted for use in the penal settlement of Brisbane. Its name came from the presence of a red soil embankment in that part of the countryside.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Redcliffe” style=”fancy”] On the foreshore at Redcliffe today there is a substantial monument marking the location of the first settlement in what is now South East Queensland. The monument is much more substantial than the buildings of that first settlement for it was seen as a temporary location until a more permanent site could be found. Red Cliff Point had been marked on Matthew Flinders’ chart after he anchored off it at 10.30 am on Wednesday 17 July 1799. This was what is now known as Woody Point. John Oxley reported that ships could get in reasonably close to the shore there and that there was no difficulty in effecting a landing at any tide. He could not be sure about navigation in other parts of Moreton Bay or into the Brisbane River until further marine survey work was done so he said that if a settlement were to be established in the Moreton Bay area Red Cliff Point offered the best site in the first instance. When the principal settlement was established up the Brisbane River it could he thought be retained as a military post and stores depot. The settlement was established September 1824 under the command of Lieutenant Henry Miller who had with him 14 soldiers some accompanied by wives and children and 29 convicts. They arrived in the government brig Amity from Sydney. They drew their water from Humpybong Creek. The relocation to a site on the banks of the Brisbane River took place in May of the following year. The spelling Redcliffe is in official records from 1878. The buildings of the first settlement were used for a short period by the German missionaries who tried to start mission work among the Aborigines in the late 1830s. One of the long-term residents who benefited from the land sales of the 1880s was the Anglican minister Rev. John Sutton who had gone to live there in convalescence after being injured in a fall from a horse. His name lingers in Sutton’s Beach.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Red Hill” style=”fancy”] The Aboriginal name for the area covered by this Brisbane suburb was Boonah the bloodwood tree. The name has been in use since 1870s.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Redland Bay” style=”fancy”] Europeans named it after the soil there but to the Aboriginal people it was Talwurrupin wild cotton tree[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Reesville” style=”fancy”]The Landsborough Shire Council named this locality near Maleny Reesville in 1922 to commemorate the late Mr H. O. Rees who had owned a plant nursery and mixed fruit orchard there. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Regents Park” style=”fancy”] The name which had been used for a housing estate developed early in the 1980s was gazetted June 1987[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Reynolds Creek” style=”fancy”] Reynolds was an early settler in the area drained by Reynolds Creek which flows into Warrill Creek. Its Aboriginal name was Pal-loden.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Riverview” style=”fancy”] It’s not hard to guess at the origin of this name – it was so named because from it one could obtain views of the Brisbane River.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Robertson” style=”fancy”] Dr William Nathaniel Robertson died in 1938 but his name lives on in the suburb named after him. He was born in Edinburgh 1866 the son of a Presbyterian minister Rev. Peter Robertson. He was only 6 when his parents moved to Queensland and he was left in the care of grandparents but when he graduated in medicine from the University of Edinburgh he joined them and took up general practice at Ipswich. After some years he became an ear nose and throat specialist establishing that department at the Mater Hospital and gaining a reputation as an excellent surgeon. He was a director of the Australasian Medical Publishing Company and during his twelve years as Vice Chancellor of the University of Queensland worked hard for the setting up of the Medical School. In his obituary he is described as being an ‘engaging virile energetic kindly and cheerful personality.’[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Rochdale” style=”fancy”] Although William Roche and Kate McDermott were both born in Ireland they married in Brisbane 1867 and took up land in this area. They had one son Thomas Joseph born 1872 and in time he also established his home in the area. He called his home Rochedale and from this came the name for the suburb. Soon after the First World War the local residents meeting in a shed on Oscar Obrist’s property nominated Rochedale as the name for the new post office and district.. Although there was a move to name the area after Colonel Langford the name Rochedale South was gazetted in 1979.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Rocklea” style=”fancy”] The name became official in 1884 when the railway went through. It was derived from the earlier description which gave the name for the area Rocky Water Holes. One could stand upon a large rock to look down on the water holes at one time the site of Grimes Sugar Mill.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Rocky Water Holes Creek” style=”fancy”] The name goes back to Alan Cunningham who in 1828 wrote about the ‘beautiful chain of ponds’[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Rosalie” style=”fancy”] The suburb gets its name from property named by J. F. McDougall the second owner of Milton House probably after his Darling Downs property Rosalie Plains.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Rosalie Plains” style=”fancy”] Rosalie Plains was first settled in 1848. After six months Robert Ramsay brought the Hon. Louis Hope into partnership with him. Later owners were Kent and Wienholt A Campbell and J. F. McDougall (See Milton)[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Rosalie Shire” style=”fancy”] The local government area proclaimed in 1878 gained its name from Rosalie Plains station.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Rosemount” style=”fancy”] Rosemount at Windsor was the home of Sir Maurice O.Connell that later became a repatriation hospital.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Rosenthal” style=”fancy”]Of German origin the name was given to his property by Frederick John Bracker about 1842. Fred came from Rosenthal near Mechlenberg with 220 merino sheep from the flock of Prince Esterhazy of Silesia. He arrived in Sydney 17 January 1829 on board the Diaden. The name was allotted to the creek in 1864. Prior to that it had been known as German Creek and Bracker’s Creek. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Rosevale” style=”fancy”] The name is said to be a corruption of Rossvale. Ross was a pastoralist who grazed stock in the area during the drought of 1853. But the name first appeared on a licence to depasture stock in 1847 when a shepherd by the name of Rose was in the area.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Rosewood” style=”fancy”] The name has been used for a township on the Ipswich to Grandchester railway line from the 1860s. It comes from the rosewood or rose mahogany (Dysoxylum fraseranum) which grew well in the area prior to the widespread felling of these trees for their valuable timber and to make way for the agricultural pursuits of the farmers who settled in the area. An extensive tract of land in the vicinity was known as the Rosewood Scrub. According to Tom Petrie the Aboriginal people greatly valued spears made from the rosewood tree. It was Donald Coutts the first white settler in the area (1844) who by naming his pastoral property Rosewood ensured that the name was used for the emergent town. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Rossmore” style=”fancy”] Dulcie Logan in her history of the Kilkivan Shire says that the first choice for the school name was Fairfield but since there was already another by that name it was changed to Rossmore supposedly the name of the first teacher’s home.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Rothwell” style=”fancy”] On the 7th July 1926 a significant tree-planting ceremony took place at Redcliffe. The Governor-General Lord Stonehaven and Lady Stonehaven were present for the planting of the first trees in what was intended to be an avenue which was to have lined either side of the road all the way from Redcliffe to Kedron Bridge. This was called Anzac Avenue as its purpose was to commemorate the soldiers who had died in the First World War. It never was completed but a significant section came to provide a pleasing approach to Redcliffe from the west. T.J.Rothwell was the Chairman of the Anzac Memorial Committee and some of the area through which that avenue passed has now been given his name. He was also President of the Royal Automobile Club of Queensland (RACQ). [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Rous Channel” style=”fancy”] The proclamation made 16 July 1827 gave the name Rous Channel to The channel between the Isle of Stradbroke and Moreton Island. That would be the South Passage but it now refers to the channel that leads on into Moreton Bay from the South Passage between the Moreton and Amity Banks. The Honourable H. J. Rous captain of HMS Rainbow was the second son of the Earl of Stradbroke. He chartered some of the Moreton Bay waters during his visit to the penal colony.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Runaway Bay” style=”fancy”] The name for this canal development of the late 1960s and early 1970s was chosen by Neil McCowan and his advertising agent John Garnsey.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Runcorn” style=”fancy”] Rev. J. McLaren named the area after his birthplace Runcorn in Cheshire England. There it originally meant a wide bay or roomy cove. It has been officially recognized since 1887.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Russell Island” style=”fancy”] James Warner surveyor was commissioned to produce maps for the area south of Brisbane and it was Warner who gave the name to Russell Island naming it after Lord John Russell who was British Secretary of State for the Colonies in the 1840s. Early maps show the spelling as Russel. It was re-surveyed in the 1860s and the first blocks were bought in 1871. Russell first entered parliament at the age of 21 but lost an election by one vote in 1830 when the Wesleyans campaigned against him for some disparaging remarks he had made about prayer. Although this gave him the opportunity to develop his other interest literature it did not keep him out of politics for long. He was interested in reform of the criminal law and in prison reform. He was opposed to the transportation of convicts and was particularly opposed to assigning convicts to private landholders for he saw this as a form of slavery and he was strongly opposed to all forms of slavery. As leader of the Whigs he twice served as Prime Minister of England.[/su_spoiler] [/su_accordion] [/su_tab] [su_tab title=”S“] [su_accordion] [su_spoiler title=”Sadliers Crossing” style=”fancy”] The shallow ford across the river was named after a local landowner Thomas Sadlier[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Saint George” style=”fancy”] The town that grew up by a crossing on the Balonne River got its name from an entry in Thomas Mitchell’s diary. The surveyor and explorer noted that he crossed the river there on St George’s Day 1846.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Saint Helena Island” style=”fancy”] The Aboriginal name for the island was No-gun (Petrie) or Noogoo (Meston) and at first it was clustered together by Europeans with King and Green Islands as the Green Islands. Flinders simply numbered it two. Before the Europeans took over it was a well vegetated island and the tribespeople from the Wynnum area used to come over for the flying foxes which roosted there and which provided an important part of their diet. In 1827 the whites at Dunwich had some trouble with an Aboriginal man they nicknamed Napoleon because he was supposed to look a bit like the French general and emperor. He stole an axe from them and by way of punishment they took him over to this island in the bay and left him there. Getting off did not pose any difficulty for him however for he quickly made a bark canoe and paddled back to his people on Stradbroke Island. Because Napoleon Bonaparte had been exiled to St Helena Island in the Atlantic the local Europeans called this bay island by the same name. In 1866 prisoners were used to erect buildings on St Helena with a view to its becoming a quarantine station but it was not in fact used for this purpose but was turned into a prison. By 1869 there were over 300 prisoners there in a hard-labour prison settlement. The first superintendent was John McDonald. They stopped growing sugarcane when they discovered it provided too many hiding places for the prisoners and changed to growing potatoes and lucerne. It was no longer used as a penitentiary after Boggo Road Gaol and the Palen Creek Prison Farm were built in the 1930s[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Saint Johns Wood” style=”fancy”] The naming of St John’s Wood near West Ashgrove owes something to a district of central London known by that name. This English district gained its name from the Knights Hospitallers of St John to whom the land was transferred when the Knights Templars were suppressed early in the 14th century. It is said that the only piece of green turf remaining now from this once forested area is the oval at Lord’s Cricket Ground. In Queensland the name was adopted for the property of Mr Justice Harding and became the venue for many society functions.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Saint Lucia” style=”fancy”] The university suburb is named after the island of St Lucia in the West Indies or at least it is named after W.A.Wilson’s property which he named after the West Indian island where he was born. William Alexander Wilson purchased Dart’s Coldridge Plantation in 1882 and renamed it The St Lucia Sugar Plantation. He went on to subdivide an adjacent farm in 1883 and named it St Lucia Estate. In 1885 he moved the name to the subdivision of his sugar plantation; the Great Court of the University of Queensland occupies part of this land today. For many years the name St Lucia only applied to the far end of the peninsular but was eventually formally adopted for the whole suburb up to Gailey Road/Indooroopilly Road. See also Ironside. I am indebted to Peter Brown of the St Lucia History Group for this information.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Salisbury” style=”fancy”] Before this became the name of a suburb it was the name of William Coote’s residence named after the city of Salisbury in England. Earlier spellings of this English cathedral city were Sarisberie ( in the Doomsday Book) and Salesbury (1227). The Roman name for the settlement in this area was Sorviodunum.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Samford” style=”fancy”] It seems that the first lease for the pastoral property known as Samford was issued in 1854 to Archibald Young. It passed to Clarence H. Ball 23 July 1861. Then in 1864 it was transferred to two former British army officers recently arrived in the colony. One of them took a mob of cattle off to market and disappeared with the proceeds leaving his partner William Townley in difficult circumstances. The Townleys however were friends with the Governor and his wife. Gertrude Townley had been nursed back to good health by Lady Bowen on her first arrival in Queensland. Townley soon left his pastoral pursuits to become Gold Commissioner and later Police Magistrate Inspector of Prisons and Chairman of the Public Service Board. The Aboriginal name for the area was Kupidabin the place of possums. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Samsonvale” style=”fancy”] William Joyner arrived in Sydney from England in 1841 with some money to invest. After involvement in a cattle station in the south he came north 1844 and leased a large tract of land extending from Moreton Bay to the D’Aguilar Range and bordered on the north by the North Pine River. He named it the Samsonvale Cattle Station. He continued to live in Sydney visiting the property managed by W. Mason from time to time. He however lost his life when the steamer Sovereign on which he was travelling was wrecked on the South Passage Bar Moreton Bay 1847. His wife Isobel daughter of the late Captain Penson who had commanded the colonial vessels Mermaid and Amity together with her mother and her baby son then moved onto the property keeping Mason on as manager. She built a fine two-storied house there. The name came from Mt Samson which bordered the property and had been so named by Allan Cunningham after the late Solicitor-General Sampson. The name of Mt Sampson has not however been retained. It is now Mt English.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Sanctuary Cove” style=”fancy”] The Sanctuary Cove development was officially opened in 1988 the bi-centennial year of white settlement in Australia but the area had formerly been called Hope Island. Hope Island was named after Captain Louis Hope who was granted 1800 acres at the mouth of the Coomera River in 1867. Very conscious of being a son of the Fourth Earl of Hopetoun he lived like an aristocrat whether in his house at Ormiston or on his other property at Kilcoy. He served on the Queensland Legislative Council for twenty years. Since he planted sugarcane on his Ormiston property in 1865 and worked it with kanaka labour he is regarded as a founder of the Queensland sugar industry. He sold his Coomera land holdings in 1882 and returned to England.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Sandgate” style=”fancy”] The area which the Aboriginal people called Warra meaning an open sheet of water did not develop until nearly thirty years after settlement began and then the motivation for commencing settlement had more to do with security and emergency services than with recreation. After the Thomas King was wrecked 17 April 1852 the survivors landed at Double Island Point whence both Captain J.H. Walker and a sailor by the name of Sherry set off to walk to Brisbane. They arrived separately at Toorbul but then got lost trying to travel together on from there to Brisbane. They were rescued by the Toorbul Aboriginal people. The white community around Brisbane was aghast at the possibility that two of their own kind could have died so close to the settlement without their knowing anything about it and people agitated for a beach outpost to be established to the north for the security of settlers. J. C. Burnett began his survey of Sandgate named after the seaside resort in Kent England in September 1852 and the first land sales took place fourteen months later. It was proclaimed a town 29 April 1880 but it really boomed as a fashionable seaside place for the elite of South East Queensland when the railway line was opened in 1882. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Sandy Cape” style=”fancy”] Cook’s descriptive name has stuck.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Scarborough” style=”fancy”] The peninsula known as Humpybong or Redcliffe experienced a land boom in the 1880s fed by a growing desire for holidays by the sea. For a hundred years the idea of going to the seaside for one’s health had been gaining ground in England and when the peninsula was opened up by sub-division names of English seaside resorts were used in its marketing. This development was sparked off by an expectation that a railway line would soon be built to the area. The development at the northern end was initiated by the building of the large Scarborough Hotel in an almost uninhabited part of the coast. It was named after Scarborough in Yorkshire the name of which comes from the Old Norse language meaning a hill by a gap.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Scarness” style=”fancy”] Today part of the City of Hervey Bay this seaside resort was at one time known as Scarborough.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Schultz Canal” style=”fancy”] When Kedron Brook downstream from the railway line was made into a canal it was given the name of the chairman of the Toombul Shire Council.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Seven Hills” style=”fancy”] The real estate agent R.G.Oates said that the area reminded him of the seven hills of Rome.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Seventeen Mile Rocks” style=”fancy”] The suburban area known as Seventeen Mile Rocks got its name from the rocks of that same name in the Brisbane River nearby. They were so named because they were seventeen miles upstream from Brisbane Town. The waterways provided the main means of transport in the early days of white settlement but these rocks were a risk to navigation. In June 1842 the captains of two paddle-steamers held a race to see who could get to Redbank first. Captain Cape in the Sovereign was ahead of Captain Chambers in the Edwards when his vessel hit one of the rocks and the race had to be abandoned. However a channel was charted through the rocks and the river continued to be used by vessels drawing up to 2.13 metres. But the Swallow of the Bremer Steam Navigation Company was wrecked there in 1855. In 1863 John Petrie built an island of stone blocks in the river in carrying out his contract to remove the rocks and deepen the channel. This island was removed just over a hundred years later when further deepening of the channel was carried out.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Severn River” style=”fancy”] This river was named after the English Severn River some time before the 1851 survey.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Severnlea” style=”fancy”] The name is formed from a combination of Severn from the River Severn and Lea being a reference to C. A. Lee of Beverley landholding.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Shailer Park” style=”fancy”] The Shailer family’s Queensland story starts with the arrival of Francis Catherine and their children at Maryborough in 1865. In the following year they moved to the Logan where they grew cotton and later maize and sugarcane and citrus. When his first wife died leaving him with nine young children he married another Catherine and by her had another five children. For a time he taught school at the Slack’s Creek School. He was the first clerk of the Tingalpa Divisional Board the local authority of the time and worked for the development of the Beenleigh Agricultural Society. He died in 1909 at the age of ninety-three. The present Shailer Park occupies part of his original holding.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Shaws Pocket” style=”fancy”] See Luscombe[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Sheldon” style=”fancy”] Sheldon i repeats a Devonshire place name. In 1980 the name came to be used for the area between Capalaba and Mt Cotton.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Shelly Beach” style=”fancy”] Tom Moloney used to collect shell grit from this Caloundra beach transport it by buckboard and boat to Brisbane where it was bought by poultry suppliers. This would have drawn attention to the shell deposits there.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Sherwood” style=”fancy”] The suburb gained its name from Sherwood homestead. From 1851 the area was part of the estate owned by ‘Captain’ Thomas Boyland which extended from Oxley to Chelmer in a stretch known as Boyland’s Pocket. It is not clear that it was known by that name then but it certainly was by 1862 when in the hands of grazier Jimmieson. Whenever it was named it seems clear that the property gained its name from Sherwood Forest near Nottingham England the domain of Robin Hood and his Merry Men. It is derived from the words shire and wood or common forest land belonging to the shire.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Sholl Banks” style=”fancy”] These banks off Tangalooma in Moreton Bay were named after an early shipping pilot. For a while it was mistakenly called the Shoal Banks.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Shorncliffe” style=”fancy”] As Shorncliffe overlooks Sandgate in England so Shorncliffe overlooks the town of Sandgate in Queensland. Shorn Cliff appears on a map drawn by the surveyor Burnett in 1852. Nehemiah Bartley wrote of walking from Sandgate to Shorncliffe in 1858.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Silkstone” style=”fancy”] This suburb of Ipswich was named after the coal mining village of Silkstone in the West Riding district of Yorkshire England. The village name whose derivation seems to come from the Saxon Syl meaning wooded has been in existence since Roman times and is mentioned in the Doomsday Book. The name was also given to a famous seam of coal in that area.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Sinnamon Park” style=”fancy”] This suburb gains its name from the Sinnamon family who came to the area with the migration of a county squire from Portadown Northern Ireland in 1863 and whose grandson Sir Hercules Sinnamon sold the land upon which the suburb was built as part of the development consequent upon the opening of the Centenary Bridge.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Sippy Downs/Creek” style=”fancy”] The name Sippy comes from a local Aboriginal word dhippi or jippi meaning birds.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Skirmish Point” style=”fancy”] Matthew Flinders marked the southern part of Bribie Island Skirmish Point on his chart to indicate where he had a slight skirmish with the local Aborigines when some of them wanted to commandeer his hat. The point at which this occurred was what is now known as South Point but incongruously the name has been switched to the south eastern extremity of the island.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Skyring Creek” style=”fancy”] Named after Daniel Skyring who with his brother Zachariah at one time owned extensive grazing interests in the area and large parcels of Brisbane suburban land. They both settled in the Gympie district where Daniel called his property Bellwood.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Slacks Creek” style=”fancy”] The creek that gave its name to the district was named after the Slack family who had a cattle run there before the days of closer settlement. The Aboriginal name for it was Mungaree place of fishes and that is the name they gave to their property. John and Sarah Slack had come from Berwick-on-Tweed but it is their son William Dunbar How Slack whose name is usually remembered in association with that cattle run and the associated slaughter yards. He married their neighbour’s daughter Mary Ann Skyring in 1857 and they had eight children. At the age of 46 he died of blood poisoning after cutting his foot with an adze while working at Canungra. That was in 1874. Although he was buried there at Canungra his body was later transferred to the South Brisbane Cemetery[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Solander” style=”fancy”] The name of Joseph Banks has gone down in history as that of a great botanist and adventurer but his companion for many years was the Swedish naturalist Dr Daniel Carl Solander who was working at the British Museum at the time of Banks’ invitation to join the Endeavour expedition. Much of their work was done in collaboration. For many years after their great around-the-world journey with Captain Cook he lived in the Banks’ household with Sir Joseph Lady Banks and Sir Joseph’s sister. Solander was a tough resilient man but on Tierra del Fuego he almost succumbed to the cold and after leaving the eastern seaboard of the Australian continent was violently ill with fever and abdominal pain in Batavia and in South Africa. He survived and lived to 1782 when he was struck suddenly with paralysis and died a few days later. He was a cheerful and entertaining man content to go about his scientific work to which he was dedicated without trying to claim the limelight from others.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Somerset Dam” style=”fancy”] This major component in Brisbane’s water supply was built 1935 in the Stanley River at the urgings of Henry Plantagenet Somerset who had been a member of the Queensland Parliament 1904 to 1920. He was born in South Africa while his father a colonel in the British army was serving there and lived for a time in India until his parents died and then he was brought up by Ladies Wyndham and Somerset in England. He was barely twenty when he came to Queensland in 1871 and worked for graziers and managed stations until he started buying his own properties. In 1888 he purchased extensive lands in the Mt Stanley area farmed Caboonbah but was forced to sell after the disastrous flood of 1893. Seeing the need for a flood mitigation program he promoted the building of a dam as part of this. He died 1936.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”South Brisbane” style=”fancy”] The main settlement in convict Brisbane was on the north side of the river along by the present William Street but a settlement started to develop on the south side fairly early. It developed more rapidly as the area was opened up for free settlement so that for a time Brisbane and South Brisbane vied with each other for size. The first regular ferry service across the river between Brisbane and South Brisbane commenced operating in 1843. Others followed. Several hotels opened up there in the 1850s and 60s. One track led from the south bank of the river to a swamp at Wooloongabba where it met up with a track coming in from Kangaroo Point. It then plunged away to the south and to the west. South Brisbane gained its own local government 7 January 1888.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Southport” style=”fancy”] Thomas Blacket Stephens was born (5 January 1819) at Rochedale some ten kilometres from Southport Lancashire England and was the Queensland Minister for Lands in 1874 when an area previously known as Nerang Heads was surveyed for the establishment of a town. So many Aboriginal names were used for the area around the Broadwater that it was impossible for the authorities to decide on any one of them for the new town so the Minister suggest this name that of an English resort town. The name of Southport was bestowed on the English resort original by Dr Barton of Hoole at the end of the 18th century when development started to take place. The small settlement near the mouth of the Nerang River prior to 1874 was mainly involved in timber getting but with the gazettal of the township Thomas Hanlon built an hotel there. Cobb and Company’s coaches used to call until the railway was extended from Beenleigh in the 1880s. It then became a fashionable seaside resort boosted along by its popularity with the Governor Sir Anthony Musgrave. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Speedwell” style=”fancy”] When the area was thrown open for closer settlement a number of migrants who had come out from England on the Oswestry Grange settled here. They formed the Proston Progress Association and this association was asked by the postal authorities to suggest a name for the area. Sydney Shaw suggested Speedwell because it meant ‘go ahead’ was the name for an English blue flower and was also the name of one of the ships in which the Pilgrim Fathers set out from Plymouth for America. On hearing this last point Harry Flynn one of the settlers who was an American moved the motion and it was accepted unanimously.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Spicers Gap” style=”fancy”] Henry Alphan a stockman who worked for the Leslies of Canning Downs on the Darling Downs found the route for a road over the range so that the Southern Downs could be linked to the Moreton Bay settlement. This route ran through Spicer’s Gap. Nearby was Spicer’s Peak named by Alan Cunningham in 1828 after Peter Beauclerk Spicer the superintendent of convicts at Moreton Bay at the time.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Spitfire Banks” style=”fancy”] The Spitfire was a 19 metre schooner built in Sydney in 1855 given to Queensland on separation in 1859. She was used as a pilot boat in Moreton Bay and at Cooktown carried government officials up and down the coast and laid navigation aids in Torres Strait.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Springbrook” style=”fancy”] The word ‘spring’ was suggested by the many springs creeks and waterfalls there. It is an area of high average annual rainfall. But the first settlers called it Springwood. They came from the south coast of New South Wales in 1906 and were known as the Springwood Group. They changed the name later when they found that their mail was frequently going to Springwood in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. The Nerangballum people once lived here and their names linger as the names of the parks: Warrie meaning rushing and Gwongorella meaning dancing waters. The most famous of the falls is Purlingbrook at Gwongorella.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Spring Hill” style=”fancy”] In a new settlement sources of fresh drinking water are vital. Such springs are noteworthy features. So a hill near the convict settlement was called Spring Hill. The springs there fed the stream which has since given its name to Creek Street. So in time the name of the hill became the name of a suburb. The Aboriginal name for the area had been Woomboonygoroo (Meston) or Mahreel meaning stepmother (Steele). The first land sales were held in 1856. The higher allotments had excellent views of the town on one side and the mountains on the other and they were taken up by the well-to-do on which to build their fine houses. The lower parts came to be occupied by workers dwellings.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Springwood” style=”fancy”] The name behind Springwood is that of Colonel Sam Langford. Born in Sydney and given the name of Harold Redvers Langford he enlisted in the Australian Light Horse Regiment in the First World War but after being wounded at Galipolli took a commission in the British army in which he served until 1925. When he and his Irish wife Betty (Margaret Elizabeth McBride) came to Australia they lived at Yanco on the Murrumbidgee prior to moving to Queensland where 1932 he bought land from William Underwood which had previously been called The Wire Paddock because it was the first property in the area to be fenced. He called it Springwood because of the good spring of water there. During the Second World War he raised and led the Torres Strait Island Force sometimes nicknamed the Barefoot Brigade. He and his wife died within three days of each other at the end of 1965.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Stafford” style=”fancy”] Early on the settlement here was known as Happy Valley but when the school was established 1885-6 it was called Stafford. This name had gained credence from the clay pits which dotted the landscape the aftermath of earlier attempts at quarrying clay in the district. Some English migrants said that it reminded them of the Staffordshire countryside pockmarked with its clay-pits. Stafford in England means a ford beside a staep or landing place.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Stanley River” style=”fancy”] This tributary of the Brisbane River was named after Edward Stanley who became the fourteenth Earl of Derby and was Secretary of State for the Colonies 1833-1834 and later Prime Minister of Great Britain. He is reputed to have been an accomplished scholar and an excellent parliamentary speaker.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Stanthorpe” style=”fancy”] When Patrick Leslie left his billy behind he marked the campsite on his map with the words Quart Pot. By the 1850s Quart Pot Creek had become a regular camping spot for teamsters and an embryo township developed there. But the discovery of tin deposits in the area brought rapid growth. A private township of 160 freehold acres surveyed by Mr Greenup for Matthew Henry Marsh of Maryland and Folkstone stations was given the name Stannum Latin for tin. But the township developed by the government was named Stanthorpe on the suggestion of Mr Gregory the first Mineral Lands Commissioner for the area. Even as late as the 1890s reference was being made to the Twin towns of Stanthorpe and Stannum. There is an interesting story told of Bishop Tufnell’s visit to the Warwick-Stanthorpe area in 1872 to induct the Rev. Glennie as his successor. The Bishop is reputed to have said that Quart Pot may be a charming appellation but he felt that dignity would be lacking should Quart Pot ever have its own Bishop. Fancy being the Bishop of Quart Pot![/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Stapylton” style=”fancy”] Granville William Chetwynd Stapylton was the surveyor killed by Aboriginals in the early years of the Moreton Bay penal settlement. He was the son of a Major-General in the British army and the grandson of Viscount Chetwynd. He married Catherine in 1825 when he was 25 and came to Australia 1828 where he worked as a surveyor under Major Thomas Mitchell. He was Mitchell’s second-in-charge on the exploratory expedition to Australia Felix but was critical of his boss. In Melbourne he worked under Robert Hoddle but his heavy drinking interfered with the performance of his duties and he was disciplined. He was sent to work at the Morton Bay settlement under Robert Dixon. He and another member of the survey party William Tuck were killed in an Aboriginal attack on their camp near Mt Lindesay 31 May 1840. It seems that it was Robert Dixon who nominated his name for preservation in the naming of Mount Stapylton. The locality is named after the mountain.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Steiglitz” style=”fancy”] The German birthplace of Ferdinand Kleinschmidt who came to the Pimpama area with his parents Carl and Justine Kleinschmidt at the age of fourteen in 1863 is commemorated by this name although in Germany the name is Stegelitz. Through the prosperity of his farm and sugar mill he was able to acquire a considerable area of land there.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Stephens” style=”fancy”] The name was gazetted 1 June 1981 and boundaries amended 19 May 1995. Thomas Blacket Stepphens apart from being a wealthy newspaper proprietor and member of parliament owned land in this area from 1861. In 2002 this area was amalgamated with Andrews and some of Robina to form Varsity Lakes. Thomas Stephens son of a Baptist minister in Lancashire came to Australia 1849 and moved on to Brisbane 1853 where he ran an export business and wool scour. He married Ann in 1856 and a few years later built ‘Cumbooquepa’ using the Aboriginal name for the waterholes that lay in a hollow behind the house. He was a member of Brisbane’s first municipal council and its second mayor. He bought the Morton Bay Courier newspaper. He was elected to parliament 1863 and held several ministerial positions over the years. He was a prime mover for the establishment of the Brisbane Grammar School . He contracted cholera while on a ship berthed at an Indian port 1875 but recovered to die two years later in South Brisbane.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Stockleigh” style=”fancy”] Wil Elworthy and his brother-in-law George Hawkins took up land in this area in 1863 and named their property after the Elworrthy home in Devon.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Stones Corner” style=”fancy”] This area was named after James Stone who was born in Somerset in 1838 and came to Brisbane on the sailing ship Mount Pleasant 1857. In that same year he bought an acre of land there for a hundred pounds from Mrs Klumpp. He married Mary Ann Clayton of England in 1872. Failing to get a liquor licence  he sold ginger beer from his Ginger Beer Shop.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Storm King Dam” style=”fancy”] Storm King was the name of the ship on which John Yaldwyn and James Ross travelled to Moreton Bay arriving 6 February 1872. They named both their tin mine and a nearby mountain after the ship. Then later the Stanthorpe Shire Council water supply dam was given the same name.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Story Bridge” style=”fancy”] John Douglas Story born Edinburgh in Scotland came to Queensland as a child and after education at Brisbane Grammar and the Brisbane Technical College entered the Queensland public service. He was Under-Secretary for the Department of Education 1906-1920 when he became Public Service Commissioner 1920-1939. Among other things he worked for the establishment of the University of Queensland and was a foundation member of its senate. The bridge was designed by Dr John J. C. Bradfield and built by Evans Deakin-Hornibrook Constructions Pty Ltd..[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Stradbroke” style=”fancy”] Government Order No. 27 from the Colonial Secretary’s office dated 16 July 1827 says ‘His Excellency the Governor has been pleased to direct that the island forming the southern boundary of the eastern channel into Moreton Bay shall be designated the Isle of Stradbroke in compliment to the Honourable Captain J.H.Rous commanding His Majesty’s ship Rainbow the first ship of war which entered Moreton Bay.’ Captain Rous was the second son of the Earl of Stradbroke and the order came after Rous had charted parts of the bay not hitherto mapped and on the recommendation of the Commandant at Moreton Bay Captain Patrick Logan. Rous Channel in the bay still preserves his name. Later in life Rous became the ‘czar of horse racing’ in Great Britain. Stradbroke broke into two islands in 1895. Some suspicion rests upon the attempts to dislodge the Cambus Wallace which went aground on the sand off Jumpinpin in September of the previous year. It is suggested that the dynamiting might have contributed to the division into North and South Stradbroke. To the Aboriginal people there the island as a whole was known as Cheranggaree while the southern part was called Minjerribah. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Strathpine” style=”fancy”] The Scottish word strath means a valley so Strathpine describes an area which is in the valley of the Pine Rivers. W.H.Bowden marketed it in the 1960s as ‘Little Aspley’. The first major industry in the area was rum distillery owned by Owen Gardner and Sons. It was first operated near the mouth of the river and received molasses from the cane growing areas south of Brisbane but it moved upstream to what is now Strathpine around 1908. It ceased operation in 1968. The name for the suburb comes from the railway station named 1887 prior to its opening in 1888.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Stretton” style=”fancy”] George Stretton who was born near Derby England 1827 became the first postmaster at Brown’s Plains in 1872. He also ran the hotel.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Studio Village” style=”fancy”] The developer Villa World Ltd chose this name for their development adjacent to Warner Brothers Movie World 1990 and named the streets in keeping with that association.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Stumers Creek” style=”fancy”] Carl and Millie Stumer migrated from Germany in the 1870s and after living near Rosewood and later in the Goodnight Scrub between Gin Gin and Mt Perry moved to Yandina Creek in 1906. Over subsequent years the family owned several different properties in the Coolum area. When Robert Abbott assisted by Fred Stumer did the survey work for a subdivision prior to World War I he submitted the name of Stumers Creek for a small creek that ran past the northern boundary of what was then the Stumer farm.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Sumner” style=”fancy”] The industrial suburb developed by Hooker Centenary gained its name from a pre-existing road. It is not known who the road was named after. Probably an English migrant of the late 1880s.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Sunnybank” style=”fancy”] The Gillespies named their fruit farm Sunnybank after the village in England from which they came in 1862. Some of Samuel Gillespie’s land was subdivided and sold as Sunny Brae Estate following the Gympie gold rush but it was the naming of the railway station that secured the Sunnybank name for the area.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Sunshine Beach” style=”fancy”] Golden Beach was a rather isolated beach south of Noosa until T. M. Burke Pty Ltd developed it as Noosa Beach Estate in the years after the end of the Second World War. It was named Sunshine Beach in 1949.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Surat” style=”fancy”] Surveyor Burrowes named the town 1850 after his home in India.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Surfers Paradise” style=”fancy”] People looking at the high-rise buildings of Surfers Paradise today might not be surprised to learn that its original name meant the place of the ant. (Umbi-gumbi in the Aboriginal language.) J.H.C.Meyer acquired land there in 1876 and established a sugar plantation and crushing mill near the Nerang River and ran a ferry over the river. In 1888 he built a hotel at what was then called Elston. That name was the maiden name of the postmaster’s wife at Southport bequeathed to the area when it needed a distinct postal address. Growth came when the Jubilee Bridge was built across the Nerang River in 1925 and James Cavill owner of two hotels and a sports store in Brisbane built a hotel there to cater for fishermen. Prior to that there were only a few isolated shacks and a post office. He found that the beaches drew more people than the fish so in 1933 he re-named his hotel The Surfers’ Paradise and persuaded the authorities to make the same name change for the area. The hotel was burnt down a few years later but rebuilt as a luxury hotel with a zoo and tropical garden.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Susan River” style=”fancy”] This tributary of the Mary River was named after Susan Colbourne who married William Jones 10 April 1869[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Suttons Beach” style=”fancy”] See Redcliffe[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Swanbank” style=”fancy”] This was the name of James Foote’s property said to be named after his wife’s birthplace in Scotland.[/su_spoiler] [/su_accordion] [/su_tab] [su_tab title=”T“] [su_accordion] [su_spoiler title=”Taabinga” style=”fancy”] From dha-bengga place of the jumping ants. Another source gives its meaning as a plant that grows on various trees (mistletoe). However it was the name that Charles Robert Haly gave to his pastoral run around 1846. Born 1816 he came to Australia with his brother William 1838. When he moved north from the Gwydir River area he first went to the Logan River area and then moved further north into the Burnett. Married Rosa Harpur from the Logan district 1853. He was elected to the Queensland parliament. After the sale of Taabinga he became police magistrate in Dalby. He died 1892.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Tabragalba” style=”fancy”] The Aboriginal name means a place of nulla nulla relics. The surveyor Robert Dixon was the first to take out a pastoral lease for this area. He called it Burton Vale. This name was later changed to Tamborine then Tabragalba was split off from Tamborine 1845. When it was compulsorily cut up for closer settlement in the 1870s De Burgh Persse and family bought up nearly all of the blocks. In 1905 they put the first section of Tabragalba Estate up for auction and then the second section in 1923.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Taigum” style=”fancy”] Cabbage Tree Creek was known to the Aboriginal tribespeople of the area as Taigum or some variation of that spelling. McLean’s 1853 map shows that what became known as Cabbage Tree Creek was then known as Tighgum Creek. It was in 1975 that the name was revived as the name for a new suburb bounded on two sides by Cabbage Tree Creek. Its Aboriginal reference was to the lawyer vine.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Talburbin Point” style=”fancy”] Talburpin is the Aboriginal name for the wild cotton tree which once grew profusely in the Redland Bay area.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Talgai” style=”fancy”] Aboriginal origin fire or dead trees. It was the name of a pastoral lease taken up by Ernest George Beck Elphinstone Dalrymple who died in Brisbane at the age of 24 in 1844 after only five years in the colony of New South Wales. At one time the township went by the name of Ellinthorpe.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Tallebudgera” style=”fancy”] English names or Aboriginal names? There has been something of a tussle between the two schools of thought. Sometimes it is the English name which has stuck other times it is the Aboriginal. Tallebudgera Creek retains its Aboriginal name believed to mean a place for good fish in spite of the attempt by Robert Dixon to have it known as the River Perry. This surveyor had a distinct bias against Aboriginal names so named it after the Deputy Surveyor-General of the time Samuel Augustus Perry. However from the time of the first permanent white settlers in the area in the 1870s it has been known as Tallebudgera. This name does not seem to have belonged to the local Aboriginal dialect but to that of a tribe around Sydney so was probably given to the stream by white timbergetters trying to use Aboriginal words they had learnt in the south. Poor Samuel Perry. He worked for twenty-four years in a very strained relationship under a cantankerous and difficult boss Sir Thomas Mitchell until he resigned in ill-health and retired to Kiama where both he and his wife Caroline died within a few months of each other less than a year after his retirement. And he even had his river taken off him! Edmund Harper English migrant timber getter selector of land at Gilston friend of the local Aboriginal people whose language he learnt built a wharf at the mouth of Little Tallebudgera Creek where Wharf Street Surfers Paradise is today.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Tallegalla” style=”fancy”] A tallegalla is a scrub turkey and the Postal Receiving Office opened on his farm by John Dart in 1876 in the Rosewood Scrub was given this name because of the presence of many tallegalla in the area.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Tamaree” style=”fancy”] The Commissioner for Railways gave the siding the name of Tamara but the locals referred to it as Tamaree. The meaning is not known. For years it was popularly known as Tamaree Harbour.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Tamborine” style=”fancy”] There are at least six different forms of Aboriginal word that this name is supposed to come from. They are said to mean the place of yams or the place of lime trees.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Tamrookum” style=”fancy”] John Campbell occupied the Tamrookum run in 1842. It has also been spelt Jenbrakin or Ginbrooken. The name refers to a place of boomerangs. It was subdivided in 1931.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Tanawha” style=”fancy”] This area in the Sunshine Coast hinterland is supposed to carry the name of a mythical New Zealand monster[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Tandora” style=”fancy”]William Henry White was the first owner of the Tandora property in the Maryborough district. It is said to refer to it a dead end the only way in is the only way out. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Tandur” style=”fancy”] This was the name used by the Brisbane River Aboriginal people for the narrow-leafed ironbark (Eucalyptus creba) and probably was first given to the railway station. The local name for the tree was dooboon.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Tannymorel” style=”fancy”] The township of Lower Farm Creek developed around a sawmill in the 1870s but the name of Tannymorel was adopted after the opening of a coal mine of that name on nearby Mt Colliery in the 1890s[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Tansey” style=”fancy”] Tansey was the name of an early selector who owned much of the country in the vicinity when the school was named in 1916. It had previously been known as Sandy Creek.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Tara” style=”fancy”] A Queensland Railways publication says that the name means a flat covered with gumtree box. It was the name of a grazing property from 1852.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Tarampa” style=”fancy”] The name is of Aboriginal origin and means place of wild lime trees. The Tarampa run was taken up in 1847.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Taringa” style=”fancy”] The name is made up of two Aboriginal words: tarau meaning stones and nga meaning made up of. Together they mean place of stones. The name was given to the station when the railway line was built.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Tarome” style=”fancy”] The name is of Aboriginal origin. It was the name of an early licensed holding[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Taromeo” style=”fancy”] The first licensed grazing property in the South Burnett was settled by Simon Scott 1842. He and his brother Walter migrated from Scotland 1839. It seems that the name was borrowed from the local Aboriginal people as were the names Tooringar and Tandary for locations within the original station area.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Tarong” style=”fancy”] Meaning of name is given as Dead branch. It was used of a pastoral run from 1850 then by the Railways Department from 1915[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Taroom” style=”fancy”] The camp site near the Dawson River was known as Bonners Knob but when the post office was established (1856) the name was changed to Taroom said to be Aboriginal for fruit such as the quondong or wild pomegranate.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Tarragindi” style=”fancy”] Many people assume that Tarragindi is Aboriginal in origin but in fact it comes from a Melanesian language. Tarragindi Tussaroni was a Loyalty Islander brought over to work on the canefields of Queensland but he ran away from his employer. He was found by Alfred Foote of the Ipswich firm Cribb and Foote and he came to work for the Foote family and their relatives the Grimes. W.D.Grimes named his new house on a hill near Sandy Creek after his kanaka employee when Tarragindi said that his name meant camp on a hill. Tarragindi was a standard bearer for the Salvation Army in Ipswich processions for many years and died when he fell out of a tree while trying to rescue a pet parrot.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Taylor Range” style=”fancy”] For a time this spur from the D’Aguilar Range carried two names. Maps of the 1820s show both the names of Glenmoriston and Taylor associated with it but it was the name of Sir Herbert Taylor which came to be permanently commemorated by it. Born 1775 and died 1839 he was a soldier and politician who served as private secretary two British kings – George III and William IV military secretary to the Duke of Wellington and Master Surveyor of the British Army 1828-1830.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Templin” style=”fancy”] Templin was named by W.F.Hoenhaus after his birthplace in the Uckermark area north of Berlin. In the late 1870s a number of families migrated from this area in Germany and took up land on the Teviot Range. When in 1892 a school was opened in response to their request the name which they suggested for the school was also adopted.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Teneriffe” style=”fancy”] James Gibbon named his property Teneriffe after the town in the Canary Islands.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Tennyson” style=”fancy”] Alfred Tennyson the clergyman’s son who came to be England’s leading poet for at least half of the 19th century gave expression to the experience and feelings of his generation as no one else was able to do. As a result he became Lord Tennyson. He belonged so much to the Victorian Age though that later generations have not appreciated his work nearly to the extent as did his contemporaries. James Strong called his farm at the junction of Oxley Creek and the Brisbane River Softstone but somewhere between 1882 and 1888 changed it to Tennyson. When the land was sold to the Queensland Deposit Bank and Building Society for subdivision it was then marketed under the Tennyson name.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Tent Hill” style=”fancy”] Imagination seems to be triggered into action by the shapes of clouds of stalactites and stalagmites of rocks and trees and of the outline formed by mountains and hills so that people see familiar objects in them. Tent Hill probably got its name that way. Tent Hill was the name given to one of the early runs taken up by the first settlers and its name was probably suggested by the shape of a hill up behind the head station. Although there is another suggestion that it was where the police erected their tents while investigating the death of a shepherd at the hands of Aboriginal tribesmen in the early 1840s.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Teviot Brook” style=”fancy”] This creek which flows into the Logan River has been given the name of a Scottish stream a name which in its origins is related to other river names like Taff Tamar and Thames and meant the dark one or simply the river. It was named by Allan Cunningham 1828.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Tewantin” style=”fancy”] It was timber that brought the first white men to the area and the felled logs were dragged or rafted to a sawmill set up in the 1860s on the shores of Lake Donella. The timber was shipped out down the Noosa River from there to Brisbane. So a name meaning dead wood or place of dead logs seems appropriate. The early growth was related to the Gympie gold rush. People came in through this port to make the overland journey to the gold fields. Some referred to it as The Short Cut because it offered the quickest route to get there from Brisbane. In 1870 three years after Nash’s discovery of gold it was declared a town. Ten years later it had already begun to lay claim to being a holiday resort as gold miners came back here for a break.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Texas” style=”fancy”] Indirectly of course the town was named after the state in the United States of America but more directly it gained its name from Texas Station the largest landholding in the area. The grazing property was named by Donald Norris McDougall. After floods in 1890 the town was moved two kilometres north of its original site.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Thagoona” style=”fancy”] The Ipswich City Council website says that although Thagoona is a Ugarapul word its meaning is not known.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Theebine” style=”fancy”] This railway junction was named by the Railway Department 23 May 1910 using an Aboriginal word for barramundi or the ceratodus lung fish using a name that had been in use since 1895. Before that it had been called Coorindah.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”The Gap” style=”fancy”] Several areas around the state were thrown open to closer settlement after the First World War by being offered to returned soldiers. The Gap was one of these. Forty-two ex-soldiers were settled on nine-acre (3.25 hectares) blocks in an area that had first been settled in the 1860s. The district derived its name from a gap in the Taylor Ranges.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”The Summit” style=”fancy”] The railway station was given this name by the Queensland Railways because it was the highest point on the Warwick-Wallangarra railway line.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Thompson Estate” style=”fancy”] This area of Brisbane was named after a Scottish migrant Joseph Thompson who settled in the area in the 1860s.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Thornside” style=”fancy”] Thorneside was named after William Thorne Brisbane businessman who built Mooroondu House in the area. He was a brother of Ebenezer Thorne after whose daughter the suburb of Carina is named. It was the Railways Department that gave this name to the station they built there. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Thornlands” style=”fancy”] George Thorne was more associated with Ipswich than with this area of Thornlands but it is here that his name is preserved prominently on the map of South East Queensland. The land remained in his family’s hands for some 23 years after his death in 1877 and then it was subdivided and sold as Thornlands Estate. George Thorn came to Australia as a sergeant in the 4th (King’s Own) Regiment in 1832. He served as an orderly to Governor Bourke and was involved in the first survey of Melbourne but when his regiment was posted to India he quit joined the Commissariat Department and married Jane. They were sent to Moreton Bay in 1838 where the Commandant Patrick Logan put him in charge of the small Limestone settlement. When the quarry and kiln closed he stayed on in Ipswich and ran the first hotel there. He later sold it to set up a store and bought up land when the Ipswich town lots went on sale. He kept on acquiring land but not only in and around Ipswich but in Toowoomba Moggill and around Cleveland which many thought would become the main port for the squatters. It was from his land interests here that the name came to be incorporated into the name of Thornlands. He was a prominent Ipswich citizen well-respected in the growing community for his honesty humour and public involvement. There was in his family a love of practical jokes. Four of his sons served in the Queensland Parliament one of them George Henry filled several ministries and was Premier for some months. His daughter Jane married the businessman George Harris and their grandson eventually became Governor General of Australia in the person of Lord Casey. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Thulimba” style=”fancy”] Although a siding was opened 1882 with the name Pikedale it was soon changed to Thulimba meaning plenty of water. This had reference to the springs there.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Tiaro” style=”fancy”] In days of good road and rail transport it is hard to appreciate how important the streams were to the early European explorers and settlers. Tiaro an Aboriginal name meaning the meeting of the waters is at the limit of tidal action on the Mary River. Andrew Petrie and H.S.Russell called it the Wide Bay River when they travelled up it with Mr Joliffe the Honourable W.Wrottesley five convicts and Ulappa an Aboriginal from Brisbane. They found the runaway convict Davis known also by his Aboriginal name Durramboi. Joliffe took up land on behalf of John Eales who already owned property in the Hunter Valley. Then followed a period of racial conflict in which Aborigines killed sheep and shepherds and in which Aborigines were killed with poisoned flour. Firearms and spears wrecked their toll. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Tibberwaccum” style=”fancy”] In the Turrbul language the place name meant flying squirrel or hungry[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Tibrogargan” style=”fancy”] This mountain’s Kabi name meant the biting or aggressive grey glider and in their legend featured as the father of the Glasshouse Mountains family. Matthew Flinders reached the foot of this mountain on the short overland expedition away from his ship in 1799.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Tinbeerwah” style=”fancy”] Place of grasstrees or high hill climbing up.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Tin Can Bay” style=”fancy”] The name suggests that an interesting story might lie behind it but it comes as somewhat of a disappointment to learn that it is derived from an Aboriginal word tindhin used for a particular species of mangrove.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Tingalpa” style=”fancy”] Robert Herbert the first Premier of Queensland held land here in partnership with W.D.White of Lota House. The name meant place of fat. An early settler gave the carcass of a fat cow which had been killed by a falling tree to the local Aboriginal folk to eat. They had never seen so much fat before. This Aboriginal name was then taken over by the surveyor who thought that it referred to fat kangaroos[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Tingoorah” style=”fancy”] The Aboriginal meaning is given variously as home of the koala or green wattle tree.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Tivoli” style=”fancy”] This Ipswich suburb was named after a coal mine owned by Harry Hooper and John Robinson.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Toogoolawah” style=”fancy”] John David and Frederick were sons of James McConnell who had established a cotton-spinning business in Manchester England in 1790. John went into the silk industry in England but David emigrated to Australia at 22 years of age in 1840. Travelling overland from Sydney with his livestock he took up land to which he gave the name of Cressbrook in 1841. In choosing that name he used the name of his eldest brother’s property in Derbyshire England. John and Frederick later followed him to Australia although Frederick returned to England after a few years. David and John were well-respected devout men but both suffered from deafness. John became a member of the Queensland Legislative Council. It was David’s son James Henry who built a condensed milk factory on part of the property in 1900. A township was laid out in 1904 and to this was given the name Toogoolawah. That was the way the Railway Department spelt the name. Tugulawa was the Aboriginal name for the area near Brisbane now known as Bulimba where David and Mary McConnell had built their city residence. Its origins then lie with the Aboriginal people of the Bulimba area and refers to a tree shaped like a crescent moon[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Toohey” style=”fancy”] Toohey Mountain and Toohey Forest are named after James Toohey who made his fortune on the Californian goldfields and on taking up residence at Kangaroo Point became one of Brisbane’s largest property owners. He named one of his properties Mount Galway after his birthplace in Ireland. Although Toohey owned the land there Toohey Mountain was for a time known locally as Peggs Mountain after George Pegg who farmed there on Toohey land.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Toolburra” style=”fancy”] This is an Aboriginal name said to refer to the throwing of a spear. From 1840 it was the name of a pastoral run.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Toombul” style=”fancy”] Johannes E. Gossner headed up a Protestant missionary society and missionary training school in Berlin which sent missionaries out to India and other places around the world during the 19th century. He believed that missionaries did not need to have a great deal of academic training. What was needed were practical ‘mechanics’ who could earn their living in their adopted country and show other people the benefits of civilization while they shared with them the elements of the Christian faith. When the Presbyterians of Sydney headed by Rev. John Dunmore Lang decided to open up a mission to the Aboriginal people Dr Lang arranged for 12 German Lutheran young men with their wives and children to come from Gossner’s mission and for them to go to the Moreton Bay District in 1838. At first they were given the disused huts at Humpybong to use but then were allocated land which the Aboriginal people called Tumbul but which they called Zion’s Hill. The word seems to have had some reference to the hoop pine tree. Financial support dried up and they almost starved. The effort to make the station self-supporting took priority over the more difficult task of evangelizing the natives. They no more understood the attitudes and motivation of the Aboriginal people than the Aborigines did of them and well before the five years had elapsed when it was officially closed they has lost their enthusiasm for the task. Some of the group left but some remained to farm the area which continued to be known locally as German Station James Warner used the name for the parish surveyed in 1840 and it was used by the Railways Department for a station in 1882. Although not now on the same site there still is a Toombul railway station.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Toondah Harbour” style=”fancy”] The boat harbour at Cleveland gets its name from the steamer Toondah that was used for survey work in the bay and ended its days as a rusting shell on the shore of Cassim Island.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Toorbul” style=”fancy”] Turrbal was the name for the local Aboriginal dialect. In its modern form it has been given to a town on Pumistone Passage and to the point from which travelers now cross over to Bribie Island by bridge. According to Tom Petrie the Toorbul Point area was called Ningi Ningi by the Aboriginal people. Ningi ningi are what English-speaking people call oysters. The name of Ningi has been retained for the township on the Bribie Road near Toorbul Point.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Toowong” style=”fancy”] This was the Aboriginal name for the Common Koel Eudynamys scolopacea a name which imitated the sound made by the bird. This cuckoo is found all through coastal Queensland. It appears that the Aboriginal people used the name for the bend in the river downstream from where the Indoorooprilly railway bridge came to be built because these birds must have been particularly prevalent in the area. They generally like forests with tall trees. However Richard Drew applied the name to a different area when he subdivided blocks around a creek which white people already called Toowong Creek an area which became an elite suburb in the early decades of free settlement. When land was first sold in the area back in 1851 it was simply referred to as the ‘Western Suburbs’. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Toowoomba” style=”fancy”] This was the name of Thomas Alford’s house before it became the name of the town. It had its origins with the Aboriginal people of the area but just what name they used for the swamp is not clear. It was probably Toocoonibah. However the white settlers simply called it the Drayton Swamp until 1857 when the name of Toowoomba was adopted. Some say the name referred to a native melon which grew in the area while other say that it referred more directly to the swamp and literally meant ‘water sits down’.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Torbanlea” style=”fancy”] The name derived from Torbane Hill in Scotland was suggested by James Robertson during the establishment of the Burrum Coalfield[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Torquay” style=”fancy”] Whether named after Torquay in Devonshire or not the form and spelling of the word is surely influenced by that English reference which in turn gains its name from the quay built by the monks of Torre Abbey. The English Torquay is now part of the urban seaside resort of Torbay which together with Paignton and Brixham is promoted as the English Riviera. J. G. Steele suggests that its origin lies in the Aboriginal word dhakki-talbur for which several meanings are given.(short stone place rocky reef or stone axe). As Donald Henderson’s ten year lease was about to expire on land in this area in 1881 he sold some of it to Jas McPherson who built the first shops here and this saw the beginning of the Torquay development. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Torwood” style=”fancy”] The Torwood Estate was marketed in the mid 1880s[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Traveston” style=”fancy”]The Traverston grazing property said to have been named after an early settler Mr Travers was owned by T. Powell at the time that gold was discovered in Gympie 1867. The town was surveyed 1909 as Traverston. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Tripcony Bight” style=”fancy”] Thomas Martin Tripcony who had served in the Royal Navy in the Crimean War and had worked in Australia as a gold prospector shearer limeburner and oysterman established Cowie Bank as a home for his family when he came to the Pumistone Passage area in the 1860s.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Tuchekoi” style=”fancy”] The Aboriginal name for the wild cat. Others say that it means the place of fig trees.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Tugun” style=”fancy”] Tugun was in use by the Lands Department and the Post Office from 1910. But after the pioneering family the Farrells applied for the construction of a siding the name not from any local Aboriginal language and said by Tom Petrie to refer to the sound of waves was perpetuated by being using by the Railways Department.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Tweed River” style=”fancy”] The Tweed River from which Tweed Heads gets its name looks back to Scotland for its inspiration. From its British (Celtic) roots we know that it originally meant the strong one and in AD 700 was spelt Tuuide. Tweed Heads forms a twin town with Coolangatta.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Two Mile” style=”fancy”] When travelling north of Gympie one soon comes to the Two Mile School and one asks Two miles from where? The answer is two miles from the warden’s office on Commissioner’s Hill in Gympie. It was the site of a mini-goldrush in 1868. So rich were the alluvial deposits there that it was nicknamed the jewellers shop.[/su_spoiler] [/su_accordion] [/su_tab] [su_tab title=”U“] [su_accordion] [su_spoiler title=”Undercliffe Falls” style=”fancy”] The falls gained their name from Undercliffe run named after the home town of Mr Speering on the Isle of Wight.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Underwood” style=”fancy”] The William Underwood after whom the area is named owned land there from the 1870s and also owned an hotel at Eight Mile Plains and was post master there.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Uniacke Point” style=”fancy”] See Luggage Point [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Urangan” style=”fancy”] In the Kabi Kabi language this word referred either to small white shells or to the dugong (yuangan).[/su_spoiler] [/su_accordion] [/su_tab] [su_tab title=”V“] [su_accordion] [su_spoiler title=”Valdora” style=”fancy”] The area formerly of the old Yandina Cattle Run and opened up for closer settlement 1868 was at one time known as Golden Valley.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Venus Banks” style=”fancy”] The Venus Banks at the entrance to Moreton Bay between Bribie and Moreton Islands are named after a ship that was wrecked there in 1855.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Verrierdale” style=”fancy”] Named after David G. Verrier an early settler.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Victoria Point” style=”fancy”] Named after Queen Victoria. See Queensland.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Virginia” style=”fancy”] The suburb of Virginia was named after Virginia the first permanent English settlement in America. This state seceded from the United States 17 April 1861 and became part of the southern confederacy. Robert E. Lee the prominent leader of the Confederate forces in the Civil War which raged from 1861 to 1865 was from Virginia. [/su_spoiler] [/su_accordion] [/su_tab] [su_tab title=”W“] [su_accordion] [su_spoiler title=”Wacol” style=”fancy”] Wacol is a composite word made up from the words weigh and coal. Coal used to be weighed there on the Ipswich railway line. It was named by the Railway Department in 1927.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Wairuna” style=”fancy”] The homestead of this name was taken up by H. Stone and D. McAusland 27 November 1879.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Wallangarra” style=”fancy”] It seems that the name comes from the Aboriginal wallan meaning water and guran meaning long. The reference then was to a lagoon. Prior to that name being used it was referred to as The Dog Trap because a stone trap for catching dingoes that had been built there.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Walloon” style=”fancy”] The Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Mines web site (http://www.nrm.qld.gov.au/property/placenames) suggests that the name might have been chosen after that part of Belgium that is French-speaking.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Wamuran” style=”fancy”] Travellers north on the old northern road after leaving the Caboolture River at what is now called Upper Caboolture had as their next stop a store operated by Joseph Bell at Wararba. When a banana plantation was established there and the railway line went through it gained the name of Wamuran after a local Aboriginal leader known by the whites also as Jackie Delaney. Delaney’s Creek is a nearby district to this day.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Wandoan” style=”fancy”] Juandah station was established in the wake of Leichhardt’s exploration of the area in 1844. When the railway line was put through (1914) the township was still known as Juandah but this could be confused with another place Jundah so it was changed to Wandoan in 1927.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Wappa Falls” style=”fancy”] Of Gubbi Gubbi origin wappa means slow or gentle[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Waraba” style=”fancy”] Waraba was the local Aboriginal term for a bora ring and for the ceremonies conducted there[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Warana” style=”fancy”] Developed by Kawana Estates with a name meaning blue skies[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Warra” style=”fancy”] The Queensland Railways says that the Aboriginal name is Warra Warra and refers to an Aboriginal woman carrying a bundle.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Warrill Creek” style=”fancy”] The Aboriginal name for the creek has been retained. The word simply means water. Warrill View is derived from the name of the creek. In its Aboriginal origins the name meant the junction of two creeks.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Warwick” style=”fancy”] It is commonly assumed that the town of Warwick on the Darling Downs was named after the city of Warwick in England but in reality it was named after a character in a novel. Warwick the Kingmaker in Lord Lytton’s The Last of the Barons published 1843 fought against the tide of social change which saw the English barons losing their power and he held a particular significance for Patrick and George Leslie when their squatter’s ‘principality’ was being broken up and they were required to suggest a name for the village being planned on part of their old Canning Downs station.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Waterford” style=”fancy”] Protestant-Catholic rivalry was intense in the early colony. The Rev. Dr. John Dunmore Lang organized to bring Protestant settlers out to Queensland and Bishop James Quinn formed the Queensland Immigration Society to bring Irish Catholic settlers out. But that was not the Bishop of Brisbane’s only motive in doing this. He wanted to relieve the suffering of people in his Irish homeland caused by their eviction from lands held by their English rulers and with the help of Father Patrick Dunne organized for the ship Erin-go-Braghn to leave Waterford in Ireland 7 February 1862 bound for Moreton Bay with 431 immigrants on board 54 of whom died on board mainly from typhoid fever. So these Irish immigrants many of whom settled in this area named the district Waterford. Previously the Aboriginal people had called it Tygum meaning large. Shortly afterwards German settlers were to follow. The Irish Waterford literally meaning an inlet in which one could take shelter from the weather was one of a number of Norse settlements established around the Irish Sea in the 9th century. In 1649 it successfully resisted as attack by Cromwell’s forces only to fall to his general Ireton in the following year.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Wavell Heights” style=”fancy”] General Sir Archibald Wavell who was Commander-in-Chief in the Middle East during part of the Second World War had many Australian soldiers serving under him and when this area was subdivided after the war his name was given to this part of expanding Brisbane. Wavell was stocky in build had deep furrows on either side of his mouth and usually a twinkle in one eye. The other eye was a glass one for he lost it at Ypres during the First World War. Wavell knew and loved his English literature especially poetry. He loved to outsmart rival generals in manoeuvres was strong on military education but opposed formal examinations and cramming. He hated conformity when there was no good reason for it. Was contemptuous of idleness. Never smoked. Drank alcohol sparingly. Exercised regularly. He liked swimming and enjoyed the company of young people. Although he lacked the breezy bonhomie which is supposed to make a popular officer he was much respected by his troops. His father had been a major-general. It was said of Archie Wavell if he doesn’t want to talk don’t try making conversation with him; don’t ever tell him you are hard worked; don’t count on leave; he can bite but is a most loyal and affectionate person to work for; he has tremendous powers of concentration. He became the first Earl Wavell. He served out the latter part of the war in India and was Viceroy there 1943-1947. He died at the age of 67[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Wellers Hill” style=”fancy”] Jacob Weller a tailor born 1833 in Westphalia Germany arrived Queensland 1862 bought land on the hill from James Toohey in 1874. He grew fruit and grapes there and built the family home which remained in the family after he died in 1890 until it was bought by the city council as a reservoir site. His name has been spelt in different ways. That is why the hill on which he lived has sometimes been called Weiller’s Hill. It was officially given its present name in 1948.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Wellington Point” style=”fancy”] Ignoring the Aboriginal name of Cullen-Cullen Surveyor Warner named Wellington Point after the Iron Duke Arthur Wellesley Duke of Wellington who had been born a younger son of an English lord in Ireland and who rose to fame as leader of the British armies in the second decade of the 19th century. His most notable victory was that over Napoleon at Waterloo. He became Prime Minister in 1827 but his opposition to letting the common people vote and his use of the army against workers trying to stand up for their rights earned him the anger of many.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Westaway’s Gutter” style=”fancy”] This part of Pumistone Passage gets its name from John Westaway an early cattle grazier.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Westbrook” style=”fancy”] John Campbell gained the nickname of Tinker when he brought a consignment of tinware with him for trade with the Aboriginal people when he migrated from Maine USA. He selected a run of 110 000 acres on the Darling Downs in 1841 which he named Westbrook. The Aboriginal name for the area was Boccaninnie (old woman).[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”West End” style=”fancy”] The Aboriginal name for the area was Kuripla the place for rats but people who had come out from England had London’s West End in mind when they gave this name to this area of South Brisbane which had once been so thickly covered with scrub.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Weyba” style=”fancy”] A number of places along the Sunshine Coast end in -ba this being the Aboriginal term for place. Weyba (or it has earlier been spelt Weiba and Wyeba) probably means the place of stingrays or it could be the place of the flying squirrels.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”White’s Hill” style=”fancy”] Bob White and his wife first settled in Maryborough (Q) when they came to Australia. They moved later to Red Hill and then again to this area where they became pioneer settlers 1873. It was said that ‘The hill was too steep for grazing and too poor for farming rock lay just under the soil but Mr White liked the view.’ The Aboriginal name for the hill was Bulimba a name that Europeans borrowed for another location.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Whiteside” style=”fancy”] George Griffin married Janet Taylor at Stromness in the Orkneys 13 October 1812 and the couple moved to the Cape of Good Hope where most of their family of three boys and two girls were born. George worked at a trading post there and then was given command of trading vessels. The family moved to Sydney although the captain was away most of the time with his ships. The Rev. John Dunmore Lang was promoting northern development so Griffin took up land north of Brisbane. The head station was built when the eldest son Francis came back from the sea and helped to run the property which they called Whiteside. It took all the country from the coast to Terrors Creek Pine River and almost to the Caboolture River. Janet Griffin took up residence 1844 and in the following year her husband came to reside there full-time. Government laws restricting the size of runs forced them to divide the property into two. The part where the homestead was situated retained the Whiteside name. The other one towards the sea they called Redbanks. It was from Redbanks that Tom Petrie carved out his Murrumba property. In early days when they lived in a slab hut they rigged up a carpet in such a way that during the day it was ‘triced up’ but at bedtime the order was given ‘Let go the halyards’ and the carpet came down to form a partition forming two rooms. Captain Griffin came in one hot day and took a drink from what he thought was a cask of water not knowing that it contained a footrot wash for the sheep. So he died of accidental poisoning 1851. Mrs Griffin had her coffin ready years before she died in 1863. Visitors used to be shown it when they came to the house.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Wide Bay” style=”fancy”] James Cook’s description of this geographical feature lingers on as a name.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Widgee” style=”fancy”] It is thought that the name comes from wudha or wootha Aboriginal for red cedar.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Wight’s Mountain” style=”fancy”] The name derived from George Wight who with his son took over land here in the later 1860s but the first settler was Henry Howard Payne after whom Payne Road at The Gap is named and who was a founder of the Royal Brisbane Show.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Willawong” style=”fancy”] In its Aboriginal origins the word meant the junction of two creeks.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Willowbank” style=”fancy”] Willowbank Estate was put on the market in 1890 and has been used for the area ever since.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Willowburn” style=”fancy”] Queensland Railways say they named their station after willows growing by an adjacent creek.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Wilson’s Peak” style=”fancy”] Captain Logan named this mountain after a friend of his Captain Wilson Director of Public Works in Sydney 1827. When the Swiftsure on which he was sailing to take up his position in Sydney was delayed he brought a claim against the captain of the vessel for failing to provide a ship in good order and condition and so causing him to miss some of his salary.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Wilsonton” style=”fancy”] It is thought that the Toowoomba suburb of Wilsonton was named after a 19th century Toowoomba businessman James T. Wilson.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Wilston” style=”fancy”] The Irish-born William Wilson was 36 years of age and well started on his career as a mercantile agent in Brisbane when in 1868 he bought 46 acres from William Lovell who had originally received it as a grant from the Crown. He married Eliza Coutts and built a house on the property which he called Wilston House. It saw a number of occupants over the years. In the 1880s land around there was sold as Wilston Estate and in December 1929 Charles Elliot and Sons auctioned blocks for what they called the Wilston Hill Estate. Thus came into existence the suburb of Wilston. William Wilson was a member of the Queensland Legislative Council from January 1874 to June 1878. He died 1903.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Windaroo” style=”fancy”] The meaning is not known but it used to be the name of a large sugar plantation managed by William Stanley Warren.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Windera” style=”fancy”] Aboriginal for swamp it was the name of a pastoral run taken up by Paul Lawless 1849. Paul came to Australia from Ireland 1840 and with his brother Clement took up extensive lands in the South Burnett area. He went back to Ireland 1855 and married Ellen Nash 1858. The next year he brought her out to the South Burnett with him. However his health deteriorated and they returned to Ireland where he died 1865.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Windsor” style=”fancy”] Around the time of Queen Victoria’s jubilee in 1887 there was a strong pro-royalty sentiment in the community and this is reflected in the naming of subdivisions which took place around that time. The name Jubilee was given to a development between Bardon and Ashgrove where we still have Jubilee Terrace but also about the same time there was the opening up of a subdivision called Windsor a reference to the royal residence in Berkshire England. Windsor Castle has been the home of royalty for longer than any other building in the world. The name Windsor is derived from the Old English windels meaning windlass and ora meaning bank or shore. It is thought that the town of Windsor in England got its name from a windlass set up on the bank of the river there probably to help carts negotiate the muddy hillside as they came up from the river. Earlier in the 1880s Chief Justice Sir James Cockle acquired Oakwal in this area a house which when he and Lady Cockle returned to England was taken over by James Cowlishaw. Some of the present Windsor area was earlier known as O’Connel Town after Sir Maurice Charles O’Connell who administered the colony on four separate occasions.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Wishart” style=”fancy”] The name was adopted in 1967 to honour an early settler in the area Robert Wishart merchant and member of the Thosophical Society who was born in Edinburgh 1854.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Witches Falls” style=”fancy”] Sydney Curtis’ daughter is reported to have said that as children they gave the falls this name because as they brought the cattle across the creek at dusk they felt it was an eerie or spooky sort of place.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Witheren” style=”fancy”] According to the Queensland Government Natural Resources and Mines website www.nrm.qld.gov.au/property.placenames regarding Witheren Mountain. Bingingerra is the Yugumbir name for this mountain which in legend represents the body of Bingingerra the Turtle who died on this spot after a crucial battle with creatures of the ocean. (J D Steele Aboriginal Pathways Brisbane 1983 p.60.)[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Witta” style=”fancy”] The name meaning dingo was given to the area in 1916 when German names were being removed. It had previously been Teutoberg after a small town in Germany where some of the settlers had come from.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Wivenhoe” style=”fancy”] The property was named after a maritime town in Essex England on the River Colne near Colchester. It had been taken up by the Uhr brothers one of whom was killed by the Aboriginals while working sheep in a yard near the present Lake Manchester. The surviving brother together with a retired naval man J.S.Ferriter held the property for some time. It was bought by the North family in 1849. Wivenhoe Inn nearby became a popular stopping place. The name has been given to the dam built to augment Brisbane’s water supply.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Wolston” style=”fancy”] Poor Stephen Simpson waited nearly twenty years to marry his fiance Sophia Anne Simpson a relative of his. But when they married and migrated to Sydney she died after only twenty months of marriage and the child she bore also died. Earlier he had served in the British army during the Napoleonic wars and had studied at Edinburgh to become a doctor but the homeopathic treatment he learnt on the Continent while trying to earn enough money to get married earned for him the hostility of his fellow medicos in England. Dr Simpson took a job as Land Commissioner at the Moreton Bay Settlement which it was anticipated would soon be thrown open to free settlers. For a while (about 1840-41) he lived out at Eagle Farm in the palisaded enclosure once used by the female prisoners. His smoking arrangement there was to have a large long-stemmed pipe protruding through a small hole in the wall of his room so that he could recline on his sofa on the inside while the cook lit up the bowl with a live coal on the outside but he was better known for his cigar smoking. He gained the reputation of being very clever at curing diseases. He took up land half-way between Brisbane and Limestone near what was called Woogaroo Creek establishing there a horse stud. He built Wolston House or as it was first known Woolston House in 1852 hoping it might be inherited by his sister’s son J.M.Ommaney but the lad was killed in a fall from a horse on the property and after that the doctor sold up and went back to England where he died on the 13th anniversary of his nephew’s death Wolston House was named after Simpson’s birthplace in Coventry Warwickshire.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Wolvi” style=”fancy”] Young kangaroo almost weaned[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Wondai” style=”fancy”] Some say the name comes from an Aboriginal word meaning howling dog. but some claim that it referred to an a man speared in the back of the neck. It started to grow when the railway line was put through from Kilkivan in 1902 and the old selection of Mondure station was cut up for closer agricultural settlement. Before that there had been a collection of humpies at this spot on the road used as a resting point by drovers and teamsters travelling between Nanango and Mondure. Mondure had been taken up by Richard Jones in 1844. The township was surveyed in 1903 on a site known as Dingo Creek and given the name Bushnell after Joseph James Bushnell a local resident but almost immediately changed to Wondai.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Wongawallen” style=”fancy”] The Gold Coast Council Heritage Tour indicates that Wongawallen was the name of an Aboriginal man in the Coomera area in the 1870s. It says that the name might be composed of two words wonga pigeon and wallan water or wangum wulam cut or scarred face. It was originally named Mt Goulburn after the English politician who served as Secretary for the Colonies in the 1830s and 1840s.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Wonglepong” style=”fancy”] The name of the railway station was changed from Sarah Vale to Wonglepong 11 July 1927. The name is of Aboriginal derivation but there is some uncertainty about its meaning; possibly forgotten sound or maybe a feature on Tamborine Mountain. Before being given the name of Wonglepong the state school was called Canungra Lower.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Woodend” style=”fancy”] The property which eventually was broken up for closer settlement was taken up by J.Hay N.Hay and T.Holk in March 1854. It borrowed the name from Arthur Macalister’s house of that name built in the 1860s.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Woodford” style=”fancy”] When it came time for naming the new town to be developed here several possibilities were canvassed and the names of several local settlers were advocated but out of the bitter controversy the name of H.C.Wood won out. To his name was added the word for a river crossing and so the name of Woodford was proclaimed in 1885. Durandur was the first run selected in the area but the Archers sold it in 1848 to David and John McConnel. Thirty years later it was broken up under government pressure into smaller holdings but by this time that partnership had been replaced by the partnership of John McConnel and Henry Conwell Wood. Henry Wood was born near Madras in India the son of a British army colonel and was educated at Cheltenham before going into business working for his uncles in London and farming an estate in Hertfordshire. He came to Queensland at the age of 24 and immediately bought a horse and rode off to Durandur for he had letters of introduction from David and John McConnel’s brother in England. He too later became a member of the Queensland Legislative Council. It was Henry Wood who employed Geoge Mason to manage the Conondale section of the run and with Mason and John McConnel formed a partnership to harvest red cedar from those ranges. When Durandur was broken up he took up a block fronting Stanley River and Stoney Creek. The house at Durandur burnt down in 1893 when in a dispute between two domestics the housemaid set fire to the cook’s room. From there it spread to the whole house[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Woodhill” style=”fancy”] The school was first known as Townsvale (from 1873) and then Veresdale (from 1874) and then Woodhill (from 1899)[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Woodleigh” style=”fancy”] The Woodleigh district northern Downs prior to 1919 was called Cattle Gully.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Woodridge” style=”fancy”] Octavius Stubbs gave it this name when he subdivided land there in 1914. The timber man called his subdivision ‘wood’ because of the timber grown in the district and milled at his sawmill and ‘ridge’ because it was on a ridge along which the Brisbane to Southport railway line ran. The area had been a timber reserve from the 1870s. The original township surveyed there was named Booran. Prior to gaining the Woodridge name the railway siding had been known as 15 Miles Siding and Graham’s Siding the locality as Devar.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Woogaroo” style=”fancy”] Woogaroo Creek was known by surveyor Robert Dixon in 1840. It derives from Aboriginal term meaning cool or shady. From 1864 the name Woogaroo was applied to a mental asylum there until it became the Wolston Park Hospital.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Woolooga” style=”fancy”] The South Burnett Times in 1927 claimed to have confirmed with local aboriginal elders the meaning of woolooga as the ankle of a human being. Yet in 1988 the Woolooga State School publication claimed that it meant ‘smoke there’ and referred to the sending of smoke signals. It was the name of an early pastoral run. The place names website of the Department of Natural Resources and Mines says that the name was derived from the railway station name used from 1886 reportedly an Aboriginal word group Kabi language from wului = smoke and tha = ground/place.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Woolloongabba” style=”fancy”] Known to the cricketing world as The Gabba Tom Petrie claimed that if the original Aboriginal word had been retained it would have been Wulonkoppa. The word meant whirling around and it was the name for a series of waterholes where after rain the water ran from one to another swirling around before rushing out again. There is an early reference to wattle-scented Woolloongabba. In the early days of free settlement a track came in from Kangaroo Point and another from South Brisbane. They met by a swamp which came to be referred to as The One Mile and then from this point another track went off through the scrub to take the teamsters and travellers to any of the developing areas south or west of Brisbane. This swamp was later filled in and used as the Woolloongabba railway yards. It now houses the Queensland Government’s Land Centre.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Wooloowin” style=”fancy”] This was derived from the Aboriginal name for the area. Some say that it referred to a species of pigeon known as kuluwin but A.Meston said that wooloowin was the word for fish. All fish were wooloowin[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Woombye” style=”fancy”] Woombye owes its existence to its being a stopping place for travellers between Brisbane and Gympie. At first they travelled by Cobb and Co. coach. Later by train. When it was first used as a stopping place it was called Middle Camp but in 1871 the English author Anthony Trollope referred to it as Cobb’s Camp on the Cobb and Co. route from Gympie to Brisbane and he said of his stay in the inn there ‘The pleasant manners of the pretty German hostess almost atoned for the miraculous profusion of fleas.’ It was given its present name when the railway was built. The name comes from the Aboriginal name for the lillypilly tree a tree which grows well in the locality. The lillypilly (Acmena smithi) is a tree which has dark glossy leaves and an edible berry fruit.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Woondum” style=”fancy”] The place of the blue tongued lizard (Tiliqua Seincoides).[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Woongoolba” style=”fancy”] This was the Aboriginal name for what is now known as Pimpama Island. It was formerly known as Stegeht. It may have referred to the geebung tree[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Woorim” style=”fancy”] Woorim an Aboriginal word for kangaroo was chosen as the name for the settlement on the surfside of Bribie Island.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Wooroolin” style=”fancy”] The name means mistletoe scrub or water hole.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Wooroon” style=”fancy”] The Wigton aboriginal people used this word for the leaves of trees[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Wootha” style=”fancy”] The name for this district near Maleny means red cedar. Catherine Rees in her pioneer reminiscences says that Mr Hogg a Brisbane photographer and friend of the McCarthy family gave the name Mt Wootha to the post office operated by Joseph McCarthy. This was later shortened to Wootha.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Worongarry” style=”fancy”] A. W. Reed says that wooroongarry referrs to a type of vine that was used by Aboriginal people for climbing trees.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Wulkuraka” style=”fancy”] The name for this locality near Ipswich is derived from Aboriginal words having to do with gum trees. Name first used by the Railways Department.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Wurtulla” style=”fancy”] Given this name meaning southward by employees of the developer Kawana Estates.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Wutul” style=”fancy”] Meaning: good grass.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Wychie” style=”fancy”] The name of this district east-north-east of Chinchilla is a contraction of Wycheproof in Victoria whence many of the settlers came in the early decades of the 20th century.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Wynnum” style=”fancy”] This was the Aboriginal name for the breadfruit tree. Tom Petrie spelt it winnam. The name was at one time given to King Island off Wellington Point. Wynnum township was in the early days known as the Oyster Beds.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Wyreema” style=”fancy”] There are a couple of explanations as to the origin of Wyreema. One is that Wyra was the nickname of Mrs McDonald Patterson while Ma was short for Maria her proper name. The other is that it means fine rich land with plenty of food and was so named by Thomas Patterson in 1886. Before that it had been known as Beauaraba Junction.[/su_spoiler] [/su_accordion] [/su_tab] [su_tab title=”X“]

I have no knowledge of any place name in SouthEast Queensland commencing with “X” but I am happy to be enlightened if you know of any.

Please feel free to contact me if you are aware of one (use the “CONTACT US” link above).

[/su_tab] [su_tab title=”Y“] [su_accordion] [su_spoiler title=”Yabba Creek” style=”fancy”] Yabba is presumed to be derived from yappur meaning the box or currajong tree.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Yahoo Creek” style=”fancy”] Native name of wild cat.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Yamanto” style=”fancy”] Named after Yamahnto George Challinor’s cotton plantation. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Yandilla” style=”fancy”] Aboriginal for running water. Run named by St George Richard Gore when taking up his pastoral lease there.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Yandina” style=”fancy”] It seems that the name meaning to go on foot might have been borrowed from an Aboriginal language to the south to indicate the location of the first effective ford or river crossing up the river although there is a theory that the word was used by the Kabi Kabi people to indicate that something is finished or gone forever. This ties in with an Aboriginal legend that once the sea came up and covered the area around Yandina Creek until the wallum country rose up again and the sea retreated. Camp sites which had been used for centuries were of no more use then. They were yandina gone forever. What is certain is that the name was originally given to the cattle station and only later to the area previously known as Koongalba by Aboriginal people and Native Dog Flat by early settlers. The Post Office on the south bank of the Maroochy River was called Yandina although James Low called his place where it was located Maroochie. When the town was surveyed (1871) on the north bank of the river and the railway line put through (1891) the name Yandina became firmly established for the town on its present location[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Yangan” style=”fancy”] The name is Aboriginal for to go on or to go away. This area between Warwick and Killarney was originally called Logan’s Vale by Allan Cunningham, but was changed when the railway line went through.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Yarrabilba” style=”fancy”] In the Bundjalung language it indicated a place of song such as a bora ring.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Yaroomba” style=”fancy”]When this area of the Sunshine Coast was being developed in 1953 it was called Coronation Beach. It was the year of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation. But since 1961 it has been Yaroomba which is said to mean surf on the beach.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Yarraman” style=”fancy”] The site occupied by the town of Yarraman was once a camp for stockmen working Cooyar station where they used to meet up with musterers from Taromeo station to separate out their free ranging herds. The first settler preceding the general resumption of land from Cooyar station by about eleven years was William Lougheed who arrived with his bullock wagon in 1887. Yarraman or Yirraman is said to have been the Aboriginal word for a horse based on gurumai (kangaroo) probably not of local origin.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Yatala” style=”fancy”] Arthur Dixon an official in the Union Bank came to the area in 1868 from Yatala in South Australia and he named the property which he acquired after its South Australian namesake. So it is in its origins an Aboriginal word meaning swampy or flooded but it belonged to the language of Aboriginals in the area near Adelaide. The Aboriginal name for the area now called Yatala was Woogoomarjee.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Yebri Creek” style=”fancy”] From an Aboriginal name Yibri meaning ‘put it down’[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Yeerongpilly” style=”fancy”] Yurong-pilly meant ‘Rain is coming’ in the Yaggara dialect. This was a dialect of the Yerong tribe. [/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Yengarie” style=”fancy”] This area in the Maryborough district has a name formed from yen meaning I come and garie meaning I go. Because food was scarce the Aboriginal people passed through without camping there for any length of time[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Yeronga” style=”fancy”] This once heavily timbered area along by the river is known today by a name reminiscent of the Yerong people’s name for the area Yerongpa meaning sandy place. In was first used by Hardie Buzacott the Queensland Postmaster General for his house and later by the Railways Department as the name for a station.[/su_spoiler] [su_spoiler title=”Yurol” style=”fancy”] The area near Cooroy has a name formed from the Aboriginal term for a scrub vine used for climbing.[/su_spoiler] [/su_accordion] [/su_tab] [su_tab title=”Z“] [su_accordion] [su_spoiler title=”Zillmere” style=”fancy”]This was once known at Zillman’s Waterhole named after Johann Leopold Zillmann one of the German missionaries brought out by John Dunmore Lang to establish the mission at Toombul but who stayed on to farm in the area after it closed down. When the railway came through the name was changed to Zillmere by the Railways Department. [/su_spoiler] [/su_accordion] [/su_tab][/su_tabs]

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