Ipswich, Queensland, Australia - part 2

Ipswich Suburbs & Localities 

We have brought together in one place information on all the suburbs and localities of the City of Ipswich.  We found that much of this information was dispersed over various sources, but we would acknowledge the extent to which we have used the material found on the Ipswich City Council website & the University of Queensland directory of Queensland Places.   Our research also revealed incorrect information on the naming and early settlement of some places in these official sources, and we have accordingly brought attention to these (see Goodna, Gailes, Amberley and Calvert).  We appreciate that some of our facts may also be incorrect since we do not have access to primary sources.  We would be grateful for any corrections and further input from our fellow Ipswichians in Australia who are able to research these sources.  

In 1996 the Queensland government decided that all localities and suburbs should be officially bounded and named.  “Suburb” is the term reserved for urban communities.  “Locality” is the term used in the rural context.  The City of Ipswich covers an area of 1090 sq km (420.9 sq mls).  Within this area there are a large number of suburbs, townships and localities, as listed below.

Suburbs & Localities of the City of Ipswich (in alphabetical order)

Urban Ipswich   Total: 48

Amberley; Augustine Heights; Barellan Point; Basin Pocket; Bellbird Park; Blackstone; Booval; Brassall; Brookwater; Bundamba; Camira; Carole Park; Churchill; Chuwar; Coalfalls; Collingwood Park; Dinmore; Eastern Heights; East Ipswich; Ebbw Vale; Flinders View; Gailes; Goodna; Ipswich Central; Karalee; Leichhardt; Moores Pocket; New Chum; Newtown; North Booval; North Ipswich; North Tivoli; One Mile; Raceview; Redbank; Redbank Plains; Ripley; Riverview; Sadliers Crossing; Silkstone; Springfield; Springfield Central; Springfield Lakes; Tivoli; West Ipswich; Woodend; Wulkuraka;

YamantoRural Townships   Total: 4

Grandchester; Marburg; Rosewood; WalloonRural Localities   Total: 28

Ashwell; Blacksoil; Calvert; Deebing Heights; Ebenezer; Goolman; Haigslea; Ironbark: Jeebropilly; Karrabin; Lanefield; Lower Mount Walker; Mount Forbes; Mount Marrow; Mount Mort; Muirlea; Mutdapilly; Pine Mountain; Purga; South Ripley; Spring Mountain; Swanbank; Tallegalla; Thagoona; The Bluff; White Rock; Willowbank; Woolshed

We cover all the above with brief details of their history and points of interest, going outwards from the centre of Ipswich in the order of their chronological absorption by the city.

The original municipality and City of Ipswich t0 1916

The original municipality incorporated on 3 March 1860 was smaller than the Parish of Ipswich.  The latter extended along the Bremer River to Bunbamba Creek and much further to the south between the Deebing Creek and Bundamba Creek.  In 1879 the colonial government created local government divisions for the rural areas, but existing municipal towns and boundaries were left alone.  These municipal boundaries remained the same when Ipswich became a city in 1904, despite the fact that it had expanded beyond those limits by this year.

Central Business District (Ipswich Central): The innermost suburb is the Ipswich Central Business District; a 4.1 sq km (1.6 sq mile) area centred around Brisbane Street and Limestone Street, which includes the Ipswich Mall shopping centre.  Henry Wade surveyed the site of the “Township of Limestone” in 1842 and his first map included the names of East, Bell, Nicholas, Bremer and Brisbane streets.  The boundaries of the township were the Bremer River to the north, Milford Street to the east, Grey Street to the south and Waghorn Street to the west.  The original quarry site of Limestone Hills is in Queens Park and the locality just south of East Ipswich along the Brisbane Road is still known as Limestone Hill.  A number of substantial residences surrounded by large trees were built in this part of Ipswich.  Another locality within Ipswich Central is Denmark Hill, believed to have been named by Benjamin Cribb who emigrated from England in 1849.  He used to live in London, England, near to the Denmark Hill located there.  Cribb established a prominent retail business, which was destined to grow into the Cribb and Foote emporium in Brisbane Street, and represented Ipswich in the Queensland parliament.  Benjamin Cribb built the house of Gooloowan (see separate section above) on Quarry Street in Denmark Hill.  Denmark Hill Conservation Park was the site of the City Colliery that was worked from 1912 to 1952.

Woodend: This inner-city suburb is immediately northwest of the main settlement, on the southern bank of a bend in the Bremer River.  In 1848 this area was the first coal-bearing crown land near Ipswich to be subdivided into small ‘coal allotments’, and Radstock Pit, opened in 1854, had the distinction of being the first successful Ipswich coal mine.  However, the anticipated expansion of coal mining never materialised because the finds were too small to be commercially viable.  During the later 1850s the bushland was cleared, and this area became a residential suburb frequented by middle class families.   

The suburb takes its name from a house built by Arthur Macalister which he named Woodend.  Macalister was born in Glasgow and emigrated to Australia in 1839.  He became a solicitor, and set up a practice at Ipswich in 1850.  Macalister became a leading advocate for the separation of Queensland from New South Wales, and was three times prime minister of Queensland.  By 1860 he had built his house in the suburb.  “Woodend” is a common place-name in Scotland and it seems reasonable to assume that he named his house accordingly.  The house has since been demolished and Woodend Park is now on that site.

The first Ipswich cotton was grown at Woodend by John Panton in 1862.  There are several heritage sites in the suburb with Ipswich Grammar School and St Mary’s Convent School, both established in 1863, being the foremost.

Coalfalls: A residential suburb with Woodend to its east, bound on its north and west by the Bremer River, and two km (1¼ miles) north-west of central Ipswich.  Unlicensed mining operations were being carried out on what were known as “coal falls”, coal seams that were visible on the river bank, hence this became the name of the later suburb. This area was subdivided for ‘coal allotments’ at the same time as Woodend in 1848, and the era of suburban settlement began in the late 1850s.  Sir James William Blair, a prominent Australian politician, lawyer and judge, elected to the Queensland Parliament on several occasions, and a judge of the Supreme Court of Queensland, was born at Coalfalls in 1871, and later lived there in a house called Coalfalls (still standing, now renamed Dumfries).Sadliers Crossing: Situated south of Coalfalls between Woodend and the Bremer River; it was where there was a shallow ford crossing the river before the 1860s on property owned by Thomas Sadlier.  It is still the main railway crossing over a steel-girder structure completed in 1902 (see Wulkuraka below).  It became a residential suburb in the 1860s.  The heritage listed house of Belmont (see  separate section above), built about 1865, is in Burnett Street, Sadliers Crossing.

West Ipswich: The next suburb south, immediately west of Denmark Hill and central Ipswich, with the Bremer River and the Deebing Creek as its western boundary.  It was first settled in 1842 and remained a separate early urban settlement known as Little Ipswich (see separate entry on The Ones That Got Away page), situated between Ipswich and One Mile Bridge, until included into the municipality of Ipswich in 1860.  It was renamed West Ipswich in 1877 and was then much larger than today, spreading across what is today the southern part of Ipswich Central, including the localities of Denmark Hill and Sandy Gallop.  In 1991 the suburb boundaries were redrawn and West Ipswich lost over half its area to Ipswich Central.   

Basin Pocket: This suburb is in the loop of the Bremer River to the northeast of central Ipswich, and the river borders it on the north, west and part of the east; the suburb of East Ipswich is to the south and east of Basin Pocket.  Today’s Chermside Road was the original boundary of the municipality of Ipswich, and still remains the boundary of Basin Pocket.  The origin of the suburb name is derived from “The Basin”, an artificially enlarged natural widening of the Bremer River used by paddle steamers to turn round to go to and from the wharves at Ipswich.  The explorer Allan Cunningham noted it in 1828, and Capt. Logan named it as the limit of navigation on the Bremer River.  The actual settlement of Ipswich began a little further upstream, and it was not until 1860 that Basin Pocket was permanently occupied when William Henry Lawrence from Cambridge, England, settled there.  His son William Isaac Lawrence was born here in 1861.  The area became a working class residential suburb, and it was William Isaac Lawrence who later established the ferry here, enabling workers to cross the river to the North Ipswich railway workshops.  The ferry continued until just after World War II, when travel to work by bus became a more viable option.

North Ipswich: North Ipswich lies in a U-shaped bend of the Bremer River, immediately north of central Ipswich.  The story of North Ipswich is that of the Railway Workshops; in fact The Workshops Estate was an early name for the suburb (see Railways and The Workshops Rail Museum sections, above).  As soon as Queensland gained separation from New South Wales there was a move to construct a railway in order to bring the vast territory closer.  Transporting wool over the distance from the interior was costly and slow because of the absence of properly maintained dirt tracks.  It was quickly discovered that the construction costs for a rail system as used in Britain were beyond the budget of the fledgling Queensland colonial government. Costs were reduced by using a narrow gauge (3 feet 6 inches) that could be laid more quickly and cheaply over vast distances, and bridging the Bremer River was to be avoided if possible.  Ipswich was chosen as the first terminus because it was at the head of navigation on the Bremer River, and there was no need for a connection to Brisbane because river transport was then more efficient and effective than rail.  Since Ipswich had already been settled south of the Bremer River, North Ipswich was the only place where land was available to construct the workshops to build the rolling stock, and was also near to the river where the wool could be transferred to the waiting steamers.  

Before the coming of the railway in 1864 the area had not been settled and remained scrubland, but by 1865 roads were in place at North Ipswich.  Connected to central Ipswich at first only by ferry, a bridge was built at the present site in 1865 for both rail and road traffic until 1897 when a separate railway bridge was built a little further upstream.  Cotton and wool production in the Brisbane Valley and the Darling Downs, and the accessibility provided by the railway, stimulated further economic activity in North Ipswich, and it became a premier industrial location.  The Shillito engineering works were established there in 1867; Hancock’s timber mill in 1872 and the Queensland Woollen Mill in 1877.  The North Ipswich rail yards, vacated in 1993, endure as one of Australia’s best-preserved industrial heritage sites.

North Ipswich today extends north to beyond the Warrego Highway, but when Ipswich was incorporated in 1860 this suburb was quite small, the boundary running in a straight line southeast from the highest tidal point of the Bremer River in the west where the river curves to the south, to the same river in the east opposite today’s Bremer Parade in Basin Pocket.  Beyond this boundary from 1879 was the Shire of Brassall.  Arguments over which administration should bear the cost of repairs to the bridge over Tivoli Creek on today’s Tantivy Road, which was actually within the municipality boundaries of the City of Ipswich, but of little benefit to the city, led to the boundary being altered to run along the creek in 1909 to bring the Tivoli Bridge into the Shire of Brassall.

The City of Ipswich from 1916 to 1949

Most of the suburbs of Ipswich were outside the municipality boundaries in 1904.  When Ipswich became a city on 1 December 1904, agitation began for an extension of its boundaries.  In 1916 a number of surrounding shires were abolished and parts of Brassall, Bundanba and Purga shires were added to create a “Greater Ipswich” of 32 sq km (12.4 sq mls).

NORTH OF BREMER RIVER FROM SHIRE OF BRASSALL

With the exception of North Ipswich, the other suburbs north of the Bremer River, although in the Shire of Brassall, were effectively part of Ipswich, and in 1916 this was recognised when the city expanded in this direction.  Raymond’s Hill, once a separate suburb in the Shire of Brassall, was merged with North Ipswich, and is now an official locality.  The suburb was named after John Raymond who came from Ireland in 1865.  This acquisition extended North Ipswich to the Warrego Highway.

Tivoli & Tivoli Hill: These were once separate suburbs, but have since been merged with Tivoli Hill now an official locality within the wider Tivoli suburb.  It is situated north of the Bremer River, east of North Ipswich between Tivoli Creek and Sandy Creek. Until 1916 this area was in the Shire of Brassall.

The bushland area north of the Bremer River and east of North Ipswich was subdivided into farm allotments in 1861, and would have remained an agricultural area if it were not for the discovery of coal resources here.  The first coal was mined from exposed seams on the north side of the Bremer River east of Tivoli Creek in 1854, but it was not until the Old Tivoli Mine was opened in 1866 near Francis Street, that development really began.  This mine was financed and developed by two Ipswich businessmen, John Robinson and Harry Hooper, with coal and coke being supplied, first to the paddle steamers, then to the rapidly developing railways.  Tivoli was a middle name used by the Hooper family, and the name soon became applied to the whole area.  

Numerous other coal pits were opened, along with coke ovens.  As the Redbank deposits petered out, the Tivoli seam was more intensively exploited.  Consequently Tivoli was riddled with pits, and being close to the wharves on the Bremer River at North Ipswich, coal was transported to the riverside by a tramway.  The suburb became Queensland’s largest coal producing area by 1870.  

Moores Pocket: This suburb is in the bend of the Bremer River which is found on all sides, except the northwest.  It was named after Thomas Moore, a blacksmith and wheelwright, who lived in this area around 1846. 

WEST OF BREMER RIVER FROM SHIRE OF BRASSALL

One Mile: This suburb was originally known as Toongarra, an Aboriginal name meaning “home of the cabbage palm”; now remembered only by the name of the main road through Leichhardt.  It only officially became One Mile in 1871, although known by this name unofficially since the 1840s.  West of the Bremer River the suburb of One Mile was attached to the City of Ipswich in 1916.  It had long been an extension of West Ipswich and it derived its name because the river crossing there was one mile from the centre of the city.  Aborigines used to camp here, and so did the drovers who used to gather west of the crossing before driving their stock across.  As such it was an ideal place for Donald Campbell, recognised as the second free settler in Ipswich, to move from Little Ipswich (now West Ipswich) and set up as a blacksmith and wheelwright in 1842 on the Old Toowoomba Road.  About the same time Captain “Black” Jack Neale, a sailing captain, built a simple wooden hotel next door on the same road to cater for the thirst of the drovers.  Captain Neale later moved back to Little Ipswich to establish the One Mile Hotel.  Nevertheless, the families of these two constituted the first permanent residents at One Mile (see also Little Ipswich on The Ones That Got Away page).  The area was divided early into small market garden plots to serve the growing Ipswich market.

In the 1870s the Toongarra winery was built on the corner of Old Toowoomba Road and Chubb Street.  Its vineyard occupied about 6 hectares (14 acres), and it employed about 40 men.  Awards were won but the wines could not compete after Federation in 1901 against the cheaper wine that was now allowed in from southern Australia.

In 1953 the suburb was divided, but the name One Mile was retained by the southern portion.

Leichhardt: By 1871 this land had been subdivided and placed under cultivation.  Further subdivision and settlement took place in the 20th century, particularly in the 1940s with the expansion of the nearby RAAF base at Amberley, making this a residential suburb.  The origin of the suburb name is from Ludwig Leichhardt, an explorer and naturalist from Prussia who led major expeditions in Australia during the 1840s.  He is reputed to have camped in the area and used the facilities offered on the Old Toowoomba Road in One Mile.  In 1925 a riverside reserve on the west side of the Bremer River was designated One Mile Park; in 1930 the name was changed to Leichhardt Park since this is where he is supposed to have camped.  Following representations by local residents, the area north of the Old Toowoomba Road became a separate suburb named Leichhardt in July 1953.

FROM SHIRE OF PURGA

Churchill: A residential suburb 3 km (2 miles) south-west of central Ipswich.  Its western and eastern boundaries are the Bremer River and Deebing Creek respectively.  The proximity to the major crossing point of the Bremer River at One Mile made the land just south of Little Ipswich in the Parish of Purga, between that river and the Deebing Creek, suitable to use as stock saleyards.  During the 1860s a small community developed around these, and in 1866 the Isambert Brothers established a soap and candle works there.  The land was in the County of Churchill, and in 1870 a separate “Town of Churchill” was laid out, taking its name from the county.  In 1873 the first Ipswich Agricultural Show was held at the saleyards.  The show moved to the Sandy Gallop training track in 1877, and the yards were sold four years later.  The community of Churchill was that part of the Shire of Purga transferred to the City of Ipswich in 1916.

SOUTH OF THE BREMER RIVER FROM SHIRE OF BUNDANBA (boundary went to Bundanba Creek)

East Ipswich: This suburb surrounds Basin Pocket and touches the Bremer River in two separate places in the north and west; to the south is Brisbane Road, the city’s main arterial link to the Ipswich Motorway.  Until 1916 the boundary of Ipswich was along today’s Chernside Road (then named Boundary Road).  A small part of the present suburb of East Ipswich to the west of Chernside Road down to the Bremer River was then within the municipality, but the larger part was outside the boundary in the Shire of Bundanba.  There were a number of substantial residences with large grounds built on the outskirts of Ipswich in the 1860s.  In the late 1870s as the larger properties were broken up and sold off in smaller lots, this became a predominantly residential suburb known as Limestone.  However, it was increasingly referred to as East Ipswich and in 1891 it finally took this name.  In the same year the Ipswich Cotton Company established the first cotton mill to be built in Queensland in the suburb, near to the cotton plantations in Booval.  This did not prove profitable and in 1913 it was bought by the Ipswich Woollen Company in Tivoli Hill; in 1917 that company moved its operations from Tivoli to East Ipswich.  The woollen mill remained the major employer until it closed in the 1980s; the houses around Woollen Mill Way are a reminder of its past. 

Newtown: This is a small residential suburb south of East Ipswich, bordered by Queens Park to the west, to the north by Brisbane Road, with Booval and Silkstone to the east.  Its name comes from John Rankin’s “Newtown Estate” which was subdivided and sold in about 1865.  This was an area occupied by three or four families of the early settlers of Ipswich, in substantial properties surrounded by large canopied trees, situated on a ridge overlooking the town.  It is, therefore, notable for its heritage sites, particularly Rockton (see separate section above), one of Ipswich’s oldest surviving buildings, and Gwennap built c.1874 (now a nursing home).

Eastern Heights: Originally this suburb was the southern part of Newtown adjacent to Queens Park.  By the end of the 19th century, it was also occupied by grand houses in large grounds.  The name “Eastern Heights” was first officially used in 1930 as the suburb is on a high ridge to the east of Ipswich.

Booval: This suburb is 3 km (2 miles) from the centre of Ipswich and straddles the Brisbane Road, stretching from the suburbs of East Ipswich and Newtown in the west to Ipswich Race Course in the east.  Situated between the town of Ipswich and the eastern collieries, Booval was originally a farming district serving these communities.  The suburb took its name from Booval House (see separate section above), built c.1859 in today’s Cothill Road and believed to be the first residence in the area, built for the manager of the Bank of Australasia in Ipswich.  It is now a convent.  The house was soon surrounded by a 20 ha (49 acres) cotton plantation established by the Ipswich Cotton Company in 1861.  The origin of the house name is unknown although in the Kabi Aboriginal dialect it means “frilled lizard”; it may also refer to an initiation ceremony; or some believe it is a corruption of the French “Beau Val” for ‘beautiful valley’.  

In 1882 there were only four dwellings along Brisbane Road in Booval.  However, in 1884 this area became a dormitory suburb for coal miners working in Blackstone. Another important business was the Jacaranda Butter Factory that operated from 1901 to 2010.  Booval remained partly residential and partly commercial until the 1960s, when the railway sidings closed and businesses went into decline.  It was then that urbanisation finally reached Booval with housing estates and drive-in shopping malls, such as Booval Fair.

North Booval: The land immediately north of the Ipswich-Brisbane railway line is bounded on its east by Bundamba Creek, and on its north and west by the Bremer River, with a thin neck of land less than a mile wide separating these two stretches of water.  As such, much of the land beside the creek and Bremer River still remains undeveloped because it is subject to regular flooding.  North Booval was sparsely settled, although the original butter factory was located there.  Nevertheless, residential growth finally moved northwards creating the suburb of North Booval in the mid-1970s.

Silkstone: This suburb is 3 km (2 miles) east of central Ipswich and immediately east of Newtown, and stretches to Bundamba Creek in the west.  It was named in 1889 after the coal mining village of Silkstone in the West Riding district of Yorkshire, England.  The development of Silkstone followed on from the settlement of Newtown to the west and Booval to the north.  Most houses are from the early 1900s and the interwar years.  

The City of Ipswich from 1949 to 1995

In 1949 the suburbs immediately south of the Bremer River from Bundamba Creek to Woogaroo Creek were acquired from the Shire of Moreton.

Bundamba: Eight km (5 miles) east of central Ipswich, and initially spelt Bundanba; the spelling was changed officially in 1932 to Bundamba, although the latter spelling was in common use long before that, as indicated by references in newspapers from 1888.  The name means ‘place of the stone axe’ since this was where the Aboriginal tribes dug for stone to make their axes.  In 1851 Joseph Fleming purchased land at Bundamba and this became the site of his boiling down works.  The Bremer Mills Estate of 259 ha (640 acres) had a 6 km (4 mile) frontage to the Bremer River.  The Estate included a flour mill, a sawmill, a melting down works, a seven room house, cottages for 300 workers and their families, a church and school house.  The mills were demolished at the turn of the century by which time an industrial community had developed around the coalfields found in this area.  Early settlement away from the Bremer Hills Estate began about 1855, and later in the 1870s coal mining and several brickworks were established in the region.  

The Racecourse relocated to Bundamba in 1876 just west of Bundamba Creek, and it became home to the Ipswich Amateur Turf Club in 1890 (see Ipswich Turf Club section, above).  Although the western boundary of present-day Bundamba runs along the Bundamba Creek, it deviates to the west across land to encompass the racecourse, ensuring that this historic location remains a part of its original community. 

In the County of Stanley the settlement of Bundamba was originally part of the Parish of Goodna, whereas a Parish of Bundanba existed further south between the Bundamba Creek and Woogaroo Creek covering Redbank Plains, Swanbank and the area south to the present city boundary.  From 1879 to 1916 there was a separate Shire of Bundanba that covered only the part of today’s suburb north of the Brisbane Road (a Boundary Street still exists where it was once located), and those suburbs west of the Bundamba Creek that were not included in Ipswich until 1916.  The council seat of this Shire was Ipswich itself, whereas Bundamba was the council seat of the Shire of Purga.  In 1916 the Shire of Bundanba was divided between the Shire of Ipswich (Moreton) and the City of Ipswich.  The area east of Bundamba Creek went to the Shire of Ipswich (Moreton), and included the communities of Bundamba and Blackstone.  

Blackstone: Immediately south of present day Bundamba, this suburb was originally part of that community and known as Bundanba Creek.  As the new community could be confused with Bundanba, some time before 1870 the postmistress, Mrs Orr, suggested it change its name to Blackstone after a place in Ireland from where she came.  The mining community considered it demeaning that it was believed the name came from the coal deposits.  However, it was coal and Welsh miners that made Blackstone.  Built in 1886 for Welsh miners and their families, the United Welsh Church on Thomas Street is the only Welsh church in Queensland, and one of only four in Australia.  The church became the centre of social life, and in 1887 it hosted the first Blackstone Eisteddfod, the forerunner of the Queensland Eisteddfod movement.  The timber church was designed by Ipswich architect Samuel Shenton and was constructed on land donated by mine owner Lewis Thomas.

Lewis Thomas was born in Tal-y-bont, Ceredigion, and emigrated in 1859.  He arrived in Queensland in 1866 and started coal mining at Tivoli in partnership with other entrepreneurs.  The same year he was also active in Blackstone and in 1870 he abandoned his Tivoli interests to concentrate on what became known as the ‘Aberdare Seam’ in the Bundamba-Blackstone area.  Lewis Thomas brought in Welsh miners and the community soon became overwhelmingly Welsh in character, becoming a separate suburb in 1882.  

After making his fortune, Thomas built his m ansion Brynhyfryd (pleasant hill) in Blackstone in 1891.  Designed by George Brockwell Gill and known as the ‘Castle’, the three storey house (see photo, right) consisted of 49 rooms, together with a tower, plus stables, a gardener’s cottage, dairy, and gardens with hothouses filled with exotic plants.  After Thomas’s widow died in 1930, the house was sold and demolished in 1937 in order that the coal resources beneath the property could be exploited.  Some materials from the house were incorporated into other buildings in and around Ipswich.  The United Welsh Church benefited from a pair of glass and cedar doors bearing the name ‘Brynhyfryd’, that have been installed as a screen inside the entrance to the church, whilst a cedar fireplace surround from the house was converted into a combined Welsh pioneers/World War II memorial.  In 1973 the area previously occupied by the mansion was cleared for housing development.

The Welsh and coal have now passed into history.  The last underground mine in Ipswich, New Hill at Blackstone, closed down in 1997.

Raceview: This is a residential suburb 4 km (2½ miles) south-east of central Ipswich to the south of Eastern Heights and Silkstone, and west of Bundamba Creek.  Early settlers found the soil around Ipswich to be poor and unsuitable for agriculture, and food supplies had to be brought in from outside the area.  Fertile land was found along Bundamba Creek, and Capt. Logan established the first farm here in 1827 known as “Plough Station” because a bullock and plough could be utilised.  Today the site is bounded by Robertson Road and Cascade Street, from Raceview Street down to Bundamba Creek.  After the penal period ended in 1842, the farm lingered on as a government farm run by convicts and officers.  In 1847 there were complaints from the Ipswich residents since Plough Station had enclosed the only area that could be used for grazing, and free farmers said that this amounted to unfair competition.  In 1848 the sheep and cattle were sold and the farm closed.

Joshua Peter Bell purchased the farm and the first horse race was held on this land in 1848.  He established a stud called The Grange (at the end of today’s Grange Road) and built a race track and grandstand.  Regular horse racing was held at the track from 1850 to 1876, when the local jockey club moved to the present race course in Bundamba, just west of the creek.  In 1901 the Old Grange Racecourse, then considered part of Silkstone, was sold for housing, and the new residential suburb was named “Raceview”.  This went to the Shire of Moreton in 1916 or 1926*.  In 1949 when this part of the Shire of Moreton was transferred to the City of Ipswich, the southern part of Raceview stayed with the Shire of Moreton to become the new suburb of Flinders View, the boundary being along Edwards Street.

* In 1916 the Shire of Bundanda west of Bundamba Creek went to the City of Ipswich and Raceview was then part of that Shire.  However, Raceview was in the Shire of Moreton prior to 1949.  We assume that Raceview was that part of Ipswich transferred to the Shire of Moreton in 1926.  We have not been able to confirm this.      

Ebbw Vale: Six km (3½ miles) north-east of central Ipswich, to the east of Bundamba, is the small suburb of Ebbw Vale between the Brisbane Road and the Cunningham Highway.  The colliery of the same name was opened by the Welshman, John Jones, in 1877 and named after that location in Wales.  This suburb was once an important industrial locality with collieries and potteries, but with the closure of these industries it is now largely residential.

New Chum: A little further east across the Cunningham Highway, another coal mine gave its name to a suburb.  The Red Hill mine was opened in 1866, but was abandoned by 1876.  In 1881 James Gulland of the Old Tivoli Mine resumed work at the Red Hill mine.  He established a hamlet for his workers, giving it the name of New Chum and also renamed the mine with the same name, as an encouragement to recent arrivals in the country to settle there and take up mining.  This part of Bundamba became a separate suburb covering a large area between the latter town and Redbank.

In the southernmost part of New Chum to the east of the Cunningham Highway and adjacent to Redland Plain Road is the locality of Cooneana.  This is based on the historical homestead of the same name, comprising 225 ha (557 acres), and is derived from the Aboriginal word meaning “where the ringtail possum sits up”.  Cooenana House was built by Samuel Pearson Welsby shortly after he purchased the property in April 1868.  He was a notable teacher and lay preacher, and his family became prominent in the affairs of Ipswich.  The family retained the homestead until 1975.  In 1997 the Ipswich City Council purchased the property and established Cooneana Homestead and Gardens as a heritage centre.  It became the headquarters of the Ipswich Historical Society; this organisation was founded in 1966 to collect, preserve, and display the social history of the Ipswich region.  The first two specimens of the the Cooneana Olive (Notelaea ipsviciensis), a critically endangered species of shrub, were discovered in 1976 in the grounds of the Cooneana Homestead (see Ipswich as a Scientific Name page).

Dinmore: This is a small suburb on the Brisbane to Ipswich railway north of New Chum and east of Ebbw Vale.  Like these communities its early development was around coal mining; the Old Aberdare mine was opened in 1870 by Lewis Thomas of Blackstone. The suburb name is derived from the railway station name given in 1884 by the Railways Department after Dinmore Hill in Hertfordshire, England. Although mining was significant in the early development of the Dinmore area, brickworks and potteries became important. Pottery manufacture began in the 1880s by chance. The original intention was to open a mine shaft, but the clay was of such fine quality that pottery was deemed to be more profitable. Reliance Potteries was established in 1887 on 13 ha (32 acres) of freehold land, and produced pipes and fittings. The mines and potteries have closed, and the area is now largely residential.

Riverview: This is a residential suburb north and east of Dinmore between the Warrego Highway and the Bremer River, where it joins the Brisbane River which flows east of the suburb.  Across the Brisbane River is Moggill, reached by ferry.  In 1875 when a station was built on the railway line it was named Moggill Ferry; in 1881 the station was renamed Riverview.  The area was settled for agricultural uses from as early as 1868 (William Ackerley), but in the immediate post World War II years, only a general store and garage are recorded on the Warrego Highway at Riverview.  Urban settlement was first around Moggill Ferry Road, but during the 1970s it spread south of the Highway.  

The Moggill Ferry is one of Queensland’s iconic landmarks.  In 1873 a rowing boat ferried people across the river.  A cable ferry service began operations at the site in 1878 when Cobb & Co coaches provided a service between Ipswich and Brisbane by crossing the Brisbane River between the suburbs of Moggill in Brisbane and Riverview in Ipswich.  It was not until the 1940s that a motorised ferry capable of carrying two cars came into service.  This two-car ferry ceased operations in 1978.

In June 1979 a new cable-driven ferry  began, capable of carrying up to 20 vehicles per crossing (see photo, left).  During the 2011 Queensland floods the ferry broke free from its cable guidelines.  The suggestion to sink the ferry to prevent it becoming a ‘missile’ was seriously considered during the flood crisis, until the captain managed to secure the vessel to the banks of the Brisbane River.  Since then the State government has been considering replacing the Moggill Ferry by a high level bridge, but this is meeting with much resistance from the local people.

Redbank, Redbank Plains & Collingwood Park: To the east of Riverview is the suburb of Redbank.  One of the oldest settlements in the region, Redbank was named by Major Edmund Lockyer in 1825 for the red soil present in the banks of the Brisbane River.  The first European settlement in the area was a temporary convict outstation established on Redbank Plains in 1828.  This became a permanent convict sheep farm in 1832.  

Although a road ran from Limestone (Ipswich) through Redbank to Brisbane, the river was the main mode of transport.  It is, therefore, no surprise that, when the area was opened to free settlement in 1842, the river bank became the site of what became known as Redbank Settlement, visited that year by the Governor of New South Wales, Sir George Gipps.  The Petrie family, one of the first free settlers in Brisbane, established a wharf and wool-store there in about 1840.  The family had ambitions to develop a river port to capture the wool trade in competition with Ipswich, but this venture soon failed.  Nevertheless, others followed and the first settlement was on the river flats north of the current railway station in the loop of the Brisbane River.  The settlement was later relocated to its present position south of the railway station because of severe flooding.

The river bank also became the site of the oldest recorded coal mine in Queensland.  Andrew Petrie had first discovered coal at Redbank around 1837, but it was John Williams who opened the first mine in 1843 near the junction of Six Mile Creek with the Brisbane River, to supply coal for the paddle steamers.  It was only worked for a short time, and the main Redbank Colliery was opened in 1857.  By 1870, as the Redbank deposits petered out, the Tivoli deposits nearer to Ipswich were more intensively exploited, and mining at the Redbank Colliery ceased.  The site was reworked in the 1880s, and the Redbank Colliery continued until an explosion in 1928 and concerns about the quality of the coal led to the mine’s closure in 1932.  Further activity followed mining, mainly in the 1850s, and the present settlement of Redbank came into being as an industrial location.  Secondary industries included a boiling-down works, abattoirs, meat chilling, and woollen mills.  In 1958 the railway workshops began re-locating from North Ipswich to Redbank, becoming fully operational there in 1965.

To the south of Redbank is the suburb of Redbank Plains.  When free settlement was allowed from 1842, Redbank Plains continued as a farming and grazing area.  Farming settlers increasingly took up lots from the 1850s on the rich alluvial plains.  Maize and potatoes were early crops, though cotton was grown in significant quantities through the 1850s and 1860s, as local farmers sought to exploit global shortages and rising prices brought about by the American Civil War.  An early settler in the area was James Josey, known as the “Father of the Redbank Plains”.  Born in England in 1821, he arrived in Australia in 1840 as a convict, but became one of the biggest landowners in the area.  On his release in 1847 he became a successful timber man at Pine Mountain, and in 1859 Opossum Creek cattle station was established on Redbank Plains by him on an area of some 2833 ha (7000 acres) stocked with about 400 head of cattle.  By 1874 Redbank Plains was a small country village 5 km (3 miles) south of Redbank.

By the mid-1960s the urban growth of Ipswich reached to Redbank and housing estates began to be developed, contributing to the emergence of the new suburbs of Redbank Plains and Collingwood Park to the south. Collingwood Park, between the Goodna Creek in the east and Six Mile Creek in the west, was largely owned by the Irish Verrall family as farmland from 1854.  It remained devoid of any development apart from a perimeter road until 1980.  Developers then decided to build a “leafy residential area” in this part of Redbank to contrast with the rest of the highly  industrialised community.  It was given its name by one of the developers in 1982, possibly after the inner suburb of Collingwood in Melbourne, adding “Park” for effect, and it became a suburb separate from Redbank.

Goodna: This suburb is right on the eastern edge of the City of Ipswich, bounded on the north by the Brisbane River and by Woogaroo Creek to the east.  The area was the campsite of an aboriginal group, and the location was originally visited in 1823 by an exploration party led by John Oxley who landed to the east of Woogaroo Creek at “Termination Hill” where the hospital now stands.  Building material for the convict settlement at Limestone was quarried at the site in 1826.  

However, it was not until 1841 that European settlement began, when a sheep run called Woogaroo Station was established at the mouth of the creek by H.S.Russell and Dr Stephen Simpson.  The latter was the land commissioner and magistrate for the Moreton Bay district, and he chose the site near the mouth of Woogaroo Creek as a strategic location at the meeting-point of various routes and the river.  From 1842 to 1846, Dr Simpson had under his control a body of men known as “The Border Police” and they were housed in barracks on the rise near Termination Hill, and were thus the first European occupants in the district.  In 1851/1852 Dr Simpson purchased 809 ha (2000 acres) of land, and built a new residence which is known today as “Wolston House” and is now a heritage listed building.   Dr Stephen Simpson retired from government office in 1855 and returned to England in 1860.  

Simpson’s landholding is now Wolston Park, east of Woogaroo Creek.  The former commissioner’s camp on Termination Hill is now better known as the site of the first publicly-funded, mental health institution in the colony, Woogaroo Lunatic Asylum, established in 1865 on a 48.6 ha (120 acre) horse stud farm owned by Dr Simpson.  In 1880 the hospital was renamed the Goodna Asylum and it is still operational today, known as the The Park Centre for Mental Health, a heritage-listed psychiatric hospital.

Despite its significance to the history of Goodna and the surrounding area, Wolston Park and Termination Hill are not part of the City of Ipswich.  They are now located in Wacol and part of Greater Brisbane.  When the administrative structure was established in Queensland in 1859, the Woogaroo Creek became a boundary and this area was lost.  Goodna and Gailes eventually became part of the Shire of Moreton and ended up as part of Ipswich, while the land east of Woogaroo Creek and northwest of the Ipswich Road became part of the Shire of Sherwood that was merged with Greater Brisbane in 1925.

Other settlers followed Dr Simpson.  Many sources indicate that Thomas Grenier and family were the first to operate the sheep run at Woogaroo Station in 1841.  This is incorrect as that family was living at Kororareka (now Russell) in New Zealand in 1841, and only came to Australia (South Brisbane) in 1845 when they fled the Maori uprising of that year.  James Holmes was the next notable settler in 1851, and in 1856 a village was laid out by the Brisbane River, west of Woogaroo Creek, and was named Woogaroo, a native word meaning either “a waterhole” or “shady and cool”.  Soon after, another aboriginal word came into use, and from 1865 Goodna superseded the original name.  It was unfortunate that the early settlers had little knowledge of the words that the natives were using, since this means “human excreta” in the Yuggera language.  The Parish of Goodna was a subdivision of the County of Stanley in 1865 and extended to Ipswich, embracing Goodna, Redbank and Bundanba.  In 1879 Goodna became part of the Shire of Purga that was absorbed as part of the Shire of Moreton in 1916.

At this early period, residential living at Goodna was by the Brisbane River along tod ay’s Brisbane Terrace, since transportation was then easier by water.  Later, the settlement moved away from the original river site because of frequent flooding and re-located to its present position further south.  Originally a small farming community producing sugar, cotton, livestock and timber, Goodna is now very much a suburb of Ipswich.  Today, Goodna is famous for its yearly Jacaranda Festival, held in Evan Marginson Park at the end of October when the Jacaranda trees are in flower.  The festival was established in 1968 and attracts more than 10,000 people annually.  The Jacaranda is a genus of flowering plants native to Central and South America that has been introduced into Australia and the Pacific region.

Gailes: This typical residential suburb was long an outlying area of Goodna, known as Pullen-Pullen Flats; the latter Aboriginal name apparently means “tournament”.  The area was really an extension of the scrubland east of Woogaroo Creek, and was notable for the location of Goodna racecourse, built on Dingo Hill, just east of the present Gailes railway station.  This station is relevant to the naming of the suburb, and the myth surrounding its name.  

The railway opened in 1874 and Goodna and Wolston (renamed Wacol in 1927) were the original stations serving this area. However, the racecourse officials persuaded the Railway Department to build an unmanned siding in 1919 to enable the horses to be brought nearer to the race track.  This stop was known as Dingo Hill.  In 1924 a golf course was built and Goodna Golf Club was formed nearby to the station.  It was agreed with the railway that trains could stop at Dingo Hill to allow golfers to disembark.  However, that name and Pullen-Pullen were considered inappropriate for a passenger stop, and the name Goodna had already been taken.  So the station was renamed Gailes in September 1925.

This is where the myth starts. It is known that the railway station was named after the Western Gailes Golf Course in Ayrshire, Scotland.  The myth is that the name was given by, or suggested by the wife of the founder of Goodna Golf Club, Dr Henry Byam Ellerton, Medical Superintendent of the Goodna Asylum, after the golf course in Scotland near her birthplace.  This myth is even perpetrated by the official Queensland Government website on place-names.  The facts are correctly stated in the golf club and railway literature.  Dr Ellerton was born in London in 1871.  He had no connection with Scotland nor ever worked in Ayrshire.  Likewise his wife was born in 1880 at Portrush, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, and also had no connection with Scotland.  The name was suggested by a wife, that of James Walker Davidson who was then Queensland’s Commissioner for Railways.  He was born in Glasgow and came to Australia as a young man.  On consulting his wife, she suggested Gailes because Davidson’s brother played at the Western Gailes golf course in Scotland.     

With the advent of the new railway station, the Goodna golf course was not at Goodna. It was at Gailes.  So in 1935 the golf club and course also became Gailes. The long-forgotten Goodna Racecourse closed in 1929. And, of course, the new name came to be applied to the whole area in preference to Pullen-Pullen. In fact, Gailes was one of those places in two separate administrations since the golf course and railway station were actually in Greater Brisbane, being northwest of the Ipswich Road, and the rest of the area southeast of that road was part of Goodna, and eventually merged with the City of Ipswich (see Goodna, above).  However, when Gailes became a suburb of Ipswich in 1959, the official municipal boundaries had then to be recognised and the golf club and station were no longer officially part of Gailes, but now part of Wacol in Brisbane, despite continuing to be named Gailes right up until today.

The City of Ipswich from 1995

The merger with the Shire of Moreton in 1995 brought in a number of urban and rural communities.

URBAN SUBURBS NORTH OF BREMER RIVER

North Tivoli: Although considered an extension of Tivoli, the area east of Sandy Creek was in the Shire of Moreton, and thus became a separate suburb.  In 1864 coal seams exposed on the eastern banks of the creek led to the opening of the Davie’s mine, and coal mines were soon operating in this general area.  A couple of heritage features off the Crosby Road are a part of this industrial legacy: the former Abermain Power Station and the Haighmoor Coke Ovens.  

The Abermain Power Station was a 10 MW coal fired ‘package power station’, which meant a complete power station supplied by one supplier.  It came into service early in 1953.  It stood adjacent to the Haighmoor Colliery and was the first power station in Queensland to be located on a coalfield, and one of the first in Australia to use a cooling tower system.  It was decommissioned in 1967.

The Haighmoor Colliery opened in the 1870s.  The coal from this mine was suitable for coking and the Haighmoor Coke Ovens are 18 beehive coke ovens built in a double row battery in 1897 and appear to have been used until the 1970s.  There were over 300 coke ovens built in the North Ipswich coalfield, and the Haighmoor ones are rare surviving examples and the best preserved.  Coke was used for combustion with little or no smoke, making it a desirable fuel for stoves as a substitute for coal.

Chuwar: A large semi-residential suburb, 8 km (5 miles) north-east of central Ipswich, lying between a horseshoe bend of the Brisbane River to the north and the suburb of Tivoli in the south.  The suburb of Karalee is to the east.  This Aboriginal name was chosen by the colonial surveyor James Warner in 1848 as a subdivision (parish) name.  Unfortunately, no record of its meaning is recorded.  The area was occupied by farmers, and it was not until 1886 that a settlement was planned with this name around the intersection of Mt Crosby and Junction Roads.  This never really developed, and there is not a central focus for this locality.  The popular College’s Crossing Recreational Reserve is in this suburb (see separate section above).

The Westbank water treatment plant and the Blackwall electricity substation were built in the northern part of the suburb in the 1980s.  Since these major installations were constructed to meet the increasing demands of Brisbane, in 2000 Chuwar was divided along the Blackwall Road and the northern part in the horseshoe bend of the Brisbane River was transferred to the City of Brisbane (see The Ones That Got Away page).

Karalee & Barellan Point: Two residential and semi-rural suburbs, 10 km (6 miles) north-east of central Ipswich, lying between the Brisbane and Bremer Rivers.  The names are aboriginal: Karalee means “pretty hill beside the water or grass near a waterhole”; Barellan means “meeting of the waters”.Karalee is a large suburb stretching between the two rivers.  In 1848 Richard Joseph Smith from Leicester, England, opened a boiling-down plant at the subdivision of Chuwar on the north bank of the Bremer River.  This was known as Town Marie, named after his wife, and it was a self contained industrial village with a boiling-down works, a sawmill, owner’s house and homes for workmen.  Its location was near the present-day Karalee Shopping Village on Junction Road and it stretched down to the river.  Boiling-down was a process that converted carcasses into a fat (tallow) used to make candles.  Not only was it smelly, but the works used to discharge their waste into the river.  This caused obvious pollution, and also constituted a serious obstruction to navigation - it was not unknown for steamers to run aground on huge piles of bones that had been thrown into the river.  As a result of the economic depression of the 1860s, the boiling-down works had to be sold in 1866.

The name Town Marie stayed on but the area became one of dairy and farm holdings.  In 1969 these began to be bought up and the land divided into small acreage building blocks.  House building started in the early 1970s but was severely affected by the flooding of the Brisbane River and the Bremer River in 1974.   After these floods, development slowed as the authorities decided that many of the blocks were unsuitable for houses.  Nevertheless, in 1973 a new suburb was created from Chuwar, and Town Marie was renamed Karalee.

The south-west sector of the Karalee area is Barellan Point, a tongue of land where the Bremer River joins the Brisbane River, officially recognised as a suburb in 1981.  It is a residential and recreational area, previously used mainly for dairying.  The extreme point is an official “locality” since 1978, long known unofficially as Bremer Junction or The Junction.  This is the area where the rivers meet adjacent to the Joseph Brady Park.  In the early 20th century it was a popular day trip site for picnics, paddle steamer rides and large family gatherings.  The park is named after the Engineer of Harbours and Ports in 1865, who began to build a stone wall into the river at this point.  The stone wall can clearly be seen at low tide.  It is the remains of a scheme to raise the water level of the Bremer River to assist navigation, particularly across the bar of the Bremer River at its junction with the Brisbane River.  Joseph Brady started work on the wall, but it was abandoned, particularly when it became clear that the railway would soon supersede river transport.

URBAN SUBURBS WEST OF IPSWICH

Brassall: A suburb 5 km (3 miles) northwest of the city centre, located west of North Ipswich, centred around the Mihi Creek, a northern tributary of the Bremer River.  Drovers used the creek to water their herds.  As this was the main stock route, the continual animal traffic meant that there was not enough time for the grass to recover, and there was therefore insufficient vegetation available for the animals.  For this reason it was known as ‘Hungry Flat’.  In October 1851 surveyor James Warner reviewed the land and he introduced the names Mihi Creek and Brassall.  The reasons for these names are not known.  

In 1860 Brassall constituted a Parish in the County of Churchill.  From 1879 it was a separate administrative Division of Brassall, and from 1903 the Shire of Brassall.  The council met at North Ipswich.  The Shire of Brassall was quite extensive since it included the former Ipswich suburbs immediately to the north of the Brisbane River (Kholo and Mount Crosby), those areas of Chuwar between the Bremer and Brisbane Rivers, and reached down to present-day Leichhardt and One Mile west of the Bremer River.  However, in 1916 the Shire of Brassall was divided between the City of Ipswich and the new Shire of Ipswich (Moreton).

The division of 1916 resulted in the loss of its industrial estates at Tivoli and the areas adjacent to North Ipswich, and thereafter Brassall reverted to an area of small farms, as it had been in 1860, now within the Shire of Moreton.  Eventually, Ipswich’s metropolitan growth crossed into Brassall in the 1970s and there was considerable residential growth around the Warrego Highway in the 1990s.  Finally, in 1995 the merger of Moreton and Ipswich made Brassall a suburb of the latter city.  The suburb is the site of the Haig Street Quarry Bushland Reserve (see separate section above).

Wulkuraka: The next suburb between Brassall and Leichhardt, west of the Bremer River is 3 km (2 miles) from the city centre, and south of the Ironpot Creek, which became the boundary when Wulkuraka was designated a separate suburb from Brassall in 1991.  As at 2013 it is still relatively undeveloped with much bushland scenery.  

The suburb is better known for its role in the railway development in Queensland.  The original line to Bigges Camp ran via North Ipswich before crossing the Mihi Creek and then turning southwest towards today’s Wulkuraka.  In 1875 the first six kilometres were replaced by a new line that ran directly west from central Ipswich and crossed the Bremer River at Sadliers Crossing.  It became necessary to raise the level of the Sadliers Crossing Rail Bridge so flood waters could not inundate it, as happened in 1893, so a new bridge was built in 1902.  It is a rare example of a large metal truss rail bridge that has not been substantially changed since its completion and, hence, it has been given heritage status.

Between 1884 and 1913 a branch line was constructed from today’s Wulkuraka to Yarraman in the Upper Brisbane Valley.  A station was built known as the Brisbane Valley Junction.  In June 1905 the Railways Department renamed it Wulkuraka.   It is thought that the name is derived from an Aboriginal expression describing ‘a red flowering gum tree’ or even ‘a group of kookaburras’.  The Brisbane Valley Railway ceased operations in 1993.  It is now the 161 km (100 mile) Brisbane Valley Rail Trail for walkers, cyclists and horse riders.   

Amberley: The small community of Amberley is situated to the south west of Ipswich.  It was originally called Three Mile Creek, but it was more commonly known as ‘The Sand Ridge’ because of a difficult terrain for horse drawn vehicles and bullock drays.  The area was originally part of Jeebropilly (see further below), but was officially named Amberley in 1903 from the name of the farm of early settlers, James Edwin and Martha Collett.*

Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Amberley is situated approximately 8 km (5 miles) to the south west of Ipswich.  The land on which the base stands was purchased in 1938 and became Queensland’s first air force base when it opened in June 1940.  During the years 1942 -1943, Amberley became a major base for the American Air Force.

Today 3,500 people are employed at the base.  Up until 2010, RAAF Amberley was probably best known as the home of the F-111 strike aircraft.  The F-111 has now been retired and the base is home to the F/A 18 Super Hornet Fighters. (See also City of Ipswich aircraft sections on the Ips Misc. page) 

*Most sources state that this was after “their home village in Sussex, England”.  However, we beg to differ.  It is true that the Amberley in Sussex is better known because of its medieval castle, but the author of this piece actually lives in another Amberley, in Gloucestershire.  The online Collett Family website indicates that (James) Edwin and Martha Collett came from the Gloucestershire Amberley.  Our research supports this.  In 1849 Edwin Collett married Martha Ann Baston in Stroud, Gloucestershire.  The 1851 Census for England shows Edwin Collett, aged 31, and his wife Martha, aged 22, living at Woodchester.  This village is adjacent to and part of the larger parish of Amberley, Gloucestershire.  There are no Colletts living at the Sussex Amberley in 1851.  The family emigrated to Australia in 1857, and do not appear in the 1861 Census in England.  The headstones in the Stone Quarry Cemetery at Jeebropilly clearly show their names and ages matching this record: Edwin Collett d. 1896, aged 77, and his wife Martha Ann d.1897, aged 68.  Conclusion: their home village was Amberley in Gloucestershire, England.

URBAN SUBURBS SOUTH OF IPSWICH 

Yamanto: A residential suburb, 5 km (3 miles) south of central Ipswich.  It lies along the south bank of the Bremer River, south of the suburb of Churchill, extending between Amberley and the Warrill Creek in the west, to the Deebing Creek and  Flinders View in the east.  It is bounded on the south by the Cunningham Highway.

The area seems to have been virgin soil until October 1863 when George Challinor, who had emigrated from England in 1849 and arrived at Ipswich in 1857, started a cotton plantation which he named Yamahanto.  No reason has been given for this name.  He worked the plantation until 1870, when the revival of the American cotton industry after the Civil War rendered the cultivation of this crop unprofitable.  By this time other farmers had arrived in the area, and the property was sold.  

In 1881 a branch railway line was constructed from Ipswich to Harrisville (the Fassifern or Dungandan Line), and a station was built that was named Yamahato or alternatively Yahmahato or Yahmahnto.  However, ostensibly to avoid confusion with the nearby property of Yamahanto (but probably because nobody could spell the name properly), in 1903 the station was renamed Mine Accident.  Obviously such an inappropriate name never caught on, and in 1907 the name Loamside was given to the railway station.  This is said to be a corruption of Leamside, the name suggested by Thomas West, who owned the land, after the place in Co. Durham, England, where he was married in 1878.  The locality in the southwest of the suburb is still called Loamside.  The railway and Loamside station were closed in 1964.  Attempts to change the old name had not succeeded and eventually the spelling settled on Yamanto.  In July 1978 this was officially recognised as the locality and later suburb name.

In 1959 the Shire of Moreton purchased 11 ha (27½ acres) to build a new Council Office which was opened on 4th March 1961.  This was on a site in Yamanto.  Some sources state that the Council Office was in Churchill; in fact it was in Warwick Road, between the municipal boundary of Ipswich and Winston Street in Yamanto, and therefore just over the boundary in the Shire of Moreton.  The confusion arises from the continued usage of the old administrative areas for land purposes whereby the site was in the “Parish of Purga, County of Churchill”.    There was nothing much except a couple of local abattoirs, a brickworks and the Ipswich sanitary depot at Yamanto until the early 1980s when housing estates began in this suburb.  With the construction of the Cunningham Highway and the expansion of the nearby RAAF Base at Amberley, by 2010 Yamanto was inevitably part of the urban growth development associated with the adjacent Ripley Valley project. 

Flinders View: This is a residential suburb 4 km (2½ miles) south-east of central Ipswich immediately south of Raceview, of which it was part until 1949.  It was officially named in 1976, although the area was known by this name long before, and it originates from being able to see Flinders Peak from the suburb.  This is the summit of the Teviot Range reaching 679 m (2,228 ft) above sea level.  The Shire of Moreton encouraged urban development in the suburbs along the edge of Ipswich in the 1980s. 

Ripley: Travelling west from the suburbs of Redbank Plains and Springfield there are several rural localities south of the Cunningham Highway: Ripley, South Ripley, Deebing Heights and Swanbank.   These are located in the area designated as Ripley Valley.  The origin of its name is unrecorded and its original location was much further south (see South Ripley, below). In 2000 Ripley was gazetted as a suburb with South Ripley as a rural locality.  

In 2012 Ripley in its current form existed as a small housing estate of under 1,000 residents between the Centenary Highway and the Cunningham Highway, south of Flinders View and west of Bundamba Creek and Swanbank.  However, the area is part of the Queensland metropolitan western growth corridor project to alleviate expected and forecast population growth of the existing communities along the coast.  The Ripley Valley Urban Development Area (UDA) was declared on 8 October 2010 and covers a total area of 4,680 ha (11,564 acres).  Once the area is fully developed, Ripley is expected to have a population of 120,000 people with an estimated 50,000 residential dwellings, with suitable land for new business and industrial developments.  Work began in October 2012, the first residents are expected to occupy homes in 2014 with full development of the project by 2057.

URBAN SUBURBS EAST OF IPSWICH 

The following urban suburbs are located east of the Woogaroo Creek and were originally part of the Parish of Woogaroo that was eventually absorbed into the Shire of Waterford.  On 16 August 1930 this area was transferred to the Shire of Moreton.

Carole Park is a suburb southeast of Gailes and the easternmost part of the City of Ipswich.  It is only 19 km (12 miles) south west of the Brisbane central business district.  Carole Park was originally a very rural part of Gailes with a few farms, and stayed with the Shire of Moreton when Ipswich expanded in this direction in 1949.  Electricity did not reach the area until 1965 and this finally brought urban expansion.  An industrial estate and housing development, with residents finding employment on the industrial estate, were built.  The name Carole Park Estate was applied in the 1949-51 period when the area was first subdivided on paper by the developer, and it is said to have been named after his grandmother.  In 1972 the area was designated a suburb.  The construction of the Logan Motorway in 1988 separated the residential section of Carole Park from the industrial.  When the Shire of Moreton was merged with the City of Ipswich in 1995, the motorway provided the alignment for a new boundary between Ipswich and Brisbane; the industrial side became part of Ipswich and the residential area went to Brisbane, thus dividing Carole Park between two different administrations.  In May 2010, in order to avoid confusion, the residential part of Carole Park in Brisbane changed its name to, and merged with, the adjacent suburb of Ellen Grove in Brisbane.

Camira: A suburb south of Carole Park built in the 1970s between Woogaree Creek and Sandy Creek.  It was formally named in 1972 and the Aboriginal word from an unknown source is said to mean “windy”.  The suburb originally covered a much larger area to the south and west, but those areas were detached to become Bellbird Park and part of the Greater Springfield Development (see below).  Camira adjoins the 4,500 ha (11,119 acres) Greenbank Military Camp, established in 1941 for the use of American troops during World War II, and still used today as a live training facility for the Australian Defence Force.  The suburb also contains the Camira Bora Ring (see separate section above).

Bellbird Park: Immediately south of Goodna and east of Redbank Plains, this area was a rural, undeveloped area in the western part of Camira.  It had first been farmed by Lewis Jones and family in 1864 and had remained an agricultural area. 

After the 1974 floods, developers saw its residential potential and began building housing estates.  The area was named after bellbirds that had once been heard along Woogaroo Creek, but had now retreated southwards into undeveloped scrubland.  In 1984 it became a separate suburb.  

Greater Springfield Development: On the south-western outskirts of the City of Ipswich, east of the suburb of Redbank Plains, is Australia’s first privately built city.  It is situated on what was a hilly, forested landscape between the headwaters of Woogaroo Creek, Opossum Creek and Sandy Creek that drain the northern slope of Spring Mountain (355m; 1,164 ft), from which the development takes its name.

The Greater Springfield project is the vision of Maha Sinnathamby, a Malaysian Australian businessman and property developer of Tamil ancestry, and chairman of the Springfield Land Corporation.  In 1992 he acquired a 28.5 sq km (11 sq mls) parcel of land for the new suburb of Springfield, planned to have 15,000 home sites, a 200 ha (494 acres) town centre, a research and development centre, 1,000 ha (2,471 acres) of open space and a golf course.  One third of the development area has been designated as open space and conservation areas with numerous lakeside facilities.  The population of the Greater Springfield area in 2016 was 24,835, with a projected 105,000 people by 2030.  It is Australia’s largest master planned city and community development project, and is currently the country’s fastest growing city.  Springfield was specifically designed and located near enough to Brisbane to attract commuters and reduce population growth along the coastal strip of Queensland.  Maha Sinnathamby’s project has received global acknowledgement and Springfield has been named the world’s best master-planned community.

The development has six projected suburbs, five of which have already been officially recognised as urban suburbs.  Running south from Camira is Springfield, north of the Centenary Highway, and immediately south of the Highway is Springfield Lakes, built around lakes constructed on Opossum Creek, both gazetted as suburbs in 2000.  Springfield Central (gazetted 2007), adjacent to the Highway, contains the main shopping centre and university campus.  Brookwater (2003) is described as a ‘residential golf community’.  It is separated from its larger neighbour, Springfield, by the Opossum Creek.  Between Brookwater and Redbank Plains is Augustine Heights (2003), built around Woogaroo Creek.  This suburb and St Augustine’s College are named after St Augustine.  Although non-denominational, there is a strong emphasis on the Catholic Christian faith within this community.  The sixth suburb, Spring Mountain, is south of the Centenary Highway and is at present an undeveloped rural locality between the White Rock Conservation Park and Spring Mountain Forest Park.

OTHER URBAN AREAS 

Walloon: About 13 km (8 miles) from central Ipswich, this town is so near that since the 1980s it has been considered an outer suburb of the city. It had a population of 1,588 in 2016. The location was called Ten Mile Peg because of its approximate distance from Ipswich along the old cart track.  It was one of the original stations on the Ipswich to Grandchester railway (1865), and the station was given the name Walloon by the Railways Department.  This is believed to be because a number of early settlers in the immediate neighbourhood came from southern Belgium.  It was not until 1877, when coal was found just north of the station and the Walloon Saloon was built, that a proper settlement developed.  It became an urban area with an economy based on dairying and coal mining.  Mining continued until 1960 but, a short while after this date, Walloon began to develop as a residential, commuter suburb within easy reach of Ipswich.

From 1879 to 1916 there was a Division  of Walloon (from 1903 Shire of Walloon) as the local government authority to the west of Ipswich, stretching from Ipswich to Rosewood, with Marburg serving as the administrative seat of the Shire.  In 1890 the southern portion was detached to become the Shire of Rosewood (see below).  The Shire of Walloon extended beyond the present boundaries of the city further north into the Brisbane Valley around Lowood.  In 1912 this northern part became the separate Shire of Lowood and in 1916 this became part of the Shire of Esk. In 1916 the Shire of Walloon was divided between the Shire of Rosewood and the new Shire of Ipswich (Moreton), with the present-day urban area of Walloon becoming part of the Shire of Ipswich (Moreton).    

Rosewood: This urban centre is around 17 km (10 miles) west of Ipswich, and has a population of  2,834 (2016).  Its name derives from the Rosewood Scrub.  This was a huge tract of dense forest stretching 20 km (13 miles) northwards from present-day Rosewood to Fernvale, first sighted by John Oxley and Allan Cunningham when they were exploring southern Queensland in 1824.  The explorer Ludwig Leichhardt gave it this name in 1844 after the rosewood tree or dry vine shrub (Acacia harpophylla).  Because of its density, the Rosewood Scrub was considered impenetrable, so the early explorers and settlers avoided this area.

The present site was first settled in 1864 when the railway was being built between Ipswich and Grandchester; the first resident is believed to have been John Farrel who operated the railway gates, but further settlement did not really begin until the 1870s when the Rosewood Scrub was exploited for its valuable timber, followed by dairying.  The first coal mine in the area was opened in 1877.  The nearby New Oakleigh mine was the second last coal mine still operating in the City of Ipswich region. The mine was closed in January 2013.  Rosewood developed into a small urban centre because of its location on the railway.  This was further emphasised in the late 20th century when it became a residential area for commuters to Ipswich and Brisbane.  

Situated on the corner of Langfield Road and John Street is Glendalough; an early 20th century timber house built by Thomas Bulcock.  It is listed on the Australian heritage register.  Also in Rosewood is St Brigid’s Catholic Church.  It was built in 1910 and is the largest wooden church in Queensland.

In 1890 the Division of Rosewood (from 1903 Shire of Rosewood) was established as the local government area for the large expanse of territory west of Ipswich.  It then extended beyond the present western boundaries of the city.  In 1905 the Shire of Rosewood and Shire of Mutdapilly merged to become the new Shire of Rosewood.  A further re-division of territories in 1916 saw the loss of the westernmost portion to the Shire of Laidley, while most of the Shire of Walloon came to Rosewood.  In 1949 the Shire of Rosewood lost its separate identity when it was absorbed into the Shire of Moreton. In the Rosewood suburb is Perry’s Knob, an isolated ridge that is a remnant basalt left by volcanic activity, as seen on the adjacent postcard.   It was named after the Perry family who owned the ridge.  It used to be a haunt of bushrangers, and a former stop on the now disused Rosewood-Marburg railway. 

There was some mining in the vicinity from 1927 to 1969.  However, it is probably better known for the way the second part of the name has exercised the minds of officialdom and the local populace.  The locals insist that the name has always been spelt without the letter ‘k’, i.e. Perry’s Nob.  However, the authorities insist on officially spelling it with a ‘k’, so Knob it is.

Marburg: A rural town on the Warrego Highway, 34 km (21 miles) from Ipswich with a population of 595 (2016).  Marburg was once covered by the Rosewood Scrub.  Sam and Sally Owens were the first graziers to establish themselves here in 1842.  However the family is said to have become more famous in the area because of their illegal alcoholic drinks rather than their sheep.  Nevertheless, the first name for the area became Sally Owen’s Plains, although the name Rosewood Scrub was also commonly used.  

In the 1860s the surrounding Rosewood Scrub was utilised for its vast timber reserves, but in 1868 the area was described as “still a wilderness”.  That year Charles Smith carved out the Woodlands Estate, and he was followed in the early 1870s by German farmers.  One of these, J L Friedrich, arrived in 1866 from Prussia, opened a store and Anglicised his name to Frederick.  In 1876 J L Frederick made an application for Sally Owen’s Plains to have a school.  When this was opened in 1879 the Postmaster General named the settlement that had arisen around the school and store Frederick after the applicant.  Around the same time the German settlers were carting their produce to Walloon Railway Station, and they had to provide a home town address.  They decided on Marburg in the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau, and the railway authorities took this up.  In 1881 the “Marburg Hotel” opened, thus the name had come into use unofficially.  In 1888 Frederick officially became Marburg; it served as the administrative seat of the Shire of Walloon until 1917.  Because of anti-German feelings during the First World War, the name of the town was changed to Townsend in June 1917 in honour of the British general Sir Charles Townshend, who fought the Turks in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) in 1916.  The locals never supported the change and on 1st January 1920 it reverted to Marburg.

The timber, sugar cane and dairy industries put Marburg on its feet.  This was largely down to the Woodlands Estate established by Charles Smith who, by the early 1880s, had installed a sawmill, a sugar mill and a rum distillery.  Many of the German farmers supplied the mill with cane, but within a few seasons it was found that rainfall was too low for good production.  Farmers turned to maize and dairying, although the mill continued to operate until 1918.  The son of Charles Smith, Thomas Lorimer Smith, built the heritage-listed Woodlands Mansion in Marburg.  One of the most distinctive buildings in Queensland, it was built between 1888 and 1891 by the architect George Brockwell Gill.  It is a plantation-style mansion featuring a square tower and elaborate lacework verandahs.  Today it is a restaurant and is available as a venue for weddings, conferences and functions.

In 1912 a railway line from Rosewood to Marburg was opened but only a few years later the railway began to suffer from the competition of highway traffic.  The railway line passed nine working coal mines in the 1940s, as well as dairy farms and timber cutting on the distant ranges.  It survived until 1965 when the line was closed.

As dairying declined after World War II, so too did Marburg’s population; from a population of over 600 in 1954 to fewer than 400 by the late 1960s.  When the Warrego Highway was upgraded in the 1960s, most of the traffic from Brisbane to Toowoomba passed Marburg without stopping, and subsequently the level of business activity in the town declined.  Since the 1980s the population has recovered somewhat, as Marburg has much to offer people seeking a rural residential lifestyle within commuting distance of Ipswich.

Grandchester: The urban area of Grandchester, located in the Lockyer Valley between Ipswich and Toowoomba, is quite small, with a population of 444 in 2016.  It is 34 km (21 miles) west of Ipswich.  

The Ugarapul Aboriginals called the area ‘Googabilla’ which means “honey”, and until the 1850s held corroborees on what is now the Recreation Grounds.  The area was first explored by Allan Cunningham in 1829.  Cunningham’s party camped beside what is now known as the Railway Lagoon while searching for the source of the Brisbane River.  From about 1842 this campsite became known as Bigge’s Camp after two brothers, Frederick and Francis Bigge, who established it as a stopover on the way north to their Mount Brisbane Sheep Station.  The first settlers in the area were Thomas and Maria Mort who took up the Franklyn Vale run in 1849 to the south of Grandchester along the Western Creek tributary of the Bremer River.  Descendants of the Morts still live at Franklin Vale today (see below).  Various inns were later established at Bigge’s Camp to cater for the needs of travellers, the first of these being opened by a Frenchman, Wellmand Prosper Douyere, in 1854.

However, it was the railway that really established the settlement.  Since there was already an efficient river communication between Ipswich and Brisbane, there was an urgent need for a connection to the Darling Downs in the west.  For this reason the first railway line to be built in Queensland ran west from Ipswich to Bigge’s Camp.  This was the first narrow gauge mainline railway in the world.  When it was opened on 31st July 1865, Governor Bowen thought that the terminus of such an historic railway should have a more dignified name so he suggested Grandchester, a name which means great or large camp (from Latin castra).  Grandchester has the oldest surviving railway station in Queensland built in 1866 and it is heritage listed.  

Just to the south of Grandchester is Spicers Hidden Vale.  Set on a 12,000 acre working cattle station, Spicers Hidden Vale (formerly Peppers Hidden Vale Retreat) is now a hotel, restaurant and conference centre of the Spicer Group of luxury retreats, which also offers bushwalking, horse riding, clay pigeon shooting and orienteering.  It was once owned by Alfred Cotton, whose son, Sidney, is said to have been the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s James Bond character.  The estate was once part of the historic Franklyn Vale (see Mount Mort below) and was taken up in 1871 by John Jost who used it for breeding cattle, sheep and racehorses.  It then became known as Jost Vale.  In 1900 it was sold to Alfred Cotton and the surrounding locality became the present Cottonvale.  He was the first to take up residency in the valley and it is said that his wife suggested the name Hidden Vale.    

RURAL LOCALITIES

SOUTH OF THE CENTRAL URBAN AREA TO WARRILL CREEK

Spring Mountain: South of the Centenary Highway between the White Rock Conservation Park and Spring Mountain Forest Park.  This is at present an undeveloped rural locality destined to be the sixth suburb of the Greater Springfield Development (see above).

White Rock: This locality was established immediately west of Springfield and Woogaroo Creek in 2007. It includes a large conservation area (see White Rock - Spring Mountain Conservation Estate section, above).  The name refers to a prominent pale-coloured sandstone outcrop, the major feature of the Conservation Park, which is of high cultural significance to the indigenous Yuggerapul people. 

Swanbank: This is a predominantly industrial locality 5.5 km (3½ miles) southwest of Ipswich centre, south of the Cunningham Highway.  The Bundamba Creek bisects the area and the dominant natural feature is the Swanbank Lagoon, which had previous names of Logan Lagoon and Josey’s Lagoon.  The origin of the present name is from Lanark, Scotland.  James Foote (d. 1895) arrived at Ipswich in 1850 from England and became a partner of the general store and emporium, Cribb and Foote.  He was an alderman and mayor of Ipswich.  In about 1870 he purchased a large piece of land including the lagoon and named the property Swanbank after the birthplace of his wife, Catherine.  Her maternal family name was Swan and ‘Swanbank’ was probably a house-name, since no location exists of that name, and official records indicate that the Swan family was resident in the town of Lanark. Swanbank was part of the suburb of Blackstone at the time and adjoined its coalfields.  At present Swanbank has the remains of several collieries, a heritage railway line and a power station.  The original Swanbank Colliery opened in 1892, and a spur railway line was built over the Box Flat to carry the coal from these rich fields.  In July 1972, the Box Flat Mine experienced an explosion which took the lives of 18 men.  The incident was the worst mining disaster in Ipswich’s history.  After the explosion the mine closed and the entrances were sealed.  A bridge on the Centenary Highway is named in honour of the lives lost in the disaster.

The Swanbank power stations have been operational since 1966. At first these were coal-fired and the Box Flat Mine was then the main supplier. However, with the move towards cleaner fuels, the two coal-fired power stations had been decommissioned by the end of 2012, and Swanbank E is fuelled by natural gas and methane gas, some of the gas being drawn from a landfill site. Swanbank has been a major local employer and has played a significant role in supporting the growth of the region as well as providing a reliable electricity supply for Queensland.

Swanbank also has a preserved railway line and heritage station.  The Queensland Pioneer Steam Railway conduct steam train trips on the Swanbank Branch Line to the Swanbank power station, and around Swanbank rail balloon loop which used to be used to service the coal needs of Swanbank power station.  A balloon loop allows a train to reverse direction without having to shunt or even stop.

South Ripley: The New District Atlas for Queensland (1878) showed Ripley as a small locality, just west of the Bundamba Lagoon.  By 1972 Ripley had moved north to the locality that is now described as South Ripley, and encloses the headwaters of the Bundamba Creek and extends north to the Centenary Highway.  In 2000 the area north of the Centenary Highway was gazetted as a suburb, leaving South Ripley as a rural locality.

Ripley’s western boundary is Deebing Creek, and beyond it there is Deebing Heights.  Deebing is from the Aboriginal ‘dibing’ meaning a mosquito.  Deebing Heights has a small housing estate near the Cunningham Highway and is part of the above project.  Deebing has been a settlement since Queensland’s early colonial history, but was only gazetted as a locality within Purga in 2000, and a rural suburb in 2004.  

It is the location of the heritage listed Deebing Creek Mission Aboriginal Reserve. This was founded by the Aboriginal Protection Society of Ipswich on 52.6 ha (130 acres) in 1887 to cater for the Aboriginal people from the Ipswich area.  At that time the Aborigines were camped in Queens Park, Ipswich.  They went from door to door as beggars seeking food, and were often under the influence of alcohol.  In order to address these concerns and basically to remove them from the public parks, the society looked around for land suitable to set up accommodation for them, and to allow the Aborigines to become self-sufficient.  In 1892 the reserve was officially proclaimed under the management of the missionary Rev. Edward Fuller.  Although some 300 Aboriginal people went through Deebing Creek during its existence, there was no requirement for them to remain in residence at the mission.  Because residence was purely voluntary, some of the people went into town and obtained alcohol and reverted to camping at Queens Park.  It was felt that the Deebing Creek mission was not far enough out of town, and in November 1914 a grant was made to assist the transfer of the mission from Deebing Creek to reserve land at Purga, where there was an abundance of good agricultural land at a greater distance from the town.  In 1915 the mission was relocated to Purga.

From the closing of the reserve, the suburb remained largely undeveloped until the 1990s when the present housing estate was built.Purga: This rural suburb 14 km (8 miles) south of Ipswich played a much larger role in the past.  Today the Warrill Creek forms its northern and western boundary and it straddles the Purga Creek north of Peak Crossing, once another rural suburb of Ipswich.  The name ‘Purga’ is an Aboriginal word describing ‘a meeting place’.

The Parish of Purga was an original subdivision of the County of Churchill in 1850 covering the area to the west of the Deebing Creek which included today’s suburbs of Churchill and Yamanto.  The Rev. Dr William Lambie Nelson from Scotland purchased land at Purga in the 1850s, but the first real settler in the rural heartland was James Dick in 1862.  However, those areas nearer to Ipswich saw urban development, particularly at Churchill.  When the colonial government created the local government divisions in 1879, this subdivision was extended to the northeast, and as the Shire of Purga it stretched all the way to Bundamba to include the industrial suburbs of Blackstone, New Chum, Dinmore and much of Bundamba itself, and also the suburbs of Riverview, Redbank, Redbank Plains and Goodna.  Although Purga village was rural, the shire had an area of 300 sq km (116 sq miles) and was substantially urban with numerous coalmines.  Its council offices were in Bundamba.  In 1916 the Shire of Purga was divided between the City of Ipswich and the new Shire of Ipswich (Moreton), and the present-day settlement emerged as a rural suburb on the outskirts of the city.

In 1914 the Aboriginal Reserve mission at Deebing Creek was relocated to Purga, and from 1921 it was run by the Salvation Army.  It had a school, several huts, a church and an aboriginal cemetery.  However, it was never a success and by 1947 its buildings were dilapidated, the agricultural land was no longer utilised and the few inhabitants of the mission showed little real interest in continuing the venture.  The place resembled a ghost town, so in June 1948 the Purga mission was closed and the reserve status of the land was rescinded.  The mission site, cemetery and church are listed on the Queensland heritage register.Goolman: This locality, gazetted in 2000, is an area of isolated farmsteads southeast of Purga.  The original homestead derived this name from the mountain to the south in the Teviot Range, and is an Aboriginal word in the Yugarabal language meaning ‘a stone axe’.  The rocky outcrop is said to resemble a stone axe, and the name was recorded by the surveyor Granville Stapylton in 1839.

SOUTH WEST OF THE CENTRAL URBAN AREA

Willowbank: A rural area around the Cunningham Highway 12 km (7½miles) southwest of central Ipswich.  A large sheep and cattle station was established c.1855 by Darby McGrath from Ireland on the northwest side of Warrill Creek.  The homestead was located on what is now Amberley Air Force Base, near the banks of the creek which was prolific with willow trees - hence the name “Willow Bank”.  In February 1890 the property was surveyed into smaller parcels and auctioned off to the public, although the area continued to be known as the “Willow Bank Estate”.  The name Willowbank was used by the telephone office in the district in 1956, and this became the official name of the locality on 15th October 1983.

Willowbank village exists as a residential community on the south-west perimeter of RAAF Base Amberley and is populated extensively by Defence families and those families associated with the air base. The Ipswich Motorsport Precinct is also in this locality (see separate section above).

Jeebropilly & Ebenezer:  These two rural localities are in the area south of the Ipswich-Rosewood Road just west of Amberley that has seen extensive major open-cast coal mining.  The Aboriginal name for the area was Jeebropilly said to mean either “flying squirrel gully” or “swampy place”, and it was an original parish of the County of Churchill extending around present-day Amberley and the territory to the west.  This area was part of the large Rosebrook run taken up by Donald McLaughlin in 1843 and acquired by George Thorn in 1845.  

Aboriginal people used to gather at the Old Man Waterhole.  This became the Seven Mile Creek where bullock wagons crossed the Bremer River on their way to the Darling Downs.  An inn called The Red Lion was established at the crossing by 1850, and early pioneers soon established their homes nearby.  One of the first settlers was John Armstrong from Ireland in 1852.  He took up 33 ha (82 acres) of land at Seven Mile in 1856.  The family built their first hut near the riverbank; it was flooded and they moved to higher land.  In 1868 with the passing of the Homestead Act other settlers built homes and established farms on small portions of land that fronted the Bremer River.  Seven Mile Creek became a preaching place of the Methodist Church in 1863, and in 1868 the government started the Seven Mile Creek State Primary School.  However, frequent flooding by the river caused many of the settlers to move to higher land a little further to the south, and in 1873 the school followed them.  In 1882 a church was constructed opposite the school and it was named the Wesleyan Methodist Ebenezer Church. The name Ebenezer is the Hebrew word meaning “The Rock of Help”.  Although the settlement still retained the name Seven Mile Creek it was no longer by the river, and in 1888 the school and locality took the name Ebenezer from the church.  

The area remained largely agricultural although mining on a relatively small scale started in the 1870s through to the early 1970s to supply the nearby Queensland Rail and some domestic usage.  The advent of diesel locomotives and natural gas saw the demise of these small mines.  However, this changed in the 1980s when large-scale open-cut mining of Walloon coal for both domestic power generation and export markets began at two collieries.  The Jeebropilly coal mine became operational in 1982, and the Ebenezer mine in 1988.  The continued production of coal struggled in the face of high costs and weak commodity prices, and the Ebenezer mine was closed in 2003 and the Jeebropilly colliery ceased operations in 2007.  Because of high export prices, the Jeebropilly coal mine started up again in 2009, but plans to make the Ebenezer coal mine operational in 2014 has met with opposition from neighbouring communities and environmental campaigners.  A legacy of the open-cast mining is found in three lagoons that have filled the voids left by the mining.  These new additions to the landscape have coined another name for the area and together they are known as the Ebenezer Wetlands.  

Mutdapilly, Mount Forbes & Lower Mount Walker: An area of isolated farmsteads lies to the south near the boundary between the City of Ipswich and the Scenic Rim Region, the total population  being 756 in 2016.  In 1824 John Oxley named a peak in this range of hills Mount Forbes, after the Chief Justice of New South Wales.  It was renamed after a shepherd named Walker, who was employed by Henry Mort of Franklyn Vale, in about 1850.  The name first appeared on a railway map in 1865.  The area became settled after 1868 when the Homestead Act opened up these lands.  The reorganisation of the administrative units in this region in 1905 and again in 2000 has resulted in the city boundary dividing these isolated communities between the City of Ipswich and the Scenic Rim Region (for greater detail see The Ones That Got Away page).

NORTH WEST TO MARBURG

Two rural suburbs that were originally part of the Shire of Brassall are Muirlea and Blacksoil.  Muirlea is north of Brassall between the Warrego Highway and the Brisbane River.  A former railway station was given this name in June 1884, derived from local landowners John and Andrew Muir who came from Scotland.  It is mainly forested with little housing at present.  The Kholo Botanic Gardens (see separate section above) are located in the suburb.  Blacksoil straddles the Warrego Highway to the west of Muirlea and Brassall.  It is being developed with new housing estates.  Written record of the “black soil plains west of Ipswich” exists from 1862, and the suburb name reflects this.

Pine Mountain: Situated to the north of the city, Pine Mountain is a rural area in the Lockyer Valley.  The mountain itself rises to 233 metres (764 feet) and is bounded in the north and east by the Brisbane River.  From around 1850, logging became a major industry in the district, due to the abundance of the Hoop Pine, Araucaria cunninghamii, named after botanist Allan Cunningham.  In 1824 Oxley and Cunningham explored the area and were so impressed by this tree species growing on the hills that they gave it the name of Pine Ridge.  Alternative names of Pine Hills and Pine Range were used, but it is Pine Mountain that has stuck.  Once the timber had been cut, the land became available for settlement and by the 1880s Pine Mountain had also become an important farming community.

Ironbark: The next locality going west to Marburg is Ironbark, an area of isolated farmsteads north of the Warrego Highway.  It takes its name from the Grey Ironbark (Eucalyptus paniculata) found in these hills.  The bark is resistant to fire and heat and protects the living tissue within the trunk and branches from bushfires.  The locality is better known for being the former home of the Borallon Correctional Centre opened in 1990 as a privately operated prison, housing 492 high security prisoners.  This was rather a strange name since Borallon is about 6 km (3 miles) north of the correctional centre outside the limits of the City of Ipswich.  The prison was closed in January 2012.    

Haigslea: The area east of Marburg, known as the Walloon Scrub, was settled by John Duhs and Christopher Claus from Germany in 1871 and a school was opened in 1875 with this name for the community.  It was renamed Kirchheim (Church Home) by the mainly German settlers in the district to avoid confusion with the settlement of Walloon.  It became Haigslea in 1916, named after General Douglas Haig, commander in chief of the British Army in France, because of anti-German sentiment during the First World War.

WEST TO ROSEWOOD & GRANDCHESTER

Karrabin: A small rural settlement on the Ipswich-Rosewood road between Wulkuraka and Walloon.  It is said that the original Walloon Saloon was located at Karrabin, and like the Walloon settlement it was not until the late 1870s that it was developed.  The name is derived from the Bundjalung language meaning “red gum”, indicating one of the species of the carbeen or karrabin tree (Eucalyptus tessellaris).

Mount Marrow & Thagoona: On the road between Walloon and Rosewood is the small residential settlement of Thagoona, and to its north is the large rural locality of Mount Marrow, an area of isolated farmsteads.  The retired mariner, Captain John Nicol Rea, came in the early 1860s from Sydney and settled this area which he called Mount Rea after himself.  It later became Mount Marrow, probably because of its shape although this is not certain, or it might be a version of an Aboriginal word.  John Rea discovered coal in the 1870s, but the quality was poor until deeper shafts were dug when he opened the Caledonian Mine in 1889 to exploit the rich veins of the Walloon Coal Measures.  In 1888 a railway station was opened on the Ipswich-Toowoomba main line to the south of the coalfield and this was named Reaside.  A change of name to Thagoona occurred soon afterwards; this is an Ugarapul word, but the meaning is unrecorded.  This developed into the present residential commuter settlement 13 km (8 miles) west of Ipswich.

West of the Rosewood-Marburg road and north of the railway line to Grandchester are small rural localities.  These are sparsely populated and comprise mainly isolated homesteads.  After the Homestead Act of 1868 land in the Rosewood Scrub to the west of Ipswich was opened for clearing and settlement.  Small townships developed around a church, school and post office in some places, but with the ease of modern road transport these have mostly declined, leaving little but a solitary building that acts as a meeting place and the local cemetery. Tallegalla on the Rosewood-Marburg road was settled in 1871 by John Dart, and the post office he opened in 1876 was given this name because of the presence of brush-turkeys in the area; talegalla is the genus name for a brush-turkey.  The localities of Woolshed and The Bluff, with obvious descriptive names, lie in the forested area to the west of the Rosewood-Marburg road. 

Agricultural land with isolated farms lies around Ashwell to the northwest of Rosewood.  Walter Loveday established Ashwell Farm in the Rosewood Scrub in 1873, naming it after a village in Hertfordshire, England, and he donated an acre of land for a school which was named after his farm in 1877.

Two localities are located on the Rosewood-Grandchester road, which was originally a track in the early 1840s to the Darling Downs just along the southern edge of the scrubland.  Lanefield was a name given to the railway station here in 1887 after John Lane, a pioneer settler in 1868, whose family owned much of the land.  Further west is Calvert, a place of many overlapping former names which the sources rarely seem to get right.  So here is our attempt to sort them out.  An inn was opened here in 1843 by Samuel Owens who later sold it to a man named McKeown, and it was by this latter name that this stop on the coach route first became known.  In 1854 a village was laid out here and given the name Alfred, said to be from a nearby hill called “Alfred’s Knoll”.  The village was not originally a stop on the railway that was built in 1865, so the residents petitioned for a station.  This was opened in 1866 and named Western Creek after the nearby tributary of the Bremer River, and this name came into use.  However, the village still retained the name Alfred and when a school district was opened in 1872 it was given this name.  In 1884 the railway authorities decided to rename the station from Western Creek to Calvert, but no-one seems to know why.  It is said to have been named after James Calvert, a member of Leichhardt’s expedition in 1844, but it is just as likely to have been named after a local family.  A letter of complaint to The Brisbane Courier in March 1886 indicated that the government maps and documents still called the settlement Alfred, but people had got used to it being called Western Creek, but now it seems to be Calvert, so what was it to be called?  In 1910 the school district was renamed Calvert as well, so by this time that name had become accepted.  However, officialdom insisted that the name was still Alfred until 19 March 1931, when the Executive Council finally approved Calvert as the official name of this settlement.    

Mount Mort: This locality covers the lands either side of the Franklin Vale Creek, one of the headwaters of the Bremer River, and the furthest point southwest of the City of Ipswich.  This was part of the vast Laidley Plains sheep run taken up in 1843 by leasehold from the government.  Franklin Valley was named after Sir John Franklin, then Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), 1837-1843.  In 1849 the lease passed to Thomas Mort, a Sydney businessman, who gave the management to his brother, Henry, who converted the estate into a cattle station.  In 1852 the lease was transferred to Henry Mort and his brother-in-law James Laidley, with Henry managing the Franklin Valley section (by now spelt Franklyn Vale).  The partnership was dissolved in 1869, by which time Franklyn Vale had been much reduced by government action in resuming the land leased, but still remained the largest farm holding in the valley with 10,000 acres (4,047 ha).  The present heritage-listed Franklyn Vale Homestead was erected in the early 1870s for the son-in-law and daughter of Henry Mort, the latter who now lived in Sydney.  His sons, however, continued the business and were instrumental in developing the dairy industry in Queensland.

In 1884 this area was opened for settlement and a pioneer farmer was Carl Friedrich August Gehrke.  He was a German who emigrated with his family to Australia in 1871 and arrived next year at the Normanby Station of George Thorn.  In 1904 the Gehrke family donated land for a school, so in their honour the small scattered settlement was named Gehrkevale.  In September 1916 anti-German sentiment during the war caused the name to be changed to Mount Grace, to be followed two months later in November by another name change to Mount Mort, after the more prominent family who had been around since 1849.      

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County of Stanley 

Both Ipswich & Brisbane are situated in the County of Stanley.  It was established on 27th February 1843 and until the formation of Queensland in 1859 it was a county of New South Wales.  The Surveyor-General of NSW, Sir Thomas Mitchell, named the early counties after notable “imperial families”, Stanley being the family name of the Earls of Derby.  At the time, Edward Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby, was the Secretary of State for War & the Colonies (1841-45), and was later British Prime Minister.  Today the counties of Queensland are used mainly for the purpose of registering land titles & are otherwise non-functional administrative units. The county includes Stradbroke Island on the Pacific coast & borders four other counties: Canning, Cavendish, Churchill & Ward.

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County of Churchill 

In 1845 Thomas Mitchell, Surveyor-General of New South Wales, established a county west of the County of Stanley which he called Churchill.  Mitchell wished to honour the family of the great military commander the first Duke of Marlborough.  Hence the county and the later suburb took their name from the family, not Sir Winston Churchill nor his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, neither of whom had been born in 1845.  The boundary between the counties of Churchill and Stanley was delineated in 1850.  As far as it affected the present City of Ipswich, it ran down the Brisbane River to where that river turns north by today’s Kholo Botanical Gardens, then in a straight line across country to the Bremer River where it finally turns southward at Brassall.  The boundary then went up the Bremer River and then along the Deebing Creek to its source, and from there in a straight line to Mount Goolman further south. Thus the greatest extent of the present City of Ipswich is actually in the County of Churchill as all the suburbs, located west of the Bremer River and the urban centre of Ipswich, lie in that county.  The county borders five other counties: Stanley, Cavendish, Aubigny, Merivale & Ward.

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