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Coombabah Coombabah in the Gold Coast area either means home of turtles or a pocket of land. Coomera Alexander McLeay, who had arrived in Sydney the previous year to take up the position of Colonial Secretary, must have been delighted by Captain Logan’s report dated 24 May, 1827. Patrick Logan, while on one of his exploratory expeditions, had come across another considerable river to the south of Brisbane and advised that he had taken the liberty of naming it the McLeay. However soon after his term in office came to an end in 1837 McLeay’s name was taken away from the river and the name of a London cartographic company, Arrowsmith, which had published many maps of NSW, was substituted at the suggestion of the surveyor Robert Dixon. But that name did not gain popularity. The Aboriginal name was to gain enduring recognition and consequently the settlement which grew up by the river assumed the same name. It may derive from kumera kumera, the name of a particular kind of fern that grew in the area, or, as some say, it may have referred to a particular species of wattle. The early settler, Charles Binstead , maintained that Kumera was the Aboriginal name for the river. A township on the southern banks of the river was called Ferry Crossing until the railway gave the name of Coomera to the train station there. For a time there were two settlements known as Coomera - Coomera (Lower) and Coomera (Upper). The school at Coomera Lower only changed to Coomera State School in 1900. Coominya The name means water view and was developed from the Aboriginal Kung-i-nya. This referred to the visibility of lagoons from the railway station and township. The lagoons have since been drained. It was formerly called Bellevue after the Bellevue cattle station that it served. Coonowrin This, one of the Glasshouse Mountains, is also called Crookneck. An Aboriginal story tells of Coonowrin being clubbed by his father, Tibrogargan, for not looking after his mother, Beerwah, when the sea was rising. The blow left Coonowrin with a permanently crooked neck. It is derived from coonong-warrong or kudna-warun, crooked neck. Cooper’s Plains Place names sometimes undergo changes so that an original reference is hidden behind the present day terminology. Coopers Plains is one such place. It was named after Dr Henry Cowper, the first Australian-trained medical practitioner. He came to Brisbane penal settlement in September 1825, a year before the hospital was built. Although he acted as a lay reader of Anglican services, he had a reputation for being uncouth, ill-tempered and quarrelsome and was a heavy drinker and smoker, greatly disliked by his fellow officers. He stayed in the settlement for seven years until he was discharged from the army after breaking into the female prisoners quarters while on a drunken spree with some companions one night. Born in Drypool, Yorkshire, 1800, he was the son of Rev. W. Cowper who settled in Sydney. For all his faults, he was conscientious in his work, and Captain Logan named the agricultural outstation on Oxley Creek, somewhat to the west of the present Coopers Plains, after him. Cooran From guran meaning tall trees or Moreton Bay ash. Cooroibah (Lake Cooroibah) Place of possums. Cooroy Mt Cooroy’s original name was Coorooey, from the Aboriginal word kurui - possum . The town got its name from the mountain. Coorparoo The area was named by the local residents at a meeting, 22 March, 1875, believing it was Aboriginal for gentle dove. In the Cateehil dialect, Cooparoo-jaggin was the name of a tribal area in South Brisbane. The name represents the sound of a cooing dove. Cootharaba This was the Aboriginal name for the lake. It meant place where the wood used in making notched or studded clubs could be found. Cooyar The town was named after the Aboriginal tribe that lived in the area. Land was first issued to D. Archer & Co in 1847 and the town was surveyed by E. Warakar in 1902. Corinda The Corinda holding was taken up by J.W.Raven, 27 June, 1863, but the property, named after another in the Mitchell district in Queensland, is also linked to the name of Sir Arthur Palmer. In the 1870s it was owned by a company in which he held an interest. The name is of Aboriginal origin, but what it means is not know.. Arthur Hunter Palmer, born in Armagh, Ireland, arrived in Sydney 1838. He managed grazing properties belonging to Henry Dangar for 23 years and then started building his own pastoral empire. He was a Member of the Legislative Assembly from 1866 to 1881, and for nearly four of those years was Premier. He was a member of the Legislative Council from 1881 until his death in 1898. Apart from Corinda he occupied some of the other great houses around Brisbane at one time or another, notably Fernberg and Oakwal. He died at his Toowong home, Eastern Grey, after some years of painful arthritis and after weathering accusations in relation to the financial mismanagement of the Queensland National Bank of which he was a director. The Railway Department at first simply referred to the rail junction as the South Brisbane Railway Junction, but W.H.Hassell who surveyed the estate for development suggested the Corinda name for the suburb. Cornubia The Taylor family in the 1920s called their property Cornubia Park, but when members of the public used to arrive for picnics thinking that it was parkland the owners, the Jessens, in 1934 dropped the word Park from the name. It was sold to a developer in 1956. Place Names of South East Queensland home page
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