Oakey                                                                                                              

If every Oakey creek around the countryside had a town named after it, we would have towns of this name all over the place, but it fell only to this town on the Darling Downs to carry the name of its adjacent Oakey Creek. Leichhardt noted the she-oaks growing in the creek bed. The township developed after the railway line came through in 1867. 

Obi Obi

It is generally thought that this name is a variant of a local Aboriginal leader's name, although it could also refer to evil spirit.

Ocean View                                                                                               

Views of Moreton Bay are obtainable from this upland area between Dayboro and Mt Mee. J.L. Zillman and Kenneth McLennan selected large areas of land here in 1873. It was noted for its timber. The Ocean View State School was there from 1922 to 1963.  

O’Reillys                                                                                                    

Eight O’Reilly men took up blocks on the Roberts Plateau in July 1911 : Tom, Herb, Mick, Norbert and Ped of one family, and Luke, Pat and Joe of the other. Four years later the Lamington National Park was proclaimed largely as a result of the urgings of two men, Robert Martin Collins and Romeo Watkins Lahey. As a result no further blocks were opened up and the O’Reillys’ land formed an isolated pocket surrounded by National Park. 

Ormeau                                                                                                     

Major A.J.Boyd, after his army career, acquired land on which he grew sugar and established a sugar mill. To this property he gave the name of Ormeau, for his wife had lived on Ormeau Road, Belfast, when a girl. When the railway was put through it passed right through his property. He ran a private school on Pimpama Creek for a while. 

Ormiston                                                                                                 

Captain the Honourable Louis Hope, the seventh son of the first Earl of Hopetoun, has been described as a man of style. He purchased land overlooking Raby Bay and built Ormiston House there. Expecting Cleveland to be developed as the port for the Moreton Bay region he thought that the area where he built would become an exclusive part of town. The first house, planks of pit-sawn cedar, later became the kitchen. The main house itself was built by Scottish tradesmen brought out especially for the job. Bricks were baked in a kiln on the property. He also built a small chapel and rectory there.

Hope established here Queensland’s first commercial sugar plantation. He started the practice of bringing South Sea Islanders over to work on the Queensland sugar plantations, and this led to what was called blackbirding in the islands.

The area took its name from the house, while the house took its name from the family’s ancestral home in Scotland. 

Oxenford

The Oxenford name came to the Coomera region with the arrival of William Robert Oxenford around 1869. He grew sugarcane, and later rice and flax. He introduced Ayrshire cattle to the area, owned the first cream separator and was a champion ploughman. 

Oxley

John Oxley, as the Surveyor-General of Lands in New South Wales, was given the job of locating a site for a new convict settlement in 1823, and as a result of his recommendations Governor Brisbane decided that it should be situated at Moreton Bay. He came with the first party of soldiers and convicts, located the first, temporary, settlement at Redcliffe and made recommendations about suitable sites for the permanent settlement up along the banks of the Brisbane River.

John Joseph Molesworth Oxley, to give him is full name, had first visited Sydney in 1802 as a nineteen-year-old naval officer, but he returned to settle there ten years later. He planned the town of Bathurst, explored the Lachlan River, discovered the Liverpool Plains and helped in the establishment of the penal settlement at Port Macquarie. But for the years that he was visiting Moreton Bay he was not well, and he died just a few years later at his country home of Kirkham, near Camden, aged 47.

On his first exploratory trip up the Brisbane River he named the creek where Parsons, Finnegan and Pamphlett had found a canoe to take them down the river Canoe River, but this was later officially changed to Oxley Creek. Along with the suburb of Oxley, it continues to perpetuate his name.

He has been described as hasty in judgment, jealous of others' achievements and resentful of criticism, but he certainly left his mark on the opening up of Eastern Australia to European settlement. He was jealous of Hume and Hovell's success and resentful of the fact that they proved his predictions about the inhabitability of the country wrong. He was angered by Lockyer's suggestion that the real discoverers of the Brisbane River were Finnegan, Parsons and Pamphett. He claimed that credit for himself.  

Previous page                                      Next page

Place Names of South East Queensland home page