Eagle Farm  

When the N.S.W. Governor advised the establishment of an agricultural station away from the Brisbane settlement, Captain Logan and Colonial Botanist Fraser, selected a tract of land on the north side of the Brisbane River backed by ‘a fine creek’ (Serpentine Creek). It comprised undulating ridges of a gentle height with a small watercourse between each one. The soil was a rich, brown loam which supported a luxuriant growth of native grasses and was lightly timbered mainly with blue gum. An agricultural establishment was commenced there in 1829 using convict labour. Later it was used as the place for women prisoners. It got its name from the large number of eagles seen in the area.   

Eagle Junction    

The railway junction was originally called Eagle Farm Junction, but it became shortened to Eagle Junction.       

Eaton’s Hill

In 1849, James Cash, with his seventeen-year-old wife, came to live on a rise overlooking the South Pine River. Their slab house saw many visitors as it was on the main northern track from Brisbane and the Cashes had a reputation for hospitality. It is said that no one was turned away without at least a pot of tea. They held the land as leasehold, but after James died the property was forfeit for non-payment of lease charges. That is when John and Jane Eaton acquired the property. The prominent hill on their land came to be known locally as Eaton’s Hill, and when subdivision occurred in 1972, the name was formally gazetted for the area. This was not inappropriate for the name Eaton, in its English derivation, means riverside land. Cash’s name is continued in the area by Cash’s Crossing, once a popular picnic spot on the South Pine River.       

Ebbw Vale

The suburban area of Ipswich and the colliery gained their name from Ebbw Vale, a town in the South of Wales. During the 19th century, coal mining there led to the erection of huge steel works. But with their closure, this Welsh town has undergone another transformation to become a university town. Its Welsh name is Glynebwy, the valley of the horse river.       

Edens Landing

The origin of the name had nothing to do with Adam and Eve, nor with any television program, but had much to do with Henry Eden who ran a ferry service across the Logan River to the German settlement at Bethania Pocket back in the 1860s. He later made his fortune felling and hauling out cedar from the Northern Rivers area of New South Wales.    

Eidsvold   

We are used to seeing English and Scottish names on our maps, even Welsh and Irish, but a Norwegian place name transplanted to this part of the world is a rarity. Yet in the name of Eidsvold, a town which was named after the original station holding, we have the reproduction of a Norwegian place name. And the family which lies behind this unusual event is an unusual family that had a considerable effect on the opening up of Queensland to European settlement. This was the Archers. The family were Scottish, but transferred the centre of their family activities and business operations to the estate of Tolderodden, near Laurvig, Norway, in 1826. The brothers, Charles and Thomas Archer, named their run Eidsvold after the Norwegian village where that nation’s constitution had been passed into law.     

Eight Mile Plains

Cobb and Co. set up a changing station for their horses eight miles along the bush track from the One Mile Swamp (Woolloongabba), and so the settlement that grew up around it became known as Eight Mile Plains from as far back as the 1860s, but in 1837 Commandant Cotton in correspondence to the Colonial Secretary made reference to a sheep station at the Eight Mile plain, 20 miles by land from Brisbane and 32 up the Brisbane River.     

Eildon Hill    

Eildon comes from the name given to three hills near Melrose, in Scotland, the Roman name of which was Trimontium and a plaque nearby today proclaims, ‘Here once stood the fort of Trimontium built by the troops of Agricola in the first century AD abandoned at least twice by the Romans and ultimately lost by them after fully one hundred years of frontier warfare.’     

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