Place Names of South-East Queensland

  

 

Jacobs Well

There are a couple of stories about how Jacob's Well got its name. One is that Jacob was an engineer on a steamer working between Brisbane and Southport when they ran out of water for the boilers. Jacob went ashore, dug in the sand, and found good water. The well was then cased with timber and used by various boating people.  The other story is that,  in the early 1800s, J. C. Appel Snr with his men was attacked by Aborigines and while they were struggling home with one of their number badly wounded they noticed a wet patch on the sand and on digging found good, clear water.  Regrading this discovery as an act of God's grace, Appel named the well they dug after the biblical well of the same name.

Jamboree Heights

This was the site for the Eighth Australian Scout Jamboree held December 1967. 

Jandowae

The Aboriginal name for a waterhole there.

Jeebropilly

This area near Ipswich derives its name from a Yuggera (Aboriginal tribe) word translated as flying squirrel gully.

Jimbour

The name, derived from Gimba meaning lush grass,  was given by Richard Todd Scougall when he selected the run in 1841. Scougall sold to Thomas Bell and sons, migrants from Kildare, Ireland. 

Jindalee

The name which has been is use from the 1960s is an Aboriginal word plucked out of a published list of Aboriginal words and means bare hills. It did not belong to any local dialect. 

Jondaryan

The waterholes were known by the Aboriginal people around the Condamine River as Yondaryar, meaning a long way off. When Henry Dennis sold the initial depasturing lease to Charles Coxen in 1842 it was called Gundarnian. However the pastoral property came to be known as Jondaryan, so when the railway came in 1868 the township that developed there was also called Jondaryan. It developed as an important centre around the railhead, but declined after 1912 when the branch line was constructed out from Oakey rather than from Jondaryan. The name was retained for the newly constituted shire in 1913. 

Jumpinpin

This was the Aboriginal name for the area which was an important meeting place for tribes which gathered there to eat the sweet roots of the wynnum (breadfruit) treeJumpin-pin was the name for those honeyed roots.  


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