Kenmore                                                                                                                               

Kenmore, meaning big headland in Gaelic, is the name of a Scottish town on Loch Tay to the west of Perth. The name was transported to Queensland when Andrew Todd named his property Kenmore Park. From the property came the name for the suburb.

Colin Campbell built an inn by Lock Tay in 1572, believed to be the oldest in Scotland, and then a later Campbell built a number of whitewashed cottages nearby allowing his tenants to live in them rent-free provided they kept them clean. This was the beginning of the Scottish Kenmore. Taymouth Castle was built there in the 19th century.    

Kent's Lagoon

Named after J. Kent who took up the Fassifern run.

Keperra                                                                                                                                      

There are several interpretations of this Aboriginal word : a ceremonial ground, a tomahawk, a young male.    

Kiamba

Geyambin, its root,  referred to black cockatoos in the Gubbi Gubbi language.

Kiels Mountain

The spelling has been changed, but it was named after Henry August Keil who settled on its slopes in 1880. 

Kilcoy                                                                                                          

The brothers, Evan and Colin Mackenzie, arrived in Sydney in September, 1840, to increase their fortune, and they followed the Leslies in the great land rush for the north in 1842. They called their property in the Upper Brisbane Valley, Kilcoy, after their ancestral home in Scotland.

Evan had been educated on the Continent and spoke several European languages. He is reputed to have built the first house in Ipswich. Two years after laying claim to the Kilcoy land he bought land at Kangaroo Point and established a boiling down works and a small settlement there for his workers. In that same year he married Sarah Parks of Londonderry. When his father died in 1845, he succeeded to the baronetcy, sold up and returned to Scotland where he became a magistrate. He travelled to America and other places and died in London in 1883.

Colin was less dominant than his elder brother and steadily developed his grazing interests until he returned to Scotland in 1857 to live on the independent means he had been able to amass for himself.

It was at Kilcoy station after Sir Evan left that the notorious poisoning of Aborigines occurred. Angered by the thefts of flour from the station someone laced some with arsenic and left it out where intruders could easily take it. Several Aboriginal people died as a result. It was not the only incident of this kind to occur in the times of early settlement in Australia, but it did gain considerable public attention. It appears that Colin Mackenzie was not at Kilcoy when it happened, and he pleaded his innocence.

The town came to adopt the name of the Mackenzies’ station, but it was at first known as Hopetown after Captain Louis Hope, another aristocratic landowner in the area.    

Kilkivan                                                                                                  

Kilkivan is one of those towns which got its name from the station property on which it was situated.. The station was pioneered by John David MacTaggart when, as a young man, he drove sheep across from Maryborough and settled there. He had come out to Australia to work for Ben Boyd of Twofold Bay, but wanted to get hold of some land for himself, so came north. He named the property after a town in his native Scotland.

The first township developed when gold was discovered by six New Zealanders. They called it West Coast Creek after the area of New Zealand that they came from. This alluvial gold ran out but the town shifted when Rise and Shine Reef was discovered nearby. The town was known as Mount Neurum for a while, but Kilkivan soon came to be preferred. The town relocated itself when the railway came through, re-forming around the train station, but when the line was extended in 1902 the town was moved to its present site.    

Killarney                                                                                                     

This Queensland town borrows the name of the Irish town which David Malouf says “its founders mean to honour and were piously homesick for”   -   Killarney in Kerry, Ireland ,where the name derives from the Celtic Cill Arne (church of the shoes).

King Island

Its Aboriginal name was Yerubin or Erobin. 

Kingaroy                                                                                                      

The town was named by C.R.Haly, owner of Taabinga Station. It seems that the name is derived from the Aboriginal word for red ant, kinjerroy, but some claim that it was named after an early settler by the name of King.   

Kingsholme

This area, forming much of what used to be Upper Ormeau, is named after James Murtha's property selected in 1869 and later owned by Sir Charles Holm. 

Kingsthorpe                                                                                                 

The township was originally known as Gowrie for it grew up as part of the original Gowrie Station. It was later known as Gowrie Crossing or as Gowrie Creek, but by 1905 the name had been changed to Kingsthorpe in honour of Colonel George King of Gowrie Station.   

Kingston                                                                                                       

The first settler here was James Trahey, but he did not stay long. It was Charles and Harriet Kingston who gave their name to the area. They arrived out from England in 1857 with two young children and lived at Redbank, Oxley, Eight Mile Plains and Tygum before building their first house here, a slab construction located on a slight rise above the flood levels. They called this place Oakwood. They experienced tragedy when one of their children aged one year and ten months drowned in a nearby creek, but they had a number of children and as their sons grew up and married they built their homes around them so that there came to be a cluster of Kingston homes on the property. As they prospered William and Harriet were able to take a trip back to England and on their return built the house they called Kingston House. Since this could be clearly seen from the railway line it became a prominent feature of the landscape. Charles died in 1904 and Harriet in 1911.   

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