Place Names of South-East Queensland

  

 

Binna Burra

A Brisbane businessman, W.M.L'Estrange, suggested the Aboriginal name Binna Burra for what had previously become known as Mt Roberts in the McPherson Range.  F.E.Roberts was one of the two surveyors who surveyed the border between New South Wales and Queensland after it was decided that the border should run along the top of the range. The Aboriginal people used the term Binna Burra in a general way to refer to the high plateau where white beech trees (Gmelina Leichardtii) grew in abundance. 

Birkdale

In England, Birkdale is a contraction of Valley of the Birches.  It is said that the name was given to this area in Queensland because the tea trees growing there were a bit like the English birches in appearance.

Birnam

There are two localities of this name in South East Queensland.  One within the Beaudesert Shire, the other in the Crows Nest Shire.  The origin of both seems to go back to Charles Fraser, the Colonial Botanist.  He mentions Birnam Hill in his journal for 31 July, 1828, and  J. G. Steel points out that Fraser was born at Blair Atholl near Birnam and Dunsinane in Perthshire, Scotland.  Birnam Hill is now known as Mt Dunsinane. Birnam near Crows Nest was first of all  the name given to the railway station.  It then became the name for the locality. 


Bishop Island

Bishop island was named after Captain A.G.F.Bishop of the Harbours and Marine Department. 


Blackall Range

Samuel Wesley Blackall became Governor of Queensland at the age of 59 after serving some years as governor in West Africa. This kindly and quietly spoken former member of the House of Commons was popular in Queensland where he refused to get embroiled in the local political crises of the time. He died in 1870 after only three years in office.

Conscious of his failing health he selected his own grave site when inspecting the proposed land for a cemetery at Toowong, and the elaborate memorial built over his grave was the first to be erected in the new cemetery.

The range was named a few years after his death, 1874, by surveyor  C. S. Bradbury while surveying a timber reserve there.


Blackbutt

The town of Blackbutt occupies part of what was once Taromeo run. Simon Scott who had come to Australia two years earlier and had overlanded several thousand sheep to Cressbrook in the Brisbane Valley during the previous year, selected Taromeo in 1842. After building his slab hut and other buildings, he returned to the south to bring his wife and two young children with him in 1847.

Because this part of the run was covered by dense scrub, it was of no use to the graziers, and in 1889 the owners of the time voluntarily surrendered it. The government then threw it open for closer settlement. The area was known simply as the Blackbutt Forest, and the name Blackbutt came to be adopted for a township which started to spring up there around the turn of the century. At first the name referred to the settlement now called Benarkin, but then it came to be applied to the town which now bears the name.  The establishment of a timber industry from 1903 saw it grown rapidly. The name of Blackbutt was officially bestowed on the town of that name in 1909 by Surveyor Munro. Blackbutt is a species of eucalyptus, Eucalyptus pilularis, which gets its common name from the rough, dark-coloured bark which remains well up the trunk.


Blackstone

This is one of the oldest suburbs of Ipswich, and it derives its name from the coal deposits which Lewis Thomas and his fellow Welshmen mined here.

Blanchview

It is said that the name was based on that of Ernest Blanchard who owned property in the locality.


Bli Bli

Believed to be derived from billai billai meaning swamp oak.  Casuarina glauca, or swamp oak, grows well in open forest near saltwater estuaries, the sort of country Bli Bli was.


Bongaree

Much has been said about European expansion in Australia being at the cost of Aboriginals as it undoubtedly was, but what is not always recognized is that white exploration would not have progressed as rapidly and successfully as it did without the assistance of Aboriginal people. Many of the explorers took with them a native Australian to assist in establishing contact with tribes they might meet along the way.

Way back near the beginning of European settlement, Matthew Flinders took with him on his travels an Aboriginal man by the name of Bongaree (or Bong-ree as some called him) from the Broken Bay area near Sydney. So this man was with Flinders and his boatload of sailors when the naval captain landed on the northern shores of what he, following James Cook, called Glass House Bay. Flinders did not realize that he was stepping ashore on an island - Bribie island. He though it was part of the mainland.

Things seemed to be going well in their encounter with the local Aboriginal people, 16 July, 1799, until Flinders thought his new-found acquaintances were taking too many liberties and he fired buckshot at one of them. Three other shots were fired. The point where this happened he marked on his chart as Point Skirmish. The name is still used of a point on Bribie Island, but now it refers to a different part of the island. What he called Point Skirmish is now South Point.

Bongaree, the man, was later given a military uniform by the governor of NSW and a seemingly endless supply of cocked hats.  He cut a strange figure ceremoniously welcoming new arrivals in Sydney Town with a flourish of his hat and a deep, respectful bow.  He wore a crescent-shaped brass plate suspended around his neck proclaiming him to be "Bungaree, King of the blacks" He died November 1830. 

After the jetty was built in 1912 for the Koopa and Doomba bringing visitors over from Brisbane and Redcliffe, a township was surveyed, and this township was given the name of Bongaree, now a popular seaside resort on the western side of Bribie Island. 


Bongeen

In its Aboriginal use it referred to a box forest.

Bonogin Valley

The origins of the name are not clear, but appear to derive from the Aboriginal boonow meaning red bloodwood.


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