Cabarlah
The meaning has been given as range or mountain view and as black
possum.
Cabbage Tree
The Cabbage Tree Palm, the locally used name for Livistona Australia, gave
its name to Cabbage Tree Creek in Brisbane and to Cabbage Tree Point on the Gold
Coast.
Caboolture
The area around the Caboolture River was called by the Brisbane
Aborigines, Kabul-tur, meaning the place of the carpet snakes because
these reptiles were plentiful in the area. The Bribie people also referred to it
as the place of carpet snakes, but the name in their language was Wonga-dum.
Carpet snakes were an important source of food for the Aboriginal people, and
the birds which excitedly gathered around a carpet snake would unwittingly lead
the hunters to their prey in the swamps or up in staghorn ferns or wherever they
were to be found.
The river was important for the opening up of the country to white
settlement. Timber getters floated red cedar logs down the river, settlers
arrived and ferried their supplies in by means of the river. The river gave its
name to a licensed grazing run, to a cotton company that fizzled, and ultimately
to the township which grew up as a supply and trading centre for the settlers in
the area.
Cadarga
This district north-north eat of Chinchilla gained its name from an early
pastoral lease.
Calamvale
James Calam owned much of the land in this part of the world in
the early 1900s. The name was officially gazetted in 1972.
Caloundra
The name comes from the Aboriginal Kalowen-ba meaning the
place of the beech trees. These were plentiful in the area before being cut out
by the timber getters.
The early story of white invasion is one of castaways and shipwrecks. The
first white men in the area were Pamphlett, Finnegan and Parsons, who set out
from Sydney to sail south to collect timber but ended up being blown north and
eventually landed on Moreton island. they thought they still had to travel in a
northerly direction to get back to Sydney, so they travelled up past the area
now known as Caloundra. Runaway convicts Graham and Bracefield must also have
been in the area some years later.
In 1863 a passenger on the migrant ship Queen of the Colonies died.
Captain Cairncross organized a party of fourteen to go ashore on Moreton Island
to bury the body, but they were caught in a storm on the way back to the ship
and were driven north overnight to come ashore on a beach that became Moffat
Beach at Caloundra. When they tried to re-launch the boat in an attempt to row
to Brisbane the boat was wrecked and Mr Bransfield, the grieving husband of the
dead woman, drowned. Eventually the rest were rescued by a search party sent out
from Brisbane.
The steam-driven merchant ship, the Dickey, was driven ashore in a
cyclone in 1893 leaving the wreck on the beach which adopted its name.
Andrew Petrie used his mother�s family name when naming Point Hutchison.
The Point Hutchison area came to be called Caloundra.
Cambooya
Christopher Rolleston, Commissioner of Crown lands, named his
headquarters, Cambooya, a name he learnt from the local Aboriginal
people. It is said to refer either to some kind of waterhole vegetation (reeds, rushes
or a small tuber have been suggested) or, on the other hand, a place
of many winds.
Cambroon
This district between Kenilworth and Conondale gets its name
from Cambroon Run, named in 1850 after an old Aboriginal who claimed that it was
part of his territory. He was said to be an expert tomahawk thrower.
Camp Hill
Although the name does not appear to have been used for the area
until the 1930s it dates back to the earlier days of travel. This area on the
hillside half-way between Brisbane and the Redlands was a convenient camping
spot, hence the name.
Camp Mountain
An 1872 application to the Board of Education for a school was
signed by farmers at the �mountain camp� as well as by folk from Samford and
the South Pine River area. It apparently referred to the area below the mountain
which has been known by both the names of Mt Daniel and Camp Mountain. It
probably got its name from a prospectors� camp there in the 1860s. Attempts at
gold mining continued into the 20th century.
Campbell's Plains
Named after Colin Campbell according to a publication by the
Southern and Western District Railway Historical Association.
Canning Downs
Allan Cunningham named this area after George Canning,
aide-de-camp to Governor Darling.
Cannon Hill
This name is the result of flights of fancy by Thornhill Weedon
who was the Government Statistician and Registrar-General. He thought that two
fallen gumtrees on the top of the rise on his property looked like a couple of
cannon poking out into the air, and so he gave this name to the hill. When the
Weedon family subdivided the land in the 1880s they marketed it under the name
of the Cannon Hill Estate, and so the name was passed on to the whole
suburb.
Canungra
The name, which in the Aboriginal language from which it was
borrowed meant a small owl, was given to the creek, along which the Christries
took up their selection around 1873. The township grew up around their place.
Capalaba
The name is an Aboriginal word meaning place of possum scrub.
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