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Sanctuary Cove The Sanctuary Cove development was officially opened in 1988, the bi-centennial year of white settlement in Australia, but the area had formerly been called Hope Island. Hope Island was named after Captain Louis Hope who was granted 1800 acres at the mouth of the Coomera River in 1867. Very conscious of being a son of the Fourth Earl of Hopetoun, he lived like an aristocrat whether in his house at Ormiston or on his other property at Kilcoy. He served on the Queensland Legislative Council for twenty years. Since he planted sugarcane on his Ormiston property in 1865 and worked it with kanaka labour he is regarded as a founder of the Queensland sugar industry. He sold his Coomera land holdings in 1882 and returned to England. Sandgate The area which the Aboriginal people called Warra, meaning an open sheet of water, did not develop until nearly thirty years after settlement began and then the motivation for commencing settlement had more to do with security and emergency services than with recreation. After the Thomas King was wrecked, 17 April, 1852, the survivors landed at Double Island Point whence both Captain J.H. Walker and a sailor by the name of Sherry set off to walk to Brisbane. They arrived separately at Toorbul but then got lost trying to travel together on from there to Brisbane. They were rescued by the Toorbul Aboriginal people. The white community around Brisbane was aghast at the possibility that two of their own kind could have died so close to the settlement without their knowing anything about it, and people agitated for a beach outpost to be established to the north. Sandgate, deriving its hame from Sandgate in Kent, England, was surveyed. It was proclaimed a town, 29 April, 1880, but it really boomed as a fashionable seaside place for the elite of South East Queensland when the railway line was opened in 1882. Sandy Cape Cook’s descriptive name has stuck. Scarborough The peninsula known as Humpybong or Redcliffe experienced a land boom in the 1880s fed by a growing desire for holidays by the sea. For a hundred years the idea of going to the seaside for one’s health had been gaining ground in England, and, when the peninsula was opened up by sub-division, names of English seaside resorts were used in its marketing. This development was sparked off by an expectation that a railway line would soon be built to the area. The development at the northern end was initiated by the building of the large Scarborough Hotel in an almost uninhabited part of the coast. It was named after Scarborough in Yorkshire, the name of which comes from the Old Norse language meaning a hill by a gap. Scarness Today part of the City of Hervey Bay, this seaside resort was at one time known as Scarborough. Seven Hills The real estate agent, R.G.Oates, said that the area reminded him of the seven hills of Rome. Seventeen Mile Rocks The suburban area known as Seventeen Mile Rocks got its name from the rocks of that same name in the Brisbane River nearby. They were so named because they were seventeen miles upstream from Brisbane Town. The waterways provided the main means of transport in the early days of white settlement, but these rocks were a risk to navigation. In June, 1842, the captains of two paddle-steamers held a race to see who could get to Redbank first. Captain Cape in the Sovereign was ahead of Captain Chambers in the Edwards when his vessel hit one of the rocks and the race had to be abandoned. However a channel was charted through the rocks and the river continued to be used by vessels drawing up to 2.13 metres. But the Swallow of the Bremer Steam Navigation Company was wrecked there in 1855. In 1863 John Petrie built an island of stone blocks in the river in carrying out his contract to remove the rocks and deepen the channel. This island was removed just over a hundred years later when further deepening of the channel was carried out. Severn River This river was named after the English Severn River some time before the 1851 survey. Severnlea The name is formed from a combination of Severn, from the River Severn, and Lea being a reference to C. A. Lee of Beverley landholding. Shailer Park The Shailer family’s Queensland story starts with the arrival of Francis, Catherine and their children at Maryborough in 1865. In the following year they moved to the Logan where they grew cotton, and later maize and sugarcane. When his first wife died leaving him with nine young children he married another Catherine, and by her had another five children. For a time he taught school at the Slack’s Creek School. He was the first clerk of the Tingalpa Divisional Board, the local authority of the time, and worked for the development of the Beenleigh Agricultural Society. He died in 1909 at the age of ninety-three. The present Shailer Park occupies part of his original holding. Place Names of South East Queensland home page
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