Boodua

The name of this Darling Downs farming district comes from an Aboriginal language and refers to a hawk.


Boonah

The town of Boonah lies on part of what was originally taken up as the Dugandan  run in 1844. In the 1880s, Adolph, Levi and Max Blumberg opened a small store on the rise where the town is now situated. The town was first gazetted under the name of Dugandan, but the high part of town was still known locally as Blumbergville.

However when the railway came through, 1887, the local people suggested a new name for the station. They called it Boonah using the Aboriginal word for the red bloodwood tree (Eucaluptus gummifera), a name the Aborigines used of a location near Munbilla, well to the north of the present Boonah. The name Dugandan continues to be used for the area south of the town, although severe flooding in 1887 put an end to any idea that it might rival Boonah as a town centre. It did however become the site for two important timber mills.  

Boonarga    

This railways station between Dalby and Miles was named after the Aboriginal bunar, bloodwood tree.

Boondall

The Railway Department named the station, 22 December, 1923, using an Aboriginal word it believed referred to a crooked or twisted creek. It may however refer to the cunjevoi plant.  Tom Petrie said that the Aboriginal name for the area was Tumkaiburr. 

Boondooma Dam

The dam on the Burnett River was completed in 1980 to provide water for the Tarong power station and for irrigation. Its name comes from the Boondooma homestead built by the Lawson brothers in 1846. When restoration work was undertaken on the old homestead during the 1970s it was discovered that the house had been built to metric measurements rather than the commonly used imperial measurements. This was probably because the builder was Flemish and he worked in the system with which he was most familiar. 

Booroobin

The name for this district near Maleny means place of black possum

Booroodabin

Burudabin meant place of oaks.

Booval

The suburb took its name from Booval House, erected 1854, by George Faircloth, bank manager, and later occupied by Councillor Harry Ferrett. There are different views on the origin and meaning of the name. One view is that Faircloth named it after a place in England and that its derivation probably went back to the French beau val, fine valley. The other view is that it was of Aboriginal origin. If so, several interpretations are given to its meaning: frilly lizard, initiation rites or place where boys are initiated. In the 1860s there was a Booval Cotton Company. 

Boreen Point

Boreen is not a local word, but comes from the Aboriginal tribes around Moreton Bay. It referred to the pathway that led between the two boras in the kippa-ring.

Boronia Heights

Originally known as Logan Ridges this suburb of Logan City was named in 1991 after the name given to a housing development estate there.

Bottle and Glass

There are a number of stories told as to how the Bottle and Glass Road got its name. One says that there was a bottle and glass carved into a tree at the top of the steep pinch, another that there actually was a bottle and glass left there, while another says that Bottle and Glass were two horses used to help the regular five in the Cobb and Co coach team climb the steep stretch of road. The Bottle and Glass Mountain in nearby.


Bowen Hills

The name of Queensland's first governor is perpetuated in the area of Brisbane now known as Bowen Hills. His name was also given to a wooden bridge across Breakfast Creek in 1862, consequently to the road which gained its name from the bridge.

Sir George Bowen was what you might call a 'hands-on' governor. While he got parliamentary institutions set up as soon as he could, he had to make autocratic decisions to get the whole thing up and running.

Earlier in his life he had gained distinction as a student of the classics and was twice president of the union at Oxford. He was an ardent supporter of the English politician, W.E.Gladstone, and through him came to be appointed to the new governorship in 1859. It was not the last time he was to serve the British Empire as governor for after his term in Queensland he served as governor successively of New Zealand, Victoria, Mauritius and Hong Kong.

He has been called self-opinionated, obstinate and long winded. Some of his dreams like the establishment of a great commercial centre at Somerset on Cape York or the immigration of Indians to work as labourers in Queensland came to nothing. He had running battles with the Roman Catholic Bishop Quinn and with the radical democrat, Judge Lutwyche.

Sir George was not the only member of the family to have left behind place names as a memento of their sojourn in this part of the world. The names of his wife, Roma Diamantina, are known in the west of the state today.

He was 38 years old when he arrived in the newly created colony, and stayed for eight years.

One of the early houses to be built at Bowen Hills was Beerwah which John Petrie named after the mountain which he had climbed with his father as a lad.



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