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Coombabah
Coombabah in the Gold Coast area either means home of turtles or a pocket of
land.
Coomera
Alexander McLeay, who had arrived in Sydney the previous year to
take up the position of Colonial Secretary, must have been delighted by Captain
Logan's report dated 24 May, 1827. Patrick Logan, while on one of his
exploratory expeditions, had come across another considerable river to the south
of Brisbane and advised that he had taken the liberty of naming it the McLeay.
However soon after his term in office came to an end in 1837 McLeay's name was
taken away from the river and the name of a London cartographic company,
Arrowsmith, which had published many maps of NSW, was substituted at the
suggestion of the surveyor Robert Dixon. But that name did not gain popularity.
The Aboriginal name was to gain enduring recognition and consequently the
settlement which grew up by the river assumed the same name. It may derive from kumera
kumera, the name of a particular kind of fern that grew in the area, or, as
some say, it may have referred to a particular species of wattle. The early
settler, Charles Binstead , maintained that Kumera was the Aboriginal
name for the river.
A township on the southern banks of the river was called Ferry
Crossing until the railway gave the name of Coomera to the train station there.
For a time there were two settlements known as Coomera - Coomera (Lower) and
Coomera (Upper). The school at Coomera Lower only changed to Coomera State
School in 1900.
Coominya
The name means water view and was developed from the Aboriginal Kung-i-nya.
This referred to the visibility of lagoons from the railway station and
township. The lagoons have since been drained. It was formerly called
Bellevue after the Bellevue cattle station that it served.
Coonowrin
This, one of the Glasshouse Mountains, is also called Crookneck. An
Aboriginal story tells of Coonowrin being clubbed by his father, Tibrogargan,
for not looking after his mother, Beerwah, when the sea was rising. The blow
left Coonowrin with a permanently crooked neck. It is derived from coonong-warrong
or kudna-warun, crooked neck.
Cooper's Plains
Place names sometimes undergo changes so that an original
reference is hidden behind the present day terminology. Coopers Plains is one
such place. It was named after Dr Henry Cowper, the first Australian-trained
medical practitioner. He came to Brisbane penal settlement in September 1825, a
year before the hospital was built.
Although he acted as a lay reader of Anglican services, he had a reputation
for being uncouth, ill-tempered and quarrelsome and was a heavy drinker and
smoker, greatly disliked by his fellow officers. He stayed in the settlement for
seven years until he was discharged from the army after breaking into the female
prisoners quarters while on a drunken spree with some companions one night. Born
in Drypool, Yorkshire, 1800, he
was the son of Rev. W. Cowper who settled in Sydney. For all his faults, he was
conscientious in his work, and Captain Logan named the agricultural outstation
on Oxley Creek, somewhat to the west of the present Coopers Plains, after him.
Cooran
From guran meaning tall trees or Moreton Bay ash.
Cooroibah (Lake Cooroibah)
Place of possums.
Cooroy
Mt Cooroy's original name was Coorooey, from the Aboriginal
word kurui - possum . The town got its name from the mountain.
Coorparoo
The area was named by the local residents at a meeting, 22 March,
1875, believing it was Aboriginal for gentle dove. In the Cateehil dialect,
Cooparoo-jaggin was the name of a tribal area in South Brisbane. The
name represents the sound of a cooing dove.
Cootharaba
This was the Aboriginal name for the lake. It meant
place where the wood used in making notched or studded clubs could be found.
Cooyar
The town was named after the Aboriginal tribe that lived in the
area. Land was first issued to D. Archer & Co in 1847 and the town was
surveyed by E. Warakar in 1902.
Corinda
The Corinda holding was taken up by J.W.Raven, 27 June, 1863, but
the property, named after another in the Mitchell district in Queensland, is
also linked to the name of Sir Arthur Palmer. In the 1870s it was owned by a
company in which he held an interest. The name is of Aboriginal origin, but what
it means is not know..
Arthur Hunter Palmer, born in Armagh, Ireland, arrived in Sydney 1838. He
managed grazing properties belonging to Henry Dangar for 23 years and then
started building his own pastoral empire. He was a Member of the Legislative
Assembly from 1866 to 1881, and for nearly four of those years was Premier. He
was a member of the Legislative Council from 1881 until his death in 1898. Apart
from Corinda he occupied some of the other great houses around Brisbane
at one time or another, notably Fernberg and Oakwal. He died at
his Toowong home, Eastern Grey, after some years of painful arthritis and
after weathering accusations in relation to the financial mismanagement of the
Queensland National Bank of which he was a director.
The Railway Department at first simply referred to the rail junction as the
South Brisbane Railway Junction, but W.H.Hassell who surveyed the estate for
development suggested the Corinda name for the suburb.
Cornubia
The Taylor family in the 1920s called their property Cornubia
Park, but when members of the public used to arrive for picnics thinking that it
was parkland the owners, the Jessens, in 1934 dropped the word Park from the
name. It was sold to a developer in 1956.
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