Place Names of South-East Queensland

Harristown

Named after the Brisbane businessman,  George Harris

Harrisville

Twentv years separated the brothers, John and George Harris, but they set up in partnership as shipping agents in Brisbane in connection with the wool trade. When the older brother went off to London to look after the interests of the company there, George diversified and took the business into cotton growing among other activities. He married Jane, a daughter of George Thorn of Ipswich, and for some years owned Newstead House, but  he lost it in bankruptcy proceedings.

The Harris brothers opened a cotton gin on part of Robert Dunn's selection to handle the cotton coming off the Ipswich Agricultural Reserve. This land had been specially set aside in 1860 by the newly formed Queensland Government for the purpose of growing cotton when Briton's usual supply dried up due to the American Civil War. Other businesses established themselves nearby. The gin closed when the cotton-growing venture collapsed on the return of the United States to the cotton market, but the name of Harrisville lived on at the suggestion of Robert Dunn's youngest daughter. Her first suggestion was Harristown, but there already was a Harristown near Toowoomba, so her second choice was accepted. She later married Luke Wheeler Smith.  

Hawthorne

Hawthorne in Brisbane is named indirectly after Hawthorne in Melbourne. When the Baynes family moved from Victoria around 1875 they called their house here Hawthorne House.  The name then came to be used of the locality from the 1880s.

William Henry Baynes was born in England in 1833, the son of a butcher. He purchased a Brisbane butchery in 1859, then with his brothers established the Graziers' Butchering and Meat Export Company in 1880. This was liquidated in 1897, but they started up another business 1898. From 1878 to 1883 he was a member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly. They say that he grew hawthorn hedges on his property, another reason then for calling his place Hawthorne House.  

Hay's Inlet

It's Aboriginal name was Tungulba, meaning a place for fish-poison.

Heathwood

This area between Oxley Creek and Blunder Creek  was named after one of its early settlers.

Helensvale

The Helensvale railway siding served a sugar plantation of the same name around the end of the 19th century. The sugarcane was transported from there to the Nerang Central Mill for processing. Later the area was given over to dairying, but in the 1990s it was transformed into a residential area.     

Helidon

The town grew up around the railway station. The name came from one of the earliest runs taken up by squatters during the great land rush of the early 1840s. The run was originally spelt Hellidon after the town of that name in Northamptonshire, England.    

Hemmant

In the local Aboriginal dialect the area was known as Kuwirmandadu  and meant the place of the curlew (Petrie). The white people called it Hemmant after William Hemmant, a Brisbane businessman and politician.

Hemmant, son of a farmer at Whittlesey, Cambridge, England, was born 1838 and came to Australia when he was twenty-one. He worked as a miner at Ballarat for a while and then moved to Brisbane where he opened a drapery shop in partnership with Alexander Stewart. Their premises were destroyed in the great fire of 1864, but the business continued to prosper. He married Lucy Elizabeth Ground in 1866. They had ten children.

He opposed the squattocracy, served as an alderman on the Brisbane City Council for a couple of years, became Treasurer in Macallister's Government, but returned to England 1876 where he stirred up trouble over some supposedly fraudulent government contracts and became Queensland Agent-General. He sold his interest in the drapery firm, 1893. Died 1916.   

Hendra

The word Hendra comes from the Celtic languages, more particularly the Cornish, and in any of its forms - Hendra, Hendre or Hendref - refers to an established place of habitation. The name was chosen by Francis Curnow, Commissioner for Railways 1885-1889, when naming the station on the train line. He had in mind a particular spot in Cornwall.  

Heritage Park

Although the sub-division was originally called Heritage Woods it was gazetted in October 1991 as Heritage Park on the recommendation of the developers. 



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