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Mapleton T. D. and W. J. Smith settled
in the area in 1889, and when, a few years later, a meeting of the
settlers was called to select a name for the settlement
previously called Luton Vale or simply Blackall range, W.J. suggested
Mapleton. The name of Marburg reminds us
that German settlers took up land in what was called the Rosewood Scrub
in the 1870s. It was named by
J.L.Frederick, an early storekeeper, after Marburg in Germany. Prior to
that the district had been known as Sally Owens' Plains. During the
First World War the name was changed to Townshend after General
Townshend of the British army, but after the war the residents urged
that the German name be reinstated and so it was in 1920. The name for this beachside area between Maroochydore and Coolum is made up from the first syllables of those two names. Marcus Beach (See Peregian) One of the
reasons for the 1880s land boom on the Redcliffe Peninsula was that the
area was free of mangroves. This made it a more attractive place to
develop as a seaside resort than some other places around Moreton Bay.
Add to this that surfing was not regarded by the upper crust as the
proper thing to do. Bathing in still water was preferred. Then when the
railway line was opened to Sandgate in 1882 it was anticipated that the
next area on the northside to be serviced by rail would be Humpybong. The thing
that struck Europeans about swans in Australia was that they were
black. They were used to seeing white swans. What struck the Aboriginal
people most was that they had orange-red beaks. So the Aboriginal word
for the black swan used by the tribes around the early Moreton Bay
settlement was
muru-kutchi, sometimes written as marutchi, meaning red-bill. Maroon John Rankin, the first
settler on this run, called it Melcombe, but when in the hands of Captain Robert
Collins and his son James Carden Collins the name Maroon, derived from the
Aboriginal Wahl-maroon was used. The name Wahl-maroon was used by the
Aboriginal people for what is now called Mount Ballow. In the 1860s
Europeans called another mountain, Mount Toowoonan, Mount Maroon, but
eventually they used the name, meaning sand goanna, for the mountain that now
bears this name. Violet Marsden, whose name came to be given to the area, was active in the Kingston Park Progress Association when this area, formerly regarded as part of Kingston, was being given a new name. Mary River Europeans first called this
river Wide Bay River, but in 1847 it was officially named Mary after the wife of
Sir Charles Fitzroy, Governor of New South Wales, who had been accidentally
killed that year. Surveyor
Burnett sailed up what was then called the Wide Bay River in 1847 and
expressed his opinion that it would one day become an important port.
Mary, wife of the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Charles Fitzroy, was
killed in that same year when the horses drawing her carriage bolted
and it collided with a tree. When Burnett's report came in, the
Governor decided the river should be renamed after his wife. So it
became the Mary River. The Aboriginal people had known it
by several names: Moonabula, Mooraboocoola, Numabulla, Goodna and Yabon. |