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Moorooka
The name is Aboriginal, but
there is no evidence to suggest that the local Aboriginal people called
the area by this name. However, it is thought to refer to Toohey
Mountain which looked like a big nose. One meaning of Moorooka is big
nose. It possibly also meant ironbark. But the suburb of Moorooka
largely occupies land that was known to the whites in early days at
Pegg's Paddock.
Morayfield
George Raff of Brisbane bought some of the land held by the failed Caboolture Cotton Company and called it
Moray Field although it was often writtan as Morayfields. Eventually, from 1881, it became
Morayfield. The neighbouring property was owned by the ex-military man, Captain Whish.
Morayfield was derived from Raff's native Morayshire in Scotland.
Raff
employed kanakas and grew sugar here. The Rev.J.D.Lang commended him on
his humane treatment of the islanders. For nearly twenty years rum was
produced on the property.
His wife Harriet was the
daughter of a retired missionary he met while working in the Gippsland
area in the years soon after his migration to Australia in 1839.
After their move to Brisbane in 1851 he became a leading businessman
who worked strongly for the separation off of the new colony,
Queensland. The house they built at New Farm they called
Moraybank and it was the centre for their happy family and
social life up until Harriet's death in 1879, but when George married a
forty-year-old widow with a family of her own most of his seven sons
became somewhat estranged from him. He died in 1889 at the age of
74.
Moreton Island
The Ngugu who lived on the
island prior to the coming of Europeans called it Mulgumpin or
something like that. It meant a strange fish.
Lieutenant James Cook, HMS
Endeavour, 17 May, 1770, named a shallow bay on the eastern side
of the island Moreton Bay and the cape nearby Cape Moreton after James
Douglas, Earl of Morton, the Past-President of the Royal Society in
England. The present spelling was introduced when John Hawkesworth
published the account of Cook's voyage in 1773.
Lord Morton's
ownership of the Orkney and Shetland Islands brought him some publicity
when it was contested and he was assaulted, but he eventually sold
these islands to the north of Scotland. With his wife and child he
spent three months in the French Bastille in 1746, However he is best
known for his work in astronomy and his promotion of science. He was
very much involved in the program to make observations of the transit
of the planet Venus which resulted in Cook being sent to Tahiti.
Cook
did not realize that the cape was on an island. It was Matthew Flinders
who made that discovery in 1799, and he named the island. John
Bingle in the
Sally was the first to refer to the large bay on the western
side of the island as Morton Bay using Cook's original
spelling.
Morningside
Place names sometimes have
their origin in marketing strategies. Moringside is one of these. It
was coined in the 1880s for the marketing of a large subdivision as
Morningside Estate on the eastern or morning side of the city. It also
is the name of a town in Scotland.
Mothar Mountain
Mothar is said to have been the
Aboriginal word for a white man and that they gave it that name because a white
man was found there.
Mount Alford
This rural district was named after Thomas Alford, the manager of
Coochin Coochin station in the early 1870s.
Mount Barney
Lieutenant-Colonel George
Barney, Royal Engineers, came to the colony of New South Wales in 1835
with his wife and three children, and, except for a short stay back in
England, made Australia his home for the rest of his life. At one time
he was given the task of setting up a convict settlement in North
Australia, but the attempt to do this at Port Curtis was a failure. He
held several positions in New South Wales including that of being the
Surveyor-General who succeeded Sir Thomas Mitchell.
Captain
Logan mistook Mt Barney for Cook's Mt Warning until, 1828, when he
climbed it and saw Mt Warning from its slopes. This was on the
expedition by Logan, Cunningham and Fraser during which it was named Mt
Lindesay. There was a later re-allocation of names to these peaks so
that what had been called Lindesay became Barney, and what had at first
been called Hooker became Lindesay.
Mount Beppo
The name is supposed to be derived from
the Yuggera language word bippo being their word for mountain. It is not
however in the Yuggera language area, but may have been used by an Aboriginal
person accompanying one of the early explorers out from the Moreton Bay
settlement.
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