Place Names of South-East Queensland

  

 

Taabinga

From dha-bengga, place of the jumping ants.

Tabragalba

The Aboriginal name means a place of nulla nulla relics.  The surveyor, Robert Dixon, was the first to take out a pastoral lease for this area. He called it Burton Vale. This name was later changed to Tamborine , then Tabragalba was split off from Tamborine 1845. When it was compulsorily cut up for closer settlement in the 1870s De Burgh Persse and family bought up nearly all of the blocks. In 1905 he put the first section of Tabragalba Estate up for auction and then the second section in 1923.

Taigum

Cabbage Tree Creek was known to the Aboriginal tribespeople of the area as Taigum. 

Talgai

Aboriginal origin, fire, or dead trees.

Tallebudgera

English names or Aboriginal names?  There has been something of a tussle between the two schools of thought. Sometimes it is the English name which has stuck, other times it is the Aboriginal. Tallebudgera Creek retains its Aboriginal name, believed to mean a place for good fish, in spite of the attempt by Robert Dixon to have it known as the River Perry. This surveyor had a distinct bias against Aboriginal names so named it after the Deputy Surveyor-General of the time, Samuel Augustus Perry. However from the time of the first permanent white settlers in the area in the 1870s it has been known as Tallebudgera. This name does not seem to have belonged to the local Aboriginal dialect, but to that of a tribe around Sydney, so was probably given to the stream by white timbergetters trying to use Aboriginal words they had learnt in the south.

Poor Samuel Perry. He worked for twenty-four years in a very strained relationship under a cantankerous and difficult boss, Sir Thomas Mitchell, until he resigned in ill-health and retired to Kiama where both he and his wife, Caroline, died within a few months of each other, less than a year after his retirement. And he even had his river taken off him!

Edmund Harper, English migrant, timer better, selector of land at Gilston, friend of the local Aboriginal people whose language he learnt, built a wharf at the mouth of Little Tallebudgera Creek where Wharf Street, Surfers Paradise is today.  

Tallegalla

A tallegalla is a scrub turkey and the Postal Receiving Office opened in 1876 in the Rosewood Scrub was given this name because of the presence of many tallegalla in the area.  

Tamborine

There are at least six different forms of Aboriginal word that this name is supposed to come from. They are said to mean the place of yams or the place of lime trees. 

Tanah Merah

While the Byrne Harts originally hailed from England they had spent some years in Malaysia, and when they acquired property in this area they gave it a Malaysian name meaning red earth. After the Second Word War the name came to be used of the area generally.  

Tanawha

This area in the Sunshine Coast hinterland is supposed to carry the name of a mythical New Zealand monster.

Tandora

William Henry White was the first owner of the Tandora property in the Maryborough district. It is  said to refer to it a dead end, the only way in is the only way out.

Tara

The name is said to mean a flat covered with gumtree box.  

Tarampa, Mount Tarampa

The name is of Aboriginal origin and means place of wild lime trees.  The Tarampa run was taken up in 1847.  

Taringa

The name is made up of two Aboriginal words: tarau  meaning stones, and nga  meaning made up of. Together they mean, place of stones. The name was given to the station when the railway line was built.  

Tarome

The name is of Aboriginal origin. It was the name of an early licensed holding. 

Tarong

Meaning of name is given as "Dead branch". 

Taroom

The camp site near the Dawson River was known as Bonners Knob, but when the post office was established (1856) the name was changed to Taroom, said to be Aboriginal for pomegranate. 

Tarragindi

Many people assume that Tarragindi is Aboriginal in origin, but in fact it comes from a Melanesian language. Tarragindi Tussaroni was a Loyalty Islander brought over to work on the canefields of Queensland, but he ran away from his employer. He was found by Alfred Foote of the Ipswish firm, Cribb and Foote, and he came to work for the Foote family and their relatives, the Grimes. W.D.Grimes named his new hosue on a hill near Sandy Creek after his kanaka employee when Tarragindi said that his name meant camp on a hill. 

Taylor Range

For a time this spur from the D'Aguilar Range carried two names. Maps of the 1820s show both the names of Glenmoriston and Taylor associated with it, but it was the name of Sir Herbert Taylor which came to be permanently commemorated by it.   



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