Place Names of South-East Queensland

Templin

Templin was named by W.F.Hoenhaus after his birthplace in the Uckermark area north of Berlin. In the late 1870s a number of families migrated from this area in Germany and took up land on the Teviot Range. When, in 1892, a school was opened in response to their request the name which they suggested for the school was also adopted.

James Gibbon named his property Teneriffe after the town in the Canary Islands.

Alfred Tennyson, the clergyman's son who came to be England's leading poet for at

least half of the 19th century gave expression to the experience and feelings of his generation as no one else was able to do. As a result he became Lord Tennyson. He belonged so much to the Victorian Age though that later generations have not appreciated his work nearly to the extent as did his contemporaries.

Imagination seem to be triggered into action by the shapes of clouds, of stalactites and stalagmites, of rocks and trees, and of the outline formed by mountains and hills so that people see familiar objects in them. Tent Hill probably got its name that way. Tent Hill was the name given to one of the early runs taken up by the first settlers, and its name was probably suggested by the shape of a hill up behind the head station. Although there is another suggestion that it was where the police erected their tents while investigating the death of a shepherd at the hands of Aboriginal tribesmen in the early 1840s.

This creek, which flows into the Logan River, has been given the name of a Scottish stream, a name which, in its origins, is related to other river names like Taff, Tamar and Thames and meant the dark one, or simply, the river.

It was timber that brought the first white men to the area, and the felled logs were dragged or rafted to a sawmill set up in the 1860s on the shores of Lake Donella. The timber was shipped out down the Noosa River from there to Brisbane. So a name meaning dead wood or place of dead logs seems appropriate.

The early growth was related to the Gympie gold rush. People came in through this port to make the overland journey to the gold fields. Some referred to it as The Short Cut because it offered the quickest route to get there from Brisbane. In 1870, three years after Nash's discovery of gold, it was declared a town. Ten years later it had already begun to lay claim to being a holiday resort as gold miners came back here for a break.

Indirectly, of course, the town was named after the state in the United States of America, but more directly it gained its name from Texas Station , the largest landholding in the area. After floods in 1890 the town was moved two kilometres north of its original site.

This railway junction was named by the Railway Department, 23 May, 1910, using an Aboriginal word for barramundi.

Several areas around the state were thrown open to closer settlement after the First World War by being offered to returned soldiers. The Gap was one of these. Forty-two ex-soldiers were settled on nine-acre (3.25 hectares) blocks in an area that had first been settled in the 1860s. The district derived its name from a gap in the Taylor Ranges.

The railway station was given this name by the Queensland Railways because it was the highest point on the Warwick-Warrangarra railway line.

Thompson Estate

This area of Brisbane was named after a Scottish migrant who settled in the area

George Thorne was more associated with Ipswich than with these area of Thornside and Thornlands, but it is here that his name is preserved prominently on the map of South East Queensland.

George Thorn came to Australia as a sergeant in the 4th (King's Own) Regiment in 1832. He served as an orderly to Governor Bourke and was involved in the first survey of Melbourne, but when his regiment was posted to India he quit, joined the Commissariat Department and married Jane. They were sent to Moreton Bay in 1838 where the Commandant, Patrick Logan, put him in charge of the small Limestone settlement.

When the quarry and kiln closed he stayed on in Ipswich and ran the first hotel there. He later sold it to set up a store and bought up land when the Ipswich town lots went on sale. He kept on acquiring land, but not only in and around Ipswich, but in Toowoomba, Moggill, and around Cleveland which many thought would become the main port for the squatters. It was from his land interests here that the name came to be incorporated into the names of Thornlands and Thornside. 

He was a prominent Ipswich citizen, well-respected in the growing community for his honesty, humour and public involvement. There was in his family a love of practical jokes. Four of his sons served in the Queensland Parliament, one of them, George Henry, filled several ministries and was Premier for some months. His daughter, Jane, married the businessman, George Harris, and their grandson eventually became Governor General of Australia in the person of Lord Casey.  


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