Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to congratulate my home city of Ipswich on the 150th anniversary of being proclaimed a municipality. I congratulate the Ipswich City Council for its commemorative council meeting on 12 April 2010. Ipswich is the oldest provincial municipality in Queensland. It could and should have been the capital of Queensland. Long before Europeans arrived, the Ipswich area was home to the Jagera, Yuggera and Ugarapul clans, who managed the land and waters in a sustainable and reverent way.

Explorers John Oxley, Allan Cunningham and Lieutenant Butler first spotted the mouth of the Bremer River on a trip up the Brisbane River in September 1824. John Oxley is thought to have named the Bremer River in honour of Admiral Sir John Bremer, who sailed the HMS Tamar to northern Australia and established a settlement at Port Essington. Ipswich was first called Limestone Station by Captain Patrick Logan who discovered hills of limestone during a trip up the Bremer River in 1827. A team of convicts were then sent out to begin work at Limestone Hill. There are recorded conflicts between the Aboriginal clans of the area and the new arrivals.

Ipswich was named by Governor George Gipps, who was the Governor of New South Wales. The first town plan of Ipswich was drawn up by surveyor Henry Wade in 1842 and clearly showed that ‘Ipswich’ was to be the name for the new city. In 1860, after Queensland became a colony, Ipswich was proclaimed a municipality with a population of 3,000 people. The local industries included cotton, sugar, dairy farming, vineyards, woollen mills and coalmining. On a walk through the city centre at that time, you would have seen tailors, blacksmiths, milliners, watchmakers, grocers, cobblers, saddlers, coachbuilders and candle and soap makers. The 1880s saw coalmining grow to a significant industry in Ipswich, attracting migrants from England and Wales to join German migrants who settled in the Ipswich and West Moreton area. Steam engines were used in boats, trains, mills and works and needed coal as fuel. Coalmines were located in suburbs like Blackstone, Dinmore, New Chum, Goodna, Redbank, Collingwood Park and many other places.

Ipswich was the birthplace of rail in Queensland. The first line was launched in 1865, and it ran between Ipswich and Grandchester. As far back as 1914 the railway workshops employed 1,500 workers. The population has ebbed and flowed, but Ipswich has grown and in 2010 it covers 1,090 square kilometres and has 6,000 heritage sites. It is the fastest-growing area in Queensland—with five per cent population growth, 166,000 people, 115 different ethnic backgrounds and 84 languages. It is a fast-growing area. Congratulations to Ipswich on its sesquicentenary.