Heathwood
Postcode: 4110
Heathwood is an outer suburb of Brisbane, Australia. It is 18 km south of the CBD. Heathwood was named after an early settler in the district.
This region was the home of the Yerongpan clan of Oxley Creek who spoke the Yaggera dialect of the Turrbal language. Lost cedar cutters, Pamphlet, Finnegan and Parsons were the first white men to make observations of these people in 1823. They found two aboriginal canoes tied at the mouth of Oxley Creek (which they named Canoe Creek) for use by those wishing to cross the creek when travelling along the south bank of the Brisbane River.
In 1828 Cunningham and Fraser noted huts in the vicinity of Oxley or Inala. The only evidence of a bora ring is at the end of Kertes Road Camira on the banks of Sandy Creek, which is just outside this study area.
By 1839 it was noted that an aborigine living near Oxley Creek was dying of chronic pulmonary consumption. Tuberculosis and other diseases were rapidly reducing the Aboriginal population of the region. Smallpox had also taken its toll from as early as 1831.
The establishment of the penal colony’s cattle station at Cowper’s (Coopers) Plains from 1824 probably led to the local aborigines either moving away or tolerating the intrusion, as it was reported in 1840 that there had been no animals lost to aboriginal destruction since the time of the establishment of grazing for the penal settlement in the areas from Limestone (Ipswich) Redbank and Coopers Plains.
Heathwood was named after an early settler in the district. The region was originally part of the Archerfield Station, which was owned by the Durack family in the 1880s. The original homestead site lies within the Forest Lake development.