Marburg (Queensland)
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Marburg is a small town in southeast Queensland with a population of 536. It is located about 55 km west of the Queensland capital Brisbane right next to the Warrego Highway towards Toowoomba . One part of Marburg is in the LGA Somerset Region , the other in the LGA Ipswich City . The Marburg Range , a small mountain range, is located near the settlement .
Surname
Was named Marburg modeled on the eponymous German city of Marburg in Hessen, what was certainly responsible for ensuring that in the 19th century at this point many German settlers arrived. However, its name has undergone a number of changes, initially it had various other names such as Sally Owens Plains, Rosewood Scrub and Frederick, before it was given its current name around 1870. During the First World War, it was renamed once more on the occasion of the same, in Townsend, but was given its name Marburg back in 1920.
Why it was named after the city of Marburg is largely unclear. Some think because the German settlers who arrived in the 1870s thought the place was similar to the German Marburg. Another anecdote reports that a local "station manager" (Meier? / Vorsteher? / Amtmann?) Gave the settlement the name "Marburg" because the German new settlers stubbornly only said "ober dar" or something like that probably corresponded to the English "over there". Around 1924, a report stated that 70 percent of the shops there had German names.
When speculating about the name, it should also be borne in mind that some other places nearby also received German names that have little to do with Marburg, such as Minden , Prenzlau and Kirchheim (today Haigslea ).
history
The original inhabitants of the Marburg region were the Jagara .
The settlement flourished in the 1870s. A large part of the settlers who settled here in those years came from Germany, which was certainly responsible for the fact that the settlement was named Marburg. Those German settlers also gave German names to other places nearby, such as Minden, Prenzlau and Kirchheim (today Haigslea).
One of the important industries in the early days was logging in the nearby Rosewood Scrub. In the 1880s, a sugar cane plantation and a sugar mill were built in nearby Woodlands , in which a number of Melanesian foreign workers were also employed. In 1889 the entrepreneur Thomas Lorimer Smith had a house built there by the architect George Brockwell Gill, which is today one of the most important sights of the place.
In 1879 Marburg received its own school building, the school was initially called "Frederich School" (Friederich School?). In the same year, 1879, (or 1881?) The "Marburg Hotel" was built, which is still the most important building in the city. In 1885 an art school was built in Marburg, and on the occasion of its opening, Marburg received street lighting for the first time.
From the 1920s to the 1970s, the main street ran through Marburg. As this is halfway between Brisbane and Toowoomba, it and its "Half-Way Café" were a popular stopover for motorists. Today the Warrego Highway is a little north of the city.
In the area around Marburg, in the Warrego Valley, wine is also grown today; it is likely to be one of the world's closest wine-growing regions.
There is also a radar station in Marburg, which is used for meteorological purposes, among other things.
literature
- Richard & Barbara Appleton: "The Cambridge Dictionary of Australian Places". Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1992
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Australian Bureau of Statistics : Marburg (L) ( English ) In: 2016 Census QuickStats . June 27, 2017. Retrieved April 14, 2020.
- ↑ Marburg, -haigslea, -ironbark on queenslandplaces.com.au. accessed on August 23, 2016