QLDFarming
Beenleigh
A sugar town that settled where five roads met on dry ground.
1866Town of Beenleigh surveyed
WHAT STARTED IT
German and English settlers took up the fertile flats of the Logan and Albert rivers in the 1860s, and sugar became the leading crop. The township took its name from Gooding and Davy’s Beenleigh cane plantation, and grew where several roads met on comparatively high, dry ground on the main road to Brisbane.
WHAT SUSTAINED IT
The first town lots, offered in 1866, mostly failed to sell, and in 1869 settlers petitioned to shift the township to the crossroads on the highway to Pimpama. Sugar mills and rum distilleries followed, the South Coast railway arrived in 1885, and Beenleigh was the seat of its own shire until it was merged into Albert Shire in 1949.
TURNING POINTS
1866Seventy town lots of Beenleigh on the Albert River are offered at a Crown land sale; only eight sell.
1875St George’s church opens, the first place of worship built in the township.
1884Francis Gooding opens a distillery beside his sugar mill, forerunner of the Beenleigh Rum Distillery.
1885The South Coast railway reaches Beenleigh.
2008Beenleigh is transferred from Gold Coast City to Logan City.
WHAT IT DOES NOW
A district centre for southern Logan City, with the Gold Coast railway, a shopping centre and a historical village of relocated buildings. The rum distillery on the Albert River nearby still recalls the cane era.