QLDFarming
Mudgeeraba
Selectors cleared the scrub, then the railway moved the town.
1873Free selectors’ settlement reported
WHAT STARTED IT
Free selectors took up the scrub-covered creek country south of the Nerang River from the late 1860s, growing maize and potatoes and cutting timber. The settlement lay on the road south from Nerang towards Tallebudgera and the Tweed.
WHAT SUSTAINED IT
Cobb & Co coaches reached Mudgeeraba in 1883, the year a hotel opened. When the South Coast railway arrived in 1903 the town grew around the station on the Mudgeeraba Station Estate, and dairying, timber and bananas sustained it until the line closed in 1961.
TURNING POINTS
1873A Brisbane Courier correspondent finds ‘a flourishing settlement of free selectors’ where there was bush three years earlier.
1883Cobb & Co extends its coach route from Nerang to Mudgeeraba and Tallebudgera.
1903The South Coast railway opens through Mudgeeraba to Tweed Heads.
1933Fifty unemployed men clear blocks for a banana settlement on Mudgeeraba Creek.
1961The South Coast railway closes.
WHAT IT DOES NOW
A Gold Coast hinterland suburb of about 14,600 people beside the Pacific Motorway. Housing estates and schools now cover much of the old dairy country.