Ashgrove: An historical perspective

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Written by Dick Paten

The name ASHGROVE, as "Ash-grove", is first known to have been used in the Post Office Directory for 1874 as the address of George Rogers Harding, then living in St John's Wood House.

It was used as the name for the first Ashgrove State School built two years later on land donated by Harding. Ashgrove was a postal address at least as early as 1884 and in all probability dates from the appointment of the first postmaster, the head teacher at the Ashgrove State School, in 1877. This debunks the popularly held but erroneous view that the name was derived from 'ash trees and the Grove Estate' which its first known use predates by ten years.

With the arrival of Europeans at Moreton Bay early in the nineteenth century, the balance of occupancy of the land by the Aboriginal people was fundamentally disrupted. This led to the eventual loss of access to tribal lands and a way of life that had developed over millennia. At this time Ashgrove was part of the range of the Turrbal people. The waterholes along Enoggera Creek and its tributaries, with their dense fringing scrubs met many of the needs of a hunter-gatherer society. Whilst the presence of Aborigines in the area in the early days of European settlement is well referenced, little tangible evidence remains of their occupancy.

Constance Campbell Petrie, in recording her father's reminiscences in 1904, noted that Ashgrove was known to the Aborigines as Killindarbin, but it is not clear whether this was a general name for the area or referred to a specific site or sites in Ashgrove as it was then known.

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