Timelines
The European history of Ipswich began with the exploration of the Bremer River in 1827 by Captain Patrick Logan, the commandant of the convict settlement at Brisbane. He discovered hills of limestone along the banks of the Bremer, and in the following year, sent an overseer and five convicts to quarry limestone and erect a lime-burning kiln. This settlement was known as Limestone Station. The convict period began in 1827 and lasted for fifteen years. It was initially little more than a convict camp for supplying lime and sheep for Brisbane’s needs. However, in 1842 a site for a town was surveyed.
In 1842, following the opening up of the region to free settlement, Limestone Station was transformed into a town and the following year it was renamed Ipswich. Being at the intersection of routes to the Darling Downs and Upper Brisbane Valley gave Ipswich strategic significance and for a time townspeople and graziers alike hoped that it would become the capital port on the river. However after Queensland separated from New South Wales, Brisbane leapt ahead and became the new state’s capital city.
While the colony of Queensland was struggling for independence, so too was the fledgling settlement of Ipswich, which gained municipal status in 1860. In the early 1860s, the first railway line in Queensland began construction and by 1865 the line from Ipswich to Bigge’s Camp (later known as Grandchester) was officially opened. However, it was another decade before the line between Ipswich and Brisbane was completed. But for the shortage of cotton during the American Civil War, the town might have been seriously hindered, due to droughts, floods, high unemployment and depression which the people of Ipswich faced in the late 1860s.
Because of the demand for local produce and manufacturers, Ipswich was commercially buoyant by the end of the 1870s and enjoyed prosperity during the boom of the 1880s. As coal was required for the increasing number of steam engines employed in boats, trains, mills and works, there was a remarkable growth of mining to the north and east of the town from the mid-1870s onwards, swelling the population of the Ipswich area.
By the 1870s, however, America had regained its economic impetus, so that local farmers turned increasingly to dairy farming. In 1893 floods and severe economic depression were once again having a serious effect on the Ipswich area. Nevertheless, Ipswich was partially insulated by its diversified economy.
