Ipswich Suburb Overview
Ipswich is a city in South-East Queensland, Australia. Along the Bremer River Valley, it is approximately 40 km west of, Brisbane CBD. The locality of the same name forms its Central Activities District, business and administrative centre. Ipswich is the administrative centre of the City of Ipswich both of which according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics share an estimated population of 172 700 at the 2011 census.
Ipswich is part of the Greater Brisbane metropolitan area and due to urban sprawl since the mid-20th century part of the metropolitan conurbation and is included in Brisbane’s statistical division. It is a major commercial and industrial area that is currently undergoing major transit oriented urban renewal, which was first planned in the Ipswich Regional Centre Strategy.
It began as a mining settlement and was proclaimed as a municipality on 2 March 1860, and became a city in 1904.
Ipswich is home to the Safe City camera network installed into nine suburbs to date with further expansions proposed in the coming years. 180 camera are monitored 24/7 from a facility situated within the CBD. The Ipswich City Council Safe City Monitoring Facility has hosted representatives of law enforcement agencies from the Netherlands, Taiwan, Great Britain and approximately twenty-five local authorities from across Australia to inspect the camera monitoring system.
Ipswich is home to the largest toxic dump in the Southern Hemisphere and second largest toxic dump in Australia;it has earmarked for widespread high-impact industrial development and further coal seam gas mining.
Plans are underway for Ipswich to contain the largest gas-fired power station in Australia and two new gas-fired power stations.
Prior to the arrival of European settlers, what is now called Ipswich was home to multiple tribal lands, including the Warpai tribe, Yuggera and Ugarapul Indigenous Australian groups. The area was first explored by European colonists in 1826, when Captain Patrick Logan, Commandant of the Moreton Bay penal colony, sailed up the Brisbane River and discovered large deposits of limestone and other minerals.
The town began as a limestone mining settlement and grew rapidly as a major inland port. Ipswich was initially named Limestone, however in 1843 it was renamed after the town of Ipswich in England. It became a municipality in 1858. Ipswich was a prime candidate for becoming capital of Queensland, but failed in its bid in favour of Brisbane in 1859. It was proclaimed a city in 1904.
In 1827, the first convicts and overseers arrived to mine the area. The town that built around this industry became known as Limestone and is remembered by one of the main streets through the Ipswich city centre. In 1843, the settlement officially became known as Ipswich. The name change was proposed by surveyor Henry Wade and approved by Sir George Gipps, a soldier and Governor of New South Wales. The town of Ipswich in England was once called Gipeswic, derived from the Old English for “workplace by water”.
From the 1840s onward, Ipswich was becoming an important river port for the growing local industries such as coal, and wool from the Darling Downs, so a regular paddlesteamer service from Brisbane Town, ‘The Experiment’, was established in 1846. This, and other steamer services, remained the primary form of mass/bulk transport between the two cities until 1876, when the construction of the original Albert Bridge, spanning the Brisbane River at Indooroopilly, completed the railway line begun between Ipswich and Brisbane in 1873.
Father William McGinty, a native of Northern Ireland, took charge of Ipswich Roman Catholic Parish in 1852 and had the first St Mary’s Church built. This building was described as “a rude slab building of small dimensions, without glass windows, only shutters.” This church was later demolished and replaced by a “beautiful stone edifice of Gothic design” as quoted from a member of the church community. That was the old St. Mary’s and it cost
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