Aboriginal history The Aboriginal people of the
Brisbane River Valley and Kilcoy region are the Jinibara People, traditionally a nation of five clans: the Dungidau centred in the Kilcoy region and the junction of the
Stanley and Brisbane Rivers; the Dala or Dallumbara clan inhabiting the Conondale Range west to the Brisbane River; the Gurumngar around the southern end of the D’Aguilar Range; the Nalbo along the Maleny-Mapleton escarpment and the Dungibara on the Upper Brisbane River.
Duungidjawu (also known as
Kabi Kabi, Cabbee, Carbi, Gabi Gabi) is an
Australian Aboriginal language spoken on Duungidjawu country. The Duungidjawu language region includes the landscape within the local government boundaries of
Somerset Region and
City of Moreton Bay, particularly the towns of
Caboolture, Kilcoy,
Woodford and
Moore. Kilcoy was the heartland of the Jinibara People and the name comes from a patch of lawyer cane (jini) on Mount Kilcoy; 'bara' means' people' or 'folk'; thus Jinibara are the 'People of the Lawyer cane'. Kilcoy was known as Bumgur, meaning the 'blue cod'. The Kilcoy region is a rich Aboriginal cultural landscape. Mount Archer was known as Buruja, and also the name of a wetland near Villeneuve that was one of the main camps of the Dungidau clan. Bora rings existed at 'Wellcourt' on Somerset Dam and at Sandy Creek east of Kilcoy, Oaky Creek and Waraba Creek. The junction of the Brisbane and Stanley Rivers was known as Gunundjin, meaning a 'hollow place', and a sacred place, called Gairnbee Rock, recalled a dreaming story of a girl who went swimming there and was turned by her father, a gundir (clever man) by magic into a rock to save her from a dangerous evil spirit. The Stanley River was also called Gairnbee, meaning the water gum.
British colonisation In 1841, brothers Evan and Colin Mackenzie, of
Kilcoy Castle, Newtown Scotland, took up land west of Durundur (in the Stanley River valley) and began grazing sheep soon after land was opened to free settlement. They named it after their home town. They sold the property to Charles A. Atherton in 1849. Atherton in turn sold it to Captain
Louis Hope and John Ramsay in 1854. The partnership broke up ten years later, and Hope became sole owner and built the Kilcoy Station homestead of bricks, made on the property, and red cedar. Station managers for Captain Hope were Bryant about 1860, Captain Talbot, 1864 and William Butler from 1871 until the sale, where he purchased the homestead block.
Massacre of Aboriginal people In 1842 on the outskirts of Kilcoy Station owned by MacKenzie, 30–60 aborigines of the
Gubbi Gubbi tribe, two
Djindubari and some men from the
Dalla tribe died from eating flour that settlers had laced with strychnine or arsenic. News of this
massacre was shared among Aboriginal people attending the
Bunya Festival nearby. In his memoirs,
Thomas Petrie recalled being told of the massacre by Aboriginal people at "
one of the "bon-yi" feasts he attended." Inter-tribal meetings were held and
Old Moppy was instrumental in forging an alliance among the groups. News of the massacre at Kilcoy reached Sydney in December 1842, when an extract of a German missionary's journal describing an expedition to the Bunya Country was published in
The Colonial Observer. During the expedition the missionaries and the Aboriginal people accompanying them discovered that ''"a large number of natives, (about 50 or 60) having been poisoned at one of the squatter's stations."'' Dr
Stephen Simpson was appointed Commissioner for Crown Lands at Moreton Bay in May 1842. Allegations of the massacre on the Mackenzie Brothers' Kilcoy station were brought to his attention soon after his appointment. He attempted to investigate these allegations during a northern expedition in March - April 1843 which included interviewing some Aboriginal people. In May 1861, evidence about the massacre was presented during the hearings of the
Select Committee on the Native Police Force. Establishment of township In 1877, were resumed from the Kilcoy pastoral run and offered for selection on 19 April 1877. Timber milling operations were established as early as 1877, with Frank Nicholson building at Villeneuve, followed by James Green (1888), Hancock Brothers (1897), George Seeney and William and Stan Kropp in the same vicinity. Kilcoy's first Provisional School was opened in 1884 at Sheep Station Creek, some five to six miles north of Kilcoy Homestead, the name changing to Sheep Station Creek Provisional School in 1892 when the Kilcoy School opened its doors in Hope Street in Kilcoy. At that time there were still no subdivisions north of William Street as that was part of Kilcoy Station which was sold up in 1907. St Mary's Anglican Church was built in 1887. The timber church could seat 120 people. A
postal receiving office was established in 1889. On 1 December 1892, the Hopetoun Post Office was opened at Kilcoy in rented premises in Royston Street. It was named after
Louis Hope (the uncle of the first Governor General of Australia,
Lord Hopetoun, who was a visitor to Kilcoy Station). The township was referred to unofficially as Hopetoun. Brighton Hills Provisional School opened circa November 1904 and closed circa July 1918. It was described as "via Kilcoy". It was opened on Saturday 14 October 1905 by the Reverend William Henry Harrison, President of the Methodist Conference. In 1977, following the amalgamation of the Methodist Church into the
Uniting Church in Australia, it became the Kilcoy Uniting Church. It closed on 28 February 2021. It was on a site at 74 William Street (). In 1908, the post office name was changed from Hopetoun to Kilcoy, to avoid incorrect mail distribution to other towns of the same name in Victoria and Western Australia. In 1912, the
Shire of Kilcoy was formed, and the area became independent from the
Caboolture Shire. The post office in Kennedy Street opened in 1913. In 1953, the Kilcoy Pastoral Company established an abattoir in the town. The Jinibara people were granted Native Title by the
Federal Court of Australia in 2012. The application used a series of tape recordings made in the 1950s of Aboriginal man, Gaiarbau, (also known as Willie MacKenzie) that provided detailed understandings of Aboriginal culture in southeast Queensland. In the 1960s, road transport ensured the demise of the railway line (1964) and the old Kilcoy railway yard was converted many years later into a park known as Yowie Park. The current Kilcoy library opened in 2011. A
sand mining operation was proposed for the town in 2011. Circa 2018, the Uniting Church building was used for services by the Kilcoy United
Pentecostal Church and the Kilcoy
Seventh Day Adventist Church. As at 2024, neither congregation appears to be active in the town. == Demographics ==