What's in a name?

Does your property or house block have a name? Ours does. We call it Ninemile after the locomotive siding near our house: a name given to that siding by the then CSR Victoria Mill's administration over 100 years ago. All over the Herbert River Valley there are properties that have either retained or abandoned the names which their owners gave them.
In the early days, even when properties changed hands, the new owners retained the names. Romantic, fanciful or reminiscent of home country, they are glimpses into a past era. Pastoralist James Atkinson named his holding Farnham while James Cassady called his Mungalla. Planters, for instance, have bequeathed us Bemerside, Gairloch, Macknade and Hamleigh. Smaller property owners gave their properties names too.  So we had Antigua, the farm of Leonard Hartwell, Stone River and Mona and Eaglefarm of John Lely. Others, who were small farmers and founders of the Herbert River Farmers' Association similarly gave names to their farm holdings.  John Alm had Groseth, Francis Herron, Dumcree, Harald Hoffensetz, Rest Downs, James Herron, Emma Vale, Henry Faithfull, Hornsey , Niels Christian Rosendahl, Gumby, Arthur W. Carr, Oakleigh and August Anderssen, Riverview.
Passing through Cordelia, one property is still to this day clearly identified as Brooklands. Who owned that property?
The property has been owned by successive generations of the Pearson family who moved a former Gairloch Plantation house to the site. Today it remains as one of the oldest homes in the district. The Pearson men became synonymous with the Herbert River Farmers' League, the successor to the Herbert River Farmers' Association.
Daniel Pearson, an early supplier of Ripple Creek Mill, represented the Herbert River Farmers' League at the 1906 Sugar Industry Labour Royal Commission. His son Roy Villiers Garthorne Pearson, born in Ingham on 29 October 1891, was President of the Herbert River Farmers' League as was his son John Bartley Pearson. also born in Ingham on 25 March, 1920. He died at the age of 84 on the 25 September, 2004. As president of the League he was responsible for keeping it functioning through times of significant change in the Australian sugar industry. He told his story for a little publication: As We Were, Volume 1: Doorways to the Past published by the Herbert River Museum/Gallery.

Source: As We Were Volume 1: Doorways to the Past. Presented by the Herbert River Museum/Gallery Inc. n.d.